Low body fat levels of Gymnasts

Hi Guys,

First of all apologies if this specific question has been asked before, I've been away from the forums for a while.

I wanted to know, what exactly in a gymnasts workout repertoire leads them to have such low body fat levels? I ask this because when I have done the training recommended here, my muscle has grown and I have got stronger, but I have found it very hard to loose body fat during the workouts, even when I am keeping carbs low etc. I just find then when I go to the gym and do weights while having the same diet, I just loose fat a lot quicker and sweat alot more. And this is with working the same body parts in a full body workout, not with cardio etc or anything else aimed at fat loss.

Now I know there is a lot of talk on this site about nutrition, calorie deficits and surpluses, etc, and most of the time I see that alot of (clean) calories are recommended to get the energy and build the muscle you need to succeed with these workouts, and less calories are recommended for fat loss, as per usual with most workout advice. But for these gymnastics to build such impressive muscle they must be consuming alot, and as is regarded the usual with muscle building, when you eat a lot of calories to build muslce, you do put in a bit of fat, hence later cutting phases. It therefore seems to me there must be something special about the way gymnasts workout, that makes them lose/resist putting on alot of body fat, ie hormone releases from the way they train or something.

Only recently im reading more about MRT (metabolic resistance training etc) and various studies which support the theory that your body can be in a deficit and actually build muscle while losing fat, albeit at a slower rate, by using the calories from the fat to build the muscle (as the fat is very calorie dense, and yes I know some of you will scream thats impossible if you listen to conventional knowledge).

So I'd like to know, how these gymnasts become and remain so ripped all the time even thought the workouts don't seem to have you dripping in sweat and out of breath etc like gym workouts, and they must consume alot of calories. They obviously don't do the bulking and cutting crap, and I know there is alot of talk of HIIT etc recommended on this site, but I didn't seem to pick up from the book that they do alot of that, and that it's more directed at amatuer people on this site? Do they just do a shit load of interval/cardio etc type stuff too?

Once again sorry if any of the above is wrong, happy to be corrected if it is!

I'm a lot leaner than when I did barbell training. This is due to a number of a reasons. Didn't take me long to lean out. I'm pretty sure your body adapts to whatever you do.

What is it you want to discuss? Or do you want help for better results?

I want to know the science behind what in the gymnasts workout routine makes them loose so much body fat? Is it something to do with the hormone response to the static holds and extended tension, or is it that they just do a lot of added interval and cardio work. It can't always be due to a calorie deficit as they are always talking about consuming so many calories extra here to fuel the workouts and muscle/strength growth.

These are just some stabs in the dark, I am by no means an expert!, however:

- Competitive gymnasts train for several hours a day and more than 20hrs a week this includes a great deal of skill work which translate to a lot of activity simply not present if you only train for an hour or so on strength work. I'm not knocking this program at all though I assure you!

- I imagine that athletes that tend to gravitate towards gymnastics are generally those of a leaner build naturally. Agian not saying that gymnastics won't get you ripped 8) but just that different individuals tend to move towards activities which suit them physically.

- And to round off my round my rambles, I'm lead to believe that an awful lot of what determines an individuals body fat (and muscle mass for that matter) is there diet.

Once more to really drive the point in, I am not saying that GB training won't biuld muscle and make you look awesome, simply that there are many factors to the overall physique of competative (and recreational ) gymnasts than just their training program alone. I would maybe stretch as far as to say this is true of all all athletes, but seeing as my knowledge is even more limited in those field I'll leave it as likely possibility.

EDIT:

JasonB82 said:

Is it something to do with the hormone response to the static holds and extended tension, or is it that they just do a lot of added interval and cardio work..

I would be surprised if there was a specific advantageous hormone response to static training which led to lower body fat, but that would be interesting.

I would guess that the routine work (being fairly high intensity) would operate as interval training of sorts...

Dedicated athletes in sports where lb for lb strength is key tend to always look ripped; it's certainly not a phenomenon restricted to gymnastics. Just take a look at elite wrestlers, fighters, and Olympic lifters, for example. On the one hand people gravitate towards sports best suited for their phenotype, as Coach has said many times, and on the other hand when you combine strength training that produces hypertrophy, and the proper caloric intake, then you're going to have low body fat levels and look ripped. Just cause and effect at work.

If you're personally striving towards that aesthetic, then my only advice is to work hard and eat well. "Form follows function," is as true as it gets. Time, dedication, and diet.

JasonB82 said:

I want to know the science behind what in the gymnasts workout routine makes them loose so much body fat? Is it something to do with the hormone response to the static holds and extended tension, or is it that they just do a lot of added interval and cardio work. It can't always be due to a calorie deficit as they are always talking about consuming so many calories extra here to fuel the workouts and muscle/strength growth.

Before I directly address this, I would like to point out that gymnasts do not train for adding muscle. Gymnasts train to perform skills flawlessly. They typically do not grow quickly because being big is not the purpose of gymnastic competition and so their training is not structured around hypertrophy. Gymnastic competition is about perfect execution of skills, and this is what training is structured around. As the athlete slowly moves to more difficult skills their bodies slowly grow stronger and add more muscle where necessary in order to perform those skills. The mass gain is very slow because they are not training to be big. It is not in a gymnast's best interests to be any bigger than he or she absolutely must be. Your attempted correlation between consuming tons of calories and building muscle is not accurate, as I believe you are starting to realize. Building muscle requires 2 things: constant positive nitrogen balance and a mechanical stimulus beyond what the body is accustomed to.

Total calories are irrelevant, what matters is how much carbohydrate you burn through the day and what your protein requirements are. Fat requirements can and will be handled entirely by body fat, which is why fat is not an essential nutrient while protein is and carbs are semi-essential. Fat can not be turned into protein or carbs, it can only be burned as is. The energy from this can certainly regenerate ATP that is used in anabolic reactions (making new proteins for example) as well as catabolic actions (digesting food). It is not a raw material though. At total rest nearly all energy comes from body fat and at sedentary lifestyle activity levels 70-80% comes from fat. Running with this, let's take the statistical average person: 150-ish lbs. At a sedentary pace, no exercise, they need about 2000 calories per day on average. If they are 10% body fat they would need a maximum of 135g of protein per day. Minimum carb requirements would be 50g, to fuel the brain. We are not going to talk about ketosis, start a new topic in nutrition if you want that. So right now we have 185g of food at 4 calories per gram (on average). That's 740 calories. 37% of 2000 calories. If that is what you consume the rest of your energy must come from body fat. It is the only other source of energy. That means 1260 calories will come from fat. This person will lose 1/3 lb of fat in one day while still maintaining all of their muscle. This person would then want to consume about 2000 calories per day for the next 1-3 days to prevent any metabolic slowdown, with the extra calories coming from whatever macronutrients they want (though fat is preferred to keep fat metabolism high). Then they could repeat the whole cycle as many times as they want. That is just pure sedentary, if they were working out they would burn quite a bit more fat and build muscle at the same time. They would simply need to calculate how many g of carbs they burn during their workouts and replace that without replacing the calories derived from fat. That is the biochemical basis behind weight loss, and the practical limitations of the process.

There are many, many variations of that but they all operate on the same principle. The above is simply the maximum limit to which this can be done. Zigzag dieting is a more moderate version of this, but the same basics apply. I have done both of these and personally prefer the more drastic version. It's honestly easier for me to do. I only need to be super careful with my calories every other day, the day I eat just enough. The deficit days are no-brainers. 180-200ish grams of protein for me, 100-250g of carbs depending on how much work I do, and that's it. Literally no thought to put into it.

So why do gymnasts stay lean? Lots of work, which means lots of calories burned. They are working out for 3-4 hours 4-6 days a week. It isn't the same intensity as a 45 minute blaster in the gym for obvious reasons, but the calorie count is higher. Often MUCH higher. When I was at BUD/S I was consuming 12000 calories a day, I worked that out while I was there. On that diet I dropped from 211 to 197 in about 3 weeks. That's how much work we were doing. Days were about 12 hours long. Think about that: That would mean that if I was doing 3-4 hours of working out a day and eating 4000 calories it would be about the same ratio of work time to food. The average energy expenditure wouldn't be very different per hour, all things considered. 4000 calories is a LOT of food, dude, A LOT!!! These kids can practically eat anything and stay lean. Sure better results come from better food, but visually the workload is the primary reason in their cases. TRULY impressive physiques, the ones that stand out even in the gymnast crowd, usually come from a great diet on top of the training and sometimes from pure genetics.

Aurele said:

Dedicated athletes in sports where lb for lb strength is key tend to always look ripped; it's certainly not a phenomenon restricted to gymnastics. Just take a look at elite wrestlers, fighters, and Olympic lifters, for example. On the one hand people gravitate towards sports best suited for their phenotype, as Coach has said many times, and on the other hand when you combine strength training that produces hypertrophy, and the proper caloric intake, then you're going to have low body fat levels and look ripped. Just cause and effect at work.

If you're personally striving towards that aesthetic, then my only advice is to work hard and eat well. "Form follows function," is as true as it gets. Time, dedication, and diet.

Yes, your body is a visible reflection of your lifestyle in most cases, especially as you get older.

Slizzardman, not to derail, but I'm curious about your reference to fat as nonessential. Many fatty acids (in fact, all non-saturated fats) are cannot be synthesized endogenously and are often referred to as essential fatty acids (EFA). It seems to me that this would implicate fat as an essential nutrient, depending on the chain type? (Also, the glycerol from fat can be used in gluconeogenesis, although I haven't seen anything suggesting that it's a significant contribution).

Thanks for all the replies guys, I get now that its just down to putting in a hell of a lot of hours of that strength work so many days a week. I guess that takes the place of cardio, and yes in some cases is like interval and metabolic resistance training.

Thanks for detailed reply Slizzardman. A couple questions about your calorie explanation.. So if the calories are dropped to a low level like you explained, even during a sedentary life style, the body fat will be used to make up the rest of the calories required, and the muscle will be spared as long as you have enough protein? The muscle wouldn't be broken down as a source of food for the body first?

So fats should be kept low if you want the body to use its own fat instead, as opposed to whats said in the anabolic diet where no carbs (in the week) and high fats are recommended, to encourage the body to do the same?

Thanks

Jason: The protein supply has to be fairly constant, it can't be in a few large doses, but yes that is basically it. You have to provide for protein turnover, but as long as you do that you will be fine. I should point out that if you have muscle mass from working out you will need to maintain your weekly activity levels to keep your mass, if you stop working out no amount of protein will make you keep all of your muscle. If you are the size you are because you work out twice a week, keep working out twice a week to keep that. I hope that makes some sense...

As for the essential fat question, technically it's true that there are two essential fatty acids (Linoleic acid and alpha linolenic acid), but they are found in sufficient quantities in virtually any whole food diet. Unless you are completely insane and try to live off of pure glucose and pure protein without any supplements or other foods you will be fine Just eat plants and you will win. You don't even need that much! That is why having veggies, at the very least some leafy greens, is very important. VERY low carbs, I mean the 2 lbs of spinach has 36g of carbs with 24 or so being fiber. I mean really, it's practically no calorie and maybe 12 net carbs if you remove the fiber. You can fill up quite nicely on veggies, get all the minerals and EFAs you need, and not have to look for fats at all. Why? Because every cell membrane in every organism has fatty acids in it. You can't avoid fat in your diet if you are eating natural foods, and you shouldn't. Meats have these EFAs too.

So, while on a very technical level there are 2 essential fatty acids, you literally cannot avoid getting your EFA if you are eating real food. Thus making fat a nonessential nutrient on a very practical scale since you literally can't avoid getting what you need.

Yes, I am well aware of fat's role in vitamin absorption, that is not the point. For your body to produce energy for staying alive, fat is not required in your diet. It is simply convenient and highly efficient, and your body will make plenty out of excess food.

On non-deficit days it's a fantastic idea to have plenty of healthy fats in your diet both for vitamin absorption and because you will maintain higher levels of fat-oxidizing enzymes which should help and most certainly will not hurt your body's ability to burn fat during the short term fast that deficit days create.

Glycerol is only found in triglycerides and makes up about 10% of the calories. So if you eat 5000 calories of triglycerides you'll have 500g of glycerol, which could be synthesized into as much as 100g of glucose. Since that is not a practical diet, and even a very high fat diet would only have around 2000-3000 calories from fat for a normal person you would get 40-60g of glucose from the glycerol. That's enough to run your brain for a day, but you would have to be on a virtually no carb diet for this to take place. Still, it can and does happen.

JasonB82 said:

So fats should be kept low if you want the body to use its own fat instead, as opposed to whats said in the anabolic diet where no carbs (in the week) and high fats are recommended, to encourage the body to do the same?

Thanks

Only on deficit days, but that is not a requirement. Just a way to get peak efficiency. The requirement is that calories are low, it doesn't matter where the deficit is as long as your carb and protein requirements are met. Since carbs help spare protein and contribute to absorption rates, that is yet another good reason to fluctuate your fat intake and not intentionally have a carb deficit. Carb deficits just encourage the body to scavenge more protein and that means you need to eat more protein, which costs more and is harder on the body. That works, there is no way I will say it does not, but it isn't the smartest way to do it. However, some people like that and if that is what feels good then use it! Just because what I am describing is more efficient does not mean it is the only way things should be done. As long as you're getting the results you want and are able to enjoy what you are eating you're good to go.

Sliz, is there a simply way of calculating what the carb expenditure of a workout is?

Patrick you can google some numbers for different sports. Maybe Robb Wolf has some numbers for activities more like CF and could give you idea for his own gymnastics workouts. Garrett Smith might know as well.

And to confirm what Sliz says, basically any national or elite gymnast starts working out about 5-10 hours when they are 5 or 6. Then do that for 10 years escalating the workload to 20-25 hours for males or 25-35 for females.

Amongst the lower to medium levels, we have more than a handful of gymnasts who are pudgy who have been training anywhere from 3-7 years. So working out A LOT isn't the only key.

Yea, workload definitely isn't the only important thing. Diet matters.

Pat, I don't have specific numbers. I suppose you would search for repiratory exchange ratios for various sports and perhaps calorie expenditure for different exercises, but you can guestimate your activity level and use multipliers from overall calorie count tables (like 1.2 for sedentary or 1.7 for working out 3-4 days a week for an hour) and apply that to the amount of energy you'd need for the period of time you work out and just consume that as carbs. That's a really rough estimate, but keep in mind that total skeletal muscle glycogen stores top out around 100g. Obviously someone my size will probably have a bit more than that, maybe closer to 200g, but keep in mind that is all the muscle everywhere. Leg muscles can't send their glycogen to your arms or even to their neighbors, they don't have the right enzymes for that apparently. Same goes for any other muscle, so you can only burn through the liver (about 100g) and the muscles you are working. If you are consuming protein and carbs together during the workout like you should be you will spare a good bit of this glycogen, making your post workout carb deficit lower.

Do some guessing, I mean if you are doing an upper body workout and you pretty much go to exhaustion it's a safe bet you burned at least 60g of glycogen. It won't hurt to take in at least that much carbohydrate, in fact you would NEED to in order to spare the protein from gluconeogenesis. Glycogen stores WILL get replenished to the max extent possible with your diet, whether it's carbs from protein or carbs from rice (or whatever). It's usually a very smart idea to just replace the glycogen with actual carb sources. They are cheaper and will have more minerals unless it's industrially premade food.

Hi Slizzardman! Revelation! Thanks for sharing the infor and advice in the post. Is that what some call intermittent fasting? Or something similar? Because I'm trying to lose a ridiculous amount of body fat and having started on some very basic BWEs, I have seen some muscle growth, but I doubt I have lost any fat.

So would say, eating minimal carbs, lots of vegs and protein on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while eating normally on the other four days be the way to go for fat loss while not losing any of the teeny tiny muscles I have gained? And should those vegs be raw since cooked vegs may introduce fat and other stuff (I'm Asian and almost all of vegs are stir-fried in one way or another)?

Thank you and hope I'm not being rude and seen as hijacking a thread. Just didn't think that my simple question is worth starting another thread on its own. Sorry!

You can steam your veggies.

IF seems to be a pretty good weight loss tool. It might be compatible with GB type programming.

I would definitely say IF is compatible with GB WODs, especially if GB WOD is the primary training (meaning you aren't playing a ton of street ball or organized sports or whatever).

Maddened said:

Hi Slizzardman! Revelation! Thanks for sharing the infor and advice in the post. Is that what some call intermittent fasting? Or something similar? Because I'm trying to lose a ridiculous amount of body fat and having started on some very basic BWEs, I have seen some muscle growth, but I doubt I have lost any fat.

So would say, eating minimal carbs, lots of vegs and protein on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, while eating normally on the other four days be the way to go for fat loss while not losing any of the teeny tiny muscles I have gained? And should those vegs be raw since cooked vegs may introduce fat and other stuff (I'm Asian and almost all of vegs are stir-fried in one way or another)?

Thank you and hope I'm not being rude and seen as hijacking a thread. Just didn't think that my simple question is worth starting another thread on its own. Sorry!

Like blairbob said, steaming is highly efficient! Takes very little time, preserves the vast majority of nutritional value, and tastes great (to me)!

Just remember that "minimal carbs" is pretty much never going to be below 150-200g per day. That's 800 calories MAX, so don't freak out and think you will explode or something if you have that many carbs! Just make sure they are the most nutritious carbs you can find.

I am getting huge and staying lean (I'm 219 now, and that was after a bathroom break and not very much food... sorry if TMI! ) doing exactly that. Except for me I should be getting something like 300g per day, but that's a lot of eating when you are consuming natural whole foods, which for me is TONS of sprouted buckwheat. I'm not even doing all that much besides the ring simulation work, re-introducing push ups and dips slowly, and doing leg work 1-2x per week. 8 cups of sprouted buckwheat is about 240g carbs, and I can't quite finish all that. I have that with 4 oz of whole milk per cup, and that is the majority of my food. Veggies are practically no calorie as I have described previously, and as product labels will quickly show you!

Yeah, if one were to only do GB programming and light activity; IF is probably doable. I have a friend who has really jumped on the bandwagon and uses it a lot and is pretty damn lean and strong looking. He does a bit of running, minimalist body building splits and some martial arts besides his day job running a company. So that works for him.

Now that I'm not training 10-15 hours a week doing gymnastic skill work, it might be an option. I didn't really consider it before training in the gym and doing other activity such as 5 miles of walking to and from work up hills besides 2 or 3 times of lifting in the gym. I basically stay around the house, clean, read and go workout or maybe bike around town when I'm not online.

But for a minimalist of fitness enthusiast, especially someone on the Primal bandwagon; I can see it doable.

I don't see it doable for what I would consider an athlete. Especially when you're in the gym 2-3 hours at a time. Perhaps with some workout supplementation such as Sliz's jellybeans or raisins besides BCAA's. Perhaps something to try one of these days.

Great stuff! Yes steaming! I steam my chicken but somehow today my brain isn't working all that well. Should have thought of steaming vegs... Stupid me :roll:

Thanks guys for the advice. Shall attempt IF with a daily feeding window. Easier to fit into my lifestyle. Thanks everyone!