If you had 5 minutes a day for a gymnastic workout?

Hi guys

I`m new to this forum and first of all, thank you Coach Sommer for the wonderful book and thanks to so many of you forum participants who provide much high quality information about the art of physical development.

I have gymnastic rings at home and I`d love to learn muscle ups and handstands, but I`m first of all lazy and second I prioritize other sports so can`t afford to be too exhausted from gymnastic workouts because that would surely lead to injury and overtraining.

So that got me thinking to go with short, 5 minute gymnastic workouts a day. The first goal is psychological and that is to get to like these workouts because that is the only real way to stick with it, while the first physical goal is doing a muscle up on rings and second is holding a handstand for 30 seconds.

Right now I`m about 200lbs, can hold an L sit for a minute, can do about 60 fast push ups and about 15 pull ups. I can`t do a muscle up even if I kip heavily and I can`t hold a handstand at all.

So, the golden question. What would you guys recommend that I start with. Statical positions in dips and pull ups or reverse muscle ups done very slowly?

Only 5m a day?

Ring support hold then negative Muscle-ups with false grip pullups followed by skin the cat/360.

I think I would start off by slapping yourself, as much as needed. Get your ass in gear. Suck it up.

If you were going to do just 5 minute workouts for some dumbass reason I would vary them each day.

One day work basic ring holds or pullup/dip/skinthecat360. Another day 5m of wallHS. Another day 5m of rope climbs/towel pullups. I think you can get the picture.

You can also set up a 20 second on 10 second rest conditioning circuit. Not great, but not a complete waste of time. Pick 2 exercises, go for 5 rounds, or 1 for 10 rounds.

Still 5m/day? This isn't 15m abs. You'll get some results, maybe but more if you actually applied yourself.

5 minutes? Don't even bother. If you can get results they will be so slow that you'll give up before you see any improvement.

I think you guys might be a little bit negative on this. I bet if he spent 5 minutes a day every day on handstands he'd be spending more time on his hands than most people on this forum per week. I'd say spend the first month working up his wall handstand to the full 5 minutes with perfect as possible form. Then work on getting up the wall and trying to tap away and balancing for as long as possible, then working on kicking up to the wall with the goal of stopping and balancing without touching the wall.

For the muscle-up just spend as much time as possible going through the transition(elbows in!!).

Obviously more time spent on these skills is better but saying you can't make progress with Intense Frequent training is crazy. Look at handbalancers one arm press. He said himself that he trained it with a few perfect negatives a day.

Well here is my 2 cents on working out for that insanely low amount of time. For a period of about 2-3 months when I was brushing my teeth at night I did 2 assisted Single leg squats on each leg. 4 in all. (Assisted by a doorframe, as little assistance as possible) When I started I could not even do a semi slow negative. Now I have easy jumping SLS's. So while the results come alot slower, I think if you stay consistent you can get a few skills you can get them. But in reality if you want some real skills you will have to spend longer working out. But as long as all you really care about is the MU and HS, I think over a couple months you can see reasonable gains.

Blairbob said:

I think I would start off by slapping yourself, as much as needed. Get your ass in gear. Suck it up.

This. Spend your 5 minutes doing this

For months, 6 days / week :

5mn Planche leans (+ shoulder rehab, external rotators)

5mn L-sit (+ piked flexbility)

5mn handstands work

5mn pull-ups (full ROM + hanging stretch or even full L-hang)

5mn various planks / hollow holds + bridges + piked strech

5mn alternate handstand work / front lever work (SSC) + wall extensions

Repeat, fluctuate, learn, include rings, diversify, learn, repeat...

No way you won't urge to spend more time with gymnastic training soon. So many things you can do...

If I had only five minutes, at this level I would do:

3 x 20s PB hold, 3 x 20s chin up grip dead hang, 3 x 20s plank hold, 3 x 20s reverse plank hold and 2 x 15 s arch hold and 2 x 15 s hollow hold.

I am the last person to be giving advice on this subject,

But since you asked,

If I thought I only had five minutes to exercise each day I would do two things, in addition to using those five minutes. First I would wake up five minutes earlier each day and BAM! five more minutes to work out.

Second I would go to bed five minutes earlier every night, and BAM! now we're talking 15 minutes per day.

5 minutes of L-sits, that sounds pretty evil. 5 minutes of plank work isn't that bad.

151 said:

I am the last person to be giving advice on this subject,

But since you asked,

If I thought I only had five minutes to exercise each day I would do two things, in addition to using those five minutes. First I would wake up five minutes earlier each day and BAM! five more minutes to work out.

Second I would go to bed five minutes earlier every night, and BAM! now we're talking 15 minutes per day.

Today I`ve slept for 4 hours and then I`ve spent 11 hours doing heavy manual labour. Now I`ll probably go hiking or rock climbing and in the evening I`ll do 5 minutes of gymnastics. I also do kickboxing and weight work and some other sports therefore I`m already overtrained as it is because I`m not Rambo. This is the reason I`d like to start with 5 minutes a day and take my time to become Chuck Norris, so I`ll be able to kick Rambo`s ass.

If you do something 30 days in row, it becomes a habit. It`s easier for me to start like this and keep it up, then strech the time if needed/possible. If I force myself to start doing it for an hour a day I`ll do it half-heartedly and will hate it eventually, but I will love these 5 minute gymnast routines and will be eager waiting for another one.

If nothing else this is an interesting thread

birelar said:

Today I`ve slept for 4 hours and then I`ve spent 11 hours doing heavy manual labour. Now I`ll probably go hiking or rock climbing and in the evening I`ll do 5 minutes of gymnastics. I also do kickboxing and weight work and some other sports therefore I`m already overtrained as it is because I`m not Rambo.

Add the extra 5 minutes to your 4 hours of sleeping, and whatever other time you can find. Best advice you'll get given the above. Keep adding time and shoot for 7-9hr/night. Also, look into prioritizing your goals to see about fitting in additional activities after your sleep/work/social obligations are met. If you're finding that you still need/want to add "gymnastic" elements to your already active lifestyle the take a closer look at LearningtoFly's response as it most closely comprehends what you asked and provides a good answer. Another tip, buy the book and support the site - with a little reading between the lines you can incorporate the static elements (and some of the FBEs) into your already established weight lifting programming and not fall into the common trap of ADHD training.

For your specific goals, there is a recent thread on the Muscle up that is worth reading: viewtopic.php?f=14&t=6423, specifically Dillon's responses.

For the Handstand Google Ido's Bodyline drill on Youtube. Plenty of programming advice on this forum for it.

birelar said:

Today I`ve slept for 4 hours

Sweet jebus, you need to sleep more. Rest is part of improving. It's part of the trinity: strength training, diet, rest.

Without rest, your gains will suffer

Yeah, you need sleep, and alot more of it, you are just asking to have poor results with your current sleep habits.

Ontopic:

I`ve done three 5 minute gymnast routines by now and it feels great. Can`t wait to do another one and I will try some of your suggestions, thanks for the replies guys.

Offtopic:

Sleep - the time you live but do nothing

The needed sleep time varies a lot due to many factors which are somehow rarely mentioned in many "be healthy" guides. Let me talk about it a little from experience and study, I`d be very glad if other guys add their own thoughts.

The first factor is of course genetics and let`s leave that aside because we don`t know how to alter it (for now).

The other very important factor is energy conservation. This means controlling muscle tensions in the body and eliminating unneeded ones. If you consciously decide to shun stress and watch your behaviour thorough the day, you will find yourself relaxing parts of your body that become tense for whatever reason. A good way to begin with this is observing your breathing patterns, just observe how shallow you breathing becomes when you get scared or when you worry too much about anything. The most common energy waster and stressor is a tense upper trapezius (back neck muscle) which ruins your posture and thus prevents your spine from being relaxed and in some cases, believe it or not, this goes all the way down to harmstring tension.

Then there`s air, water and food quality. Your body does repairs while you sleep and if you provide all the resources for them while minimising the waste intake, it will repair itself faster. I`ve noticed that whenever I sleep somewhere quiet with really fresh air, I need at least an hour if not two of less sleep.

Food is important because the digestive system is huge and complicated thus uses a lot of resources. I˙d like to thank slizzardman for the great post about pre, mid and post workout nutrition because that in itself makes wonders.

The key with food is getting in touch with the hunger reflex, being full reflex, eating easier food (for instance chicken is much easier to digest than beef) and eating a large percent of live, non processed food. We`ve all been told to eat our veggies and blabla, but many plants that we eat are useless due to the way they are grown and some are useless because they are way overcooked.

Besides vitamins and minerals, plants contain very important enzymes which make digestion far easier. If you`re not into fruit, pick some fruits you like and stuff yourself with them for a week and observe the results yourself.

The easy way to test if fruit or vegetables are not just water with pesticides as is sometimes the case in supermarkets, is to smell them. If it smells like it should, then at least something usable is in it. For instance, normal apples smell like apples while the super flawless looking oversized ones in my supermarket don`t have any smell and they also taste like water.

So, that sums it up in a few paragraphs. Good night

When your body starts automatically going into sleep you need to get some sleep. Be careful and be on the lookout for serious signs of sleep deprivation. I had a couple weeks where I would only get about 2-4 hours of sleep a night and even if I would close my eyes for about 2 seconds I would fall asleep even while sitting upright in a chair.

I would consider power napping, if you have a block of time free sometime in the day just set your alarm for a quick power nap, even half an hour would help.

Good luck.

P.S. How the heck are you making gains on 4 hours a night.

The 5 minute a day thing sounds fun I know some people might knock it but hey, 5 minutes of quality exercise done intensely with focus can be pretty productive. Wasn't there some guy in Coach's book who made great gains on 2 minutes a day doing two statics? I think the great thing about gymnastic type training is its ability to be able to be slotted into another type of training and give a lot of bang for your buck. My brother lifts weights and slotted in L sits and Handstands - that's it. And he has gotten great gains just from adding some short statics in those positions into his weight lifting routine.

As to needing the right amount of sleep - no one really knows what the human body is capable of. All the scientific studies in the world are normally light years behind what people actually train and make their bodies capable of across all sorts of conditions and modalities. There is more science about how the body works now, but when you look back on the old time strong men in the 50s i think we all look a lot weaker. I don't know that the science has really helped us all that much except to tell us what is not possible.

In ten years they might release a study that shows depriving yourself of sleep causes a response in the body that leads to greater strength development. Then everyone will be doing it cause some science says its true I say try everything and see what works for you.

phrak said:

It's part of the trinity: strength training, diet, rest.

Blasphemer.