Help Designing Program

Boy what a great thread. I've been moving towards doing the WOD's myself. This thread is perhaps pushing me over the line (in a good way...)

I think I can understand much of the trepidation. A 28 day cycle makes newcomers feel like they are missing out on too much and need to make up ground too quickly. That's my situation anyway. If I can force myself to take a 28 day look at things I can accept the WOD's as they are. It's not the WOD's fault I waited until I was 42 years old to start this sort of training...

slizzardman, you may enjoy this article, courtesy for the Starting Strength website:

http://startingstrength.com/articles/adaptation_prioritization_wells.pdf

I am curious to see the entire WOD 28 day training cycle or at least have an idea of when the cycle starts.

Would anyone have the time to post the entire cycle or would it be not appropriate?

I started with my own program but I guess like most people here I eventually switch to following the WODs. It has been a few months since I started adding the WODs after my rock climbing training and I am very satisfied with my new core strength and upper body power. One thing I didn't anticipate was how much more body control the BtGB has added to my climbing. Now I amke it look good and I don't fall of the rocks "I DISMOUNT".

Carlos, I don't know if anyone just randomly has it written down, but if no one knows just check the WODs for one month. Read them and you'll see the programming. I have to also agree with the body control. I do Brazilian Jiujitsu and had been doing gymnastic based conditioning for about a year. After that, I grappled with my instructor. Immediately after, he complimented me on my much improved control and promoted me!

Hi

Very interesting discussion, and most definitely informative without a doubt. I do have a few curiosities..that i was hopping posters could address..

1- Training for personal health and fitness is drastically different to training for athletic performance. I have the impression that there is confusion with this when people create, or recommend programs. First off how is the use of WOD any more safe (from an injury prevention perspective) than any other program that says do this today. From my understanding of the WOD (not questioning its effectiveness), and i suppose maybe its my miss understanding, or lack of know, the Coach use a modified WOD with his athletes. My impression is that these are the coaches Senior and Elite level athletes (ages, and abilities, experience level unspecified, i have never come across a definition by the coach as to which athletes he specifically refers to) who are experienced and supervised athletes. How is it any safer or more effective to recommend this program compared to any other program to a recreational trainer? Even though the the daily exercises can be modified to suite the individuals abilities and experience, how is one to know how to modify this effectively? This is my general problem with following a prescribed program overall. Program design should be always! individually based for maximum results. the WOD is not individual , it cannot be. And there is no program that meets the "one shoe fits all" criteria. I could see it being great! to implement with gymnasts (group), who are all of similar ability, strength, capacity. But telling an average person "here follow this, it works great" is not entirely true.. Question for the board...

How many have been/are following the WOD?, from those of you who are? how many have suffered injury? What level of gains did you achieve? Have you ever used any other training programs/cycles that you can compare your gains to. Its hard to say that the program is very effective because it has not been directly compared to anything else. I am sure the principles may be sound, but for individuals to actually get a good benefit they would need to know those principles or have the program specifically design using those principles to tackle that individuals needs.

" slizzardman" you mention...stretch the front, strengthen the back" (even though this is applicable to majority of individuals) what if someone who reads this with dominant posterior truck musculature reads this, and follows your advice..It is not effective for them, and neither is the WOD in terms of its balanced joint and mover exercise prescription.

Using an an example, if two similar individuals (both experienced weight lifters, similar morphologies etc..) decide to use bodyweight training, who is to say that the WOD will be more effective than a more standard 7 day cycles program (as initially posted by Asclepius )... I think anyone would struggle to definitively say one is more effective than the other without actually comparing results, detaining, and than swapping programs with individuals and comparing results.

I totally agree that movement patterns, and kinetic chains must be balanced, and most (all that i have ever seen) do not actually do this..ESPECIALLY! in athletic programs. In many cases athletic programs often sacrifice balance for performance. Going back to the WOD, given that its used for gymnasts (whom out of most sports are among the more balanced physiologically, findings from jnr and Snr US national team members, according to Rob Schwartz who is the US OTC Strength and Conditioning Coach, 79% show anterior pelvic tilt, 71% show Rounded shoulders (no surprise there..."HOLLOW I SAY"), 63% Pelvic Posterior Dump) it is bound to have inbuilt gymnastics specific imbalances, if its to as effective as possible. Of course I am sure the given Coach S. know he uses corrective measures and supplemental work, this in itself is just an example of how no athletic of performance based program will be ideal. WHAT you do aside from the main program focus is what will determine the balance of the program. Which as wisely everyone has recommended shoulder (shoulder joint, shoulder girdle, elbow) prehab.

To address some of Asclepius questions from original post

Since you don't have rings you might be interested in making yourself some homemade ones... check this out

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to- ... -PVC-Cond/ ---- Happy Birthday

Is your program to much or too little is hard to say. But you should consider conditioning principles and your goals. What are you hopping to achieve with this program? Overall body weight strength, or specific skills?

For legs depending on what you want to accomplish (ply or strength), for Plyo --drop squats are vital, O-lifts, and eccentric work

Strength you can never go wrong with single leg squat variation (given suitability), squats, O-lifts.

just my 2c

Yeah, see, that is the one thing I am trying to wrap my head around.

I keep comparing the program that I made (or others like it, such as Kilroy's) to Starting Strength, which is easily the most well-known and arguably most effective novice strength building program out there (and arguably even for intermediate or advanced lifters). I'm still having trouble seeing why a linear progression program for Gymnastic Strength Training™ would not be okay. I know that this was probably explained, but the whole point of a program like it is progressive resistance, making it continually stressful to a body.

Maybe it's the fact that you would have to program an insane amount of exercises each day to balance everything out for gymnastics, and like a couple people already said in this thread, that process got dizzying and in the end they ended up with programs not too disimilar from the WOD.

EDIT:

Also, Coach S. sent an email to everyone on the forum about this thread?! Awesome!

I think ( Slizzard or others best suited will correct me if I am wrong) is not that the linear system is not OK, you will develope strenght of course. What you get with the WODs is an insane quantity of training experience from around the world that Coach has readed, recolected from other coaches(and Coach only looks for the top ones) or learned from his own experience. He has tested it with his own atletes for further refinement, If something is proved not usefull is not used, if some new methods demostrates its superiority is added.

It is not a closed theory or a "perfect" system that we should praise, it's open for further improvements and evolution along the time.It Is like comparing telegraph and internet, you can send a message both ways, but no question internet will give you plenty other advantages that you would not even imagine when you only know telegraph.

At the Mallorca seminar I translated for some spanish gymnastics coaches that are getting very good results with spanish junior gymnasts from their gym that are getting to national team, also some spanish Olympic team girls are from this same gym. They were amazed of the deepness of Coach's knowledge in most topics. Of course lots of exercices were allready known by them, but even then some of the prehab exercices and theory behind coach Strenght method impressed them specially. Also the strenght of Allan and Dillon ( not to mention the youtube videos) was surprissing for them, and they already got really strong boys.

This people just had the russian junior and olympic team training at their facilities prior to the olympics, so they are used to see other top training methods also. This is just to put into perspective the kind and quality of the info you are getting at this forum. (Also with members like Ido, Jeff, Slizzard, Blairbob ...)

The best of all is that we, mere fitness enthusiast can use this very top noch method for our own training and get great results without making any specific change to it. ( the competitive gymnastics training has lots of other specific training that is not covered here, but we don't need it anyway).

Maybe it's the fact that you would have to program an insane amount of exercises each day to balance everything out for gymnastics, and like a couple people already said in this thread, that process got dizzying and in the end they ended up with programs not too disimilar from the WOD.

Bingo.

One of the issues I had with the linear strength programming of just FSP+FBE SSC cycling is my metabolic conditioning went poor. Following the GB WOD would have circumvented that. If I did it again, I would just make some mini conditioning wods to go alongside with that after FSP+FBE work.

TY, Omegant from your testimonial from these Spanish Coaches, especially those with female gymnasts as I have been lately trying to brainstorm what I would do for a women's program as I am leaning toward switching back to training females. I have my reasons and I still enjoy to watch the guys train in the gym but it's a matter of a few issues.

By the way slizzardman, are these any of the things that you are talking about with shoulder issues:

http://www.exrx.net/Kinesiology/Weaknesses.html

http://www.exrx.net/Kinesiology/Inflexibilities.html

http://www.exrx.net/Kinesiology/Posture.html

?

Valentin, you are completely wrong about several things. For one thing, higher level gymnasts have shoulders that are at least as unbalanced as those of powerlifters. Why? ALL the high point moves are pressing. Internal rotation. The battle for these guys is to keep their shoulders functional enough to compete.

The GB program is different than competitive training in that we are not trying to do IC to Maltese to Planche to Inverted Cross or anything like that. We are trying to be fit and develop the strength to perform many of these feats of strength. Because we are not trying to compete them, we do not have to waste the huge amounts of time that must be spent correcting form and practicing these skills over and over and over again. You have to realize that a proper IC by itself is a monumental feat of strength, and that a maltese represents a level of strength that many gymnasts never obtain unless they are rings specialists. Of course there are a number that DO obtain that, and I am not in a position to comment on that further than I have here in this paragraph. This is the exact reason that Coach created the GB program! It exists to provide a way for people to build a high level of gymnastic strength without running into many of the problems that come along with high level competition.

The WODs are individual because you are supposed to scale them to your own personal ability level, which is pretty easy. The book is written with everything in movement families. You figure out what you can do with perfect form by finding the exercise prescribed and scaling back as far down that family as you have to in order to complete the work sets without hitting failure. There is so much video and forum support available that there is no reason not to know. Even without that, the book does an excellent job of showing these things. No one here is trying to do exactly what Coach posts, as that is not the goal. This is not cross fit, we are not boneheads who have nothing better to do than try to wreck our bodies with each workout. Well, most of us aren't. There could always be some lurking, but by and large this community is populated by members who want to feel good, have a wide range of athletic abilities, and do something other than lift weights.

The WODs are designed to build a balanced strength and skill set. They are not randomly posted, there is a specific sequence of workouts that is repeated. Inside that sequence are workouts that focus on max strength, strength endurance, or explosive output. This happens to every muscle group. As for what Coach's senior athletes do, they are performing exercises that are so far beyond what we can do that they do not belong in the BtGB book, which is why Coach is writing 4 other books. When they are still at our strength levels they do exactly what WE do. If members choose to work in an unbalanced fashion by focusing on planche or something that is their choice, but the WODs are very balanced when viewed in terms of the macrocycle. These imbalances are the result of added work that is either poorly thought out or added in through honest ignorance of the correct way to build up these skills. Such imbalances are not part of the WODs themselves.

There is other work that should be done, like shoulder prehab, and people like Ido and myself have made the basics that are necessary to ensure a long, injury free training career for free. There is much more detailed and comprehensive work that will be a part of Liquid Steel™. I have read an awful lot of training books, and used and seen an awful lot of systems, and nowhere else is so much given for free. There is also nowhere else that advocates a safe, well-paced approach to training with a long-term viewpoint. The closest program is 531, and there is less covered in terms of shoulder health and other such issues, particularly when you consider that we have an open forum where Coach and other high level athletes regularly respond to questions with useful time-tested methods to handle whatever the issue is.

You are absolutely correct about saying that individuals will each need to assess their strengths and weaknesses and focus on certain aspects, but that gets into personal training. Anyone who expects one single book to cover how to test and individualize a person's training is insane, because such a process is simply too much for almost everyone. You need too much equipment as well as at least one observer to make accurate measurements in all relevant categories. You have to understand proper form. You have to understand proper posture and how to recognize a potential issue and stop testing until that issue is corrected. You have to have a person who can handle such a large amount of information and testing and is capable of performing it all on themselves. That, my friend, is an enormous amount of stress. Seriously. That's why athletes with true aspirations all have trainers. It's just too much for one person to handle. Too much stress, too much time.

I don't know how many people care to share their experiences, personally I have shared mine so many times that it is becoming an irritation to re-type. Quite a number of members here have had great success in multiple athletic endeavors, and all of us who have started using the WODs have seen better and more consistent progress with the WODs, despite spending less time working out (or should I say BECAUSE of that?).

As far as why WODs would be a better idea for a recreational athlete, they are balanced. if you do what they say, you will have a very low risk of developing any kind of injury. With other training programs it is up to each person to decide what to do, and people do not understand how to keep their bodies healthy on their own. If they did there would be no need for athletic trainers, personal trainers, or fitness books.

You are also wrong in saying that it can not be said that the program is effective. You can not compare this to weightlifting nor weightlifting(Olympic lifting) to powerlifting. They all involve different movement patterns. Because of the nature of gymnastic training, you develop a more balanced set of athletic abilities. Range of motion, flexibility, body tension, and the ability to exert force in low-leverage positions are just a few of the attributes you develop here. I can personally tell you that, as an mma enthusiast (I can't say a fighter anymore because I just haven't trained on a competitive level in forever), my performance when I wrestle around and spar is far better than when I was lifting. I'm much more mobile and my ability to pull people and exert my strength in awkward positions allows me to completely dominate people physically, even when they are bigger and perhaps stronger under a barbell than I am.

You can not compare strength developed with one training tool to strength developed with another when the basics of the exercises are so very different. What you CAN compare is athletic prowess within an event, and that is something I do have experience with as have many others here. I am not the only one who has had this result, and I know of no one who has had the opposite experience.

Using an an example, if two similar individuals (both experienced weight lifters, similar morphologies etc..) decide to use bodyweight training, who is to say that the WOD will be more effective than a more standard 7 day cycles program (as initially posted by Asclepius )... I think anyone would struggle to definitively say one is more effective than the other without actually comparing results, detaining, and than swapping programs with individuals and comparing results.

Here you are completely wrong. His program does not develop multiplanar pulling at all, does not do a good job of balancing the shoulder girdle, and does not follow the basics of the FSP progressions. You are free to believe as you will, but even Killroy70, who arguable made the best linear cycle on the site, has switched over to the WODs and is enjoying his progress.

You have made a number of incorrect statements and I get so lost in the post that it is simply hard to point them out beyond what I have because I get lost in the post.

It should be obvious to anyone that if you are training for a specific sport you will need to develop the specific athletic attributes that sport (and your position within that sport) requires of the player to excel. These are primarily lower body power, and this program is not designed to address that to the highest degree as that is not an advantage for a gymnast except perhaps in the vault. At the seminars Coach has mentioned that for many people who are athletes in hip dominant sports there will be a need to add weight lifting in some form and perhaps substitute in other leg training on leg WOD days. We who have attended the seminars have repeated that here.

You are also incorrect about your statement regarding my shoulder video. Often those who have dominant posterior chains, such as myself, are the ones who benefit the MOST from the stretching aspect, and will not suffer at all from continuing to maintain and/or build posterior strength so long as stretching is done in front. The only way you will suffer from this is if you do NOT stretch the front. That is the single MOST important thing to do. If you are tight up front AND strong in back you are in serious trouble because you will be creating a very, very tight shoulder with a very small subacromial gap. I point this out in my posts here and I believe on my video as well, but that may be something I have saved for part 2. I can't remember. At any rate, that particular shoulder stretch in its variations that I have shown is 100% vital for everyone. If you have no problems now you will be sure that you maintain flexibility in front and build it before tightness becomes a problem and if you are already tight you will benefit tremendously from stretching the front. Without strengthening the back and ingraining that partially retracted posture into every day sitting and standing/walking you will not be reaping the full benefit of the stretches because you will not be completely re-setting the shoulder position.

In the end, I wonder if you realize that this program is made to develop the strength characteristics of a gymnast, and is not aimed at being a one stop wonder for all athletics. It is simply true that because of the nature of gymnastic strength there is more carryover to all aspects of athletics from a high level of gymnastic development than there is from anything else. Gymnasts, more so than athletes from any other single sport as a group, are able to immediately perform well in just about any other sport. This is due to the high degree of development in all basic aspects of athletic expression that competitive gymnastics requires. That is not the same thing as saying this is the perfect program for everyone. This IS a perfect base, but it can not create ideal athletes in every sport by itself. It will, however, create very good athletes for pretty much every sport. More than anything else, supplementary leg strength and power training would be a good idea. Personally, I also believe in overhead pressing and for certain sports strong range partials.

Asclepius: I will have to look at those links, I am not familiar with that site.

In short, I am not and never have said that a linear program won't give results. They do. The problem is that this kind of program that was proposed by the OP can not cover the entire range of strength and skills. I responded to the request for opinions by the OP with an informed opinion that the shoulder girdle was not being properly taken care of and that the core work was extremely repetitive and not fully covering what it needs to or being varied enough for optimal results. I also pointed out the lack of multi-plane pulling and the extremely high volume of MU work. I believe I said that as long as he checks out the shoulder videos I recommended and follows some kind of a similar shoulder prehab routine he should be ok, but that he will get much better results overall with the WODs because a 28 day cycle simply does not have the time constraints that a 7 day program does and can therefore cover many more aspects of fitness. This is not necessary for health, perhaps, but given the extreme time efficiency and the excellent results that come along with it I don't see why I would not recommend the WODs.

One thing I would like to add is that even with dominant posterior thorax chains you will often run into internal rotation issues. Lats are the dominant posterior muscle for shoulder flexion in adducted positions, which are most pulling positions because that's where we are strongest. Lats are also internal rotators. That's why your shoulders will always roll forward when you do a true max effort on any row. If you do that a lot without balancing that neural conditioning with at least an equal volume of scapular retraction and depression you will allow the anterior shoulder girdle to slowly tighten just like bench pressing will. Either way you will need to stretch and work on retraction. That's one of the things that can not be absent from a program that is designed to avoid training-related shoulder injuries.

slizzardman said:

Asclepius said:

Anyone care to answer my numbered questions without just saying "Do the WOD?" I'm sure the WOD is fine and all, but I don't believe it is appropriate for a novice. Simple, linear programs have been proven to be effective.

You have clearly made your choice then, and by itself there is nothing wrong with that. However, your reasoning and line of thinking is, in my personal opinion, a self-handicap. Allow me to explain what I mean by that.

If you learn more about high level athletic training, meaning training that produces the best possible adaptations in a body, you will find that the workouts are not programmed on a seven day schedule that repeats indefinitely. They rotate through 2-4 weeks, and the variables of exercise rotation, frequency, volume, intensity, and contraction speed ALL are varied from workout to workout based on what the goal of that particular phase of training is geared towards.

As far as structure goes, your proposed program and the WOD have equal levels of structure. Both are set. WODs are not random, and they are not put up for "a good time." It is perfectly fine for you to prefer your workout because it is YOURS, but to somehow think your workout has a higher level of structure is flat out incorrect. The major difference between your program and the WODs is that the WODs have been designed to rotate through ALL of those previously listed variables with the specific purpose of building a balanced level of gymnastic strength and explosiveness throughout the body. It is not physically possible to do the same thing with a 7 day rotating schedule that repeats exactly as is. That does not mean you will not get good results from your program, but it is an inherently limited program. The inherent limits present are the lack of exposure to different levels of all the different types of stimuli.

You are also mistaken in thinking that the WODs are not linear. From one dynamic pull WOD to the next you are expected to (and should expect yourself to) make slow and steady progress just as in a linear system. You don't jump up and down the intensity levels, you make slow and steady progress with the exercises selected, and when it is possible to start making the transition to the next progression you do so in measured steps, just as you would in a so-called linear progression. The major advantage of the WODs is that you are exposed to many different types of stimuli, one after the other, in the various muscle groups. For example, your upper body will cycle through slower tempo work, faster work and truly explosive work before being exposed to the slower tempo work again. This makes it impossible for the CNS to become massively efficient at any one of those things, which makes continuous progress possible. A traditional linear system that only uses one type of stimulus over and over gets adapted to very quickly by the body, and this is why linear systems have a very short lifespan before they have to be changed in order to continue progress. In that sense, they are actually less structured than the WODs as they must be completely re-tooled every 4-6 workouts for maximum gains to continue. By building that necessary variability into what is essentially a steady state workout cycle, the WODs allow for continuous progress without having to sit down and re-design everything on a regular basis. What is actually happening in the WODs is that several linear cycles are being run simultaneously, one for each particular type of stimulus. If this does not make sense to you, I will not be surprised. My entire life, quite literally since I was 7 years old, has been centered around learning and applying all of this stuff, and I have continuously pursued the latest knowledge in the field of human performance non stop. It has actually taken me until quite recently to really understand exactly what is happening in various systems and to see the similarities and differences for what they really are. I do not expect anyone else to do the same without a similar level of investment in the learning process, but it would be nice if you trust me on this one. You don't need to, I don't have much of an ego when it comes to that stuff these days, but I have nothing to gain by telling you all of this. Only you have something to gain.

Short allegory (A story used to explain a concept)

We can safely say that taking a pair of scissors and cutting your hair yourself works, because you are clearly going to be able to rid yourself of the vast majority of unwanted hair. However, it would take a very skilled person to make such a haircut look good all around the head, and that kind of skill can only come from a lot of experience. In other words, lots of time making mistakes while slowly changing how they have done things with each hair cut until they get it exactly how they want it. Even after all this it will still be very hard for this person to cut their hair as quickly as a trained professional and still get the same result, if it is at all possible. The professional is going to be faster and produce a better product in pretty much all cases because of a vastly larger amount of experience cutting hair and because of professional education that has sped up the learning process. You will rarely find a professional that is 100% self taught, we all learn from others even if it is only by watching. Clearly, if the only way to get a haircut was to do it yourself, it would not only be acceptable but ideal to cut your own hair. Paying for a haircut is clearly more efficient in all aspects, so as long as you can afford the price you would always be better off with the professional haircut. Now, if the professional haircut was free, is there any advantage at all to doing it yourself? Some will like the fact that THEY cut their hair and that no one else had a hand in it, but these people are concerned primarily with their ego. For whatever reason, it is very important to them that only THEY be responsible for their results. If they looked great but the work was done by someone else they would feel like less of a person for some reason. For everyone else, what matters is the result. Since the professional can do it better AND faster, they will always go to the professional.

All you have to do is replace the word "haircut" with "work out program" and you have my point. It seems to be very important to you that YOU be the one to design your program. I do not believe there is anything morally wrong with that, but I do believe that I would not be doing a good job as a forum member if I do not point out that this severely limits your ability to make long term progress, and the progress you DO make will be less than it could be as long as you insist on being solely responsible for your results. Coach, who is the professional, has shared the program that he uses to take ordinary children and turn them into the best athletes in his state and often the country. He has shared this program for a very reasonable rate: FREE. It is not horribly time consuming, and it is quite a lot of fun, and it produces very fast results in the short term while guaranteeing long term progress.

It will take you a long, long time to gather the knowledge it will take to duplicate the process, and by the time you do you will basically be replicating the WODs. In the process you will have wasted a number of years training sub-optimally.

EDIT:

Imbalances pretty much fix themselves when doing compound movements. You're not bodybuilding, i.e. isolating muscles. Things may start out stronger, but over time when worked concurrently with other compounds, everything will even out.

WOW. This, my friend, is completely untrue. You are not alone in this mistaken belief, but that does not change the fact that it is false. Nearly everything that we do involves internal rotation. Without specific attention to chest and shoulder stretching, scapular strengthening in all directions, and external rotation (more or less in that order, too) strengthening you are just about guaranteed to run into shoulder problems.

You appear to be a very, very motivated individual with regard to your physical regimen and as it stands right now this motivation will lead you to injury. I hope you take what I have written before this edit and after to heart and use it to keep yourself healthy and maximize your progress. Again, I have no personal stake in this. I do not get paid for spending my time here or sharing my knowledge and experience. I do this solely to try and help.

END EDIT

I can tell you right now, just looking at your proposed program, that you are way, way out of balance. I have to be very honest and tell you that your program is a destiny for shoulder problems. I will suggest to you that you watch my videos on shoulder issues and also Ido's shoulder videos (he has two on his youtube channel, scapular mobilization and shoulder stability are the subjects I believe) and like everyone else, I will suggest that you follow the WODs AT LEAST as a general template through which to base your own program.

You NEED a lot of that stuff in there. You NEED to fix the very large orientation your program has towards internal rotation. You NEED to ensure you are doing a lot of scapular retraction, and that your front lever work is all done with fully retracted scapula. It is nearly impossible to perform the harder variations of FL rows with full retraction at the top of the movement, so you will NEED to put in foot supported rows in order to get some volume work on the retractors and to make sure your body does not slowly adopt dysfunctional compensation patterns during FL rows. Bulgarian rows are also a necessity. They are really much more about the rear delts and the retractors than they are about the lats.

You will see that as we break things down, your upper body work will slowly morph into the WODs as we start to address the issues that are present in your workouts as proposed in your initial post. Lower body work is really up to you, but I would do explosive work when coach has explosive work in the leg WOD, and strength work when coach has strength work in there, and "metcon" when things are clearly meant to burn a ton of energy unless you have the knowledge to write a program that specifically addresses whatever your lower body performance goals are. A gymnast pretty much just needs to be able to absorb the impact of tumbling passes and dismounts, and that does not require the muscle mass that many other sport performances will. If you want to lift heavy or do the O-lifts or whatever, or if you want to be easily dunking a basketball or long jumping super far you will need to orient your lower body program towards these goals.

If I have offended you with this post, I apologize for the hurt feelings, but this is the truth.

Nick, you are a bit wrong about the loading. Most of the time lack of progress is due to too MUCH work, not too little, especially when dealing with a SSC. It does not take very much to make progress, and it is easy to step over the line. You will also find that injuries build up for a period of many months, and just because you do not get injured this month does not mean you are not slowly building up imbalances that will lead to AC impingement, pain, tendon degradation and for the very stubborn few who train through all that, serious tears that will require surgery to fix. It also does not mean that you are not building compensation patterns that expose you to a dramatically higher risk of knee and/or ankle injuries, or slowly building up elbow tendonitis/osis. Without a good understanding of how to do things right OR a supervisor who has that understanding and designs your program with that in mind, nearly every trainee ends up in one or more of these situations at least once and usually repeatedly.

I sometimes hate writing this much, since I have the strong feeling that this post will be largely disregarded, but perhaps it will be of use to others. At any rate this is the essence of an excellent article I will write over the break, so it won't be a total wash no matter what.

***************** Super response! Boris Zaitchouk(bondarchuk) commented that the brain will "forget" an exercise if you stay away long enough.

Brandon Green

Well at this point i stand correct, thanks for the insight. I shall have to dig a little deeper into all this and see what its all about. Not having been to one of Coach S seminars i definitely don't have all the inside know about his program. I will definitely look your recommendations about programs. However i do have some reservations about your response, but its not worth mentioning at this point. I still am skeptical, but i don't deny that Coach S knows his stuff, or anyone else. I just want to get reasoning instead of people just telling me, this is so, like or not.

Hello gents, I read a couple of posts on this thread and I felt I'd chime in.

When I first started GB I was totally against the WOD's like this poster because I didn't and still don't understand them.

I bought the GB book and made my own program and eventually fell off the boat due to other activities.

From what I'm reading, did I even need to buy Coach Sommer's book or could I have followed his free WOD's and received better progress than buying his book and organizing his program?

Btw, what are WOD's and how exactly do they work?

kombatmaster7 said:

Hello gents, I read a couple of posts on this thread and I felt I'd chime in.

When I first started GB I was totally against the WOD's like this poster because I didn't and still don't understand them.

I bought the GB book and made my own program and eventually fell off the boat due to other activities.

From what I'm reading, did I even need to buy Coach Sommer's book or could I have followed his free WOD's and received better progress than buying his book and organizing his program?

Btw, what are WOD's and how exactly do they work?

I believe how the WODs work was discussed multiple times in this thread alone.

The book is still necessary to the exercises and the various progressions of them. The WODs are free, but there is no descriptions of the exercises that are already in the book, unless there had been a previous article written on them.

kombatmaster7 said:

From what I'm reading, did I even need to buy Coach Sommer's book or could I have followed his free WOD's and received better progress than buying his book and organizing his program?

Nick already answered regarding the book. There are descriptions and photos of the movements and progressions. There are also companion DVD's that go along with the book. If you are the sort of person who can assimilate entirely through reading then the book may be enough. But if you are more of a visual learner then the DVD's might answer a lot of questions for you.

Slizzard. Do you know that Valentin is also a men's gymnastics coach? I think Val has been coaching and been in the sport about as long as I have, which is about a third of the time of Coach Sommer and honestly, we could probably acknowledge that in our first 5 years of it we didn't learn or know as much as the last 5 or 3 years.

Of course, you would tweak the GB WOD a bit for certain fitness athletes or gymnasts. X gymnast might need more shoulder prevention to balance out the shoulder or etc. At one gym, I had 2 boy's on team, besides others, that were nearly polar opposites. One had uber shoulder flexibility and no real strength, the other was the exact opposite. Poor bridge and shoulder flexion though he did have great shoulder extension...and he is/was quite strong. Even Mr. Uber flexibility had some strength as he could do about 5-7 pullups as an 8yo. Not stellar, but not super weak but he couldn't no leg rope climb. Mr. Lord of the Rings can lever and could do a straddle planche press HS but a horrible bridge wall walk. So their supplemental work would differ if I could get them to actually do it.

Kombatmaster. A WoD is the Workout of the Day.

It may be be possible for someone without BtGB to do the daily WOD but I'd only wager if they were something of a gymnast or coach beforehand as they would have to know most of the exercises beforehand. Some of the nomenclature in the GB WOD is different than I knew things before or from different regions of the US or world. Still, you would have to guess at some things and when I have forgotten my book, I forget what certain exercises are even if I scour the forum and online. Generally, I have had to bug one of my friends online with the book when I do forget mine at home or when I let my friend read or borrow it for a time (never again!).

As well, the book is full of other programming tidbits and basic programs to choose from besides proper execution of exercises.

I figured Val was at least a reasonably knowledgable person, otherwise he couldn't have asked what he asked. There were a lot of good questions, and he has a lot of points that he is correct about, but a lot of things that in my opinion were way off. Obviously that wasn't on purpose, just like when I am wrong it's not on purpose lol! Happens plenty.

I think that perhaps the most complete answer to his question regarding the GB program is that it is designed for long term continued progress. In specific areas it would be possible to exceed progress from the WODs by following a focused linear program, but you would be sacrificing growth in other areas and as time progressed and you kept switching focuses you would reach a point where it would be impossible to make appreciable progress in one area without moving backwards in another, and that is just no good for someone aiming to reach the top.

I would not be surprised if there were a few other training methods that allowed similar results, particularly whatever Jovchev is following. I mean really, he has the most amazing longevity I have ever heard of as a gymnast in modern days. As long as you are following the rules, the WAY you follow the rules is a bit less important. It seems to me that gymnastics, because of the wide variety of skills and strengths that a gymnast must use during the course of event practice, could easily fulfill a lot of this through regular practice. Add in a structure that keeps a focus on joint prehab and shoring up weak points and I can't imagine it going too far wrong. Coach's GB program is one such program, and it is always growing as Coach learns new things. I think that is one of the hallmarks of a really good program: growing and changing to accommodate new knowledge as it appears and proves itself useful.

Valentin, I hope I was not offensive. I was trying to present my opinions in a factual manner. Please feel free to ask for more information to support what I have said, and please share your reservations. I am still sometimes more confrontational than I mean to be, but it's not on purpose. I'm pretty open and willing to research.

slizzardman said:

I sometimes hate writing this much, since I have the strong feeling that this post will be largely disregarded, but perhaps it will be of use to others. At any rate this is the essence of an excellent article I will write over the break, so it won't be a total wash no matter what.

Sliz, everyone here respects you tremendously. We LOVE these information-packed posts! You can be 100 percent confident that whenever you write a post like this, a lot of the forum members are going to take the time to read and examine it thoroughly, and more often than not (at least for me), I come back to read it two or more times until I understand it.

I am one of those people who like to have everything laid out in front of them and to know what's coming up next, so I am currently examining the WODs looking for a pattern. If the seminar attendees are unable to post the schedule because of various seminar rules, I will post it here once I figure it out.

Either Trianglechoke or Jason M. Stein posted a rough outline of the WOD cycle once but I have no idea where. It shouldn't be too hard to figure out if you boil everything down to its essence (for example pushing / maximal strength day followed by pulling / dynamic strength day).

I think the rotation is a little more complex than what I posted, but it's something akin to that.

So, as a newbie to this and also excited about the results I could obtain, and now believing that the "WOD Way" is a good approach to the training, would it be possible for some of you more experienced members to "scale" down the WOD's for a week or so to allow us to gain a better appreciation of what we should do to scale them down. Perhaps there could be a WOD - A for the complete beginner and a WOD - B for a more intermediate trainer.

As I have mentioned before, alot of the issue for us new folks is leaning the abbreviations and trying to understand how to scale them back using the Book.

Also, I suspect there is no issue with starting with the next WOD versus starting at the beginning of some 28 day cycle because we don't know where it does start.

Thanks,

TommyGuunz, if I could answer your question...

Most of the abbreviations used are straight from the book BtGB.

Asking the coach to post a secondary WOD for beginners is asking a lot, seeing as how he posts the WOD for us to see for absolutely no cost to us. Also, he does explain a lot of scaling that can be dome in the notes associated with the WODS, from what I have seen.

Finally, if you ever have a question about a particular WOD, that is why you can post for each WOD to ask a specific question.

TommyGuunz said:

So, as a newbie to this and also excited about the results I could obtain, and now believing that the "WOD Way" is a good approach to the training, would it be possible for some of you more experienced members to "scale" down the WOD's for a week or so to allow us to gain a better appreciation of what we should do to scale them down. Perhaps there could be a WOD - A for the complete beginner and a WOD - B for a more intermediate trainer.

As I have mentioned before, alot of the issue for us new folks is leaning the abbreviations and trying to understand how to scale them back using the Book.

Also, I suspect there is no issue with starting with the next WOD versus starting at the beginning of some 28 day cycle because we don't know where it does start.

Thanks,

It wouldn't be possible to post a scaled down version of the WOD given because there are many variations to each movement and you could be on any one of them. It's pretty simple to do yourself, you just pick a easier movement from the same "family" that you can perform with good form for the prescribed reps. You just have to experiment for yourself to see what variation you are on.

Your best bet will be to start with WODs from a week or two ago. Many people regularly post their version of the WOD (what they had to scale down to). That should help you to figure things out!