Olympic Lifter looking to add in gymnastic static work

Been a longtime lurker on the boards and have read Building the Gymnastic Bodies book. SInce then, I have purchased rings and parallete bars and have messed around with the skills(l sit, back lever tuck, frog stand). Want to get a bit more serious with the holds to enhance my strength isometrically and make me a better athlete all around.

My current lifting program is 6 days a week(oly lifting m,w,f with squatting on t,th,sa) generally done with moderate volume. Would I be wise to just work on 1-2 skills say before a training session after a general and specific warmup? Also, is 60 seconds still the total work volume needed per session?

Thanks.

60s is just a recommended protocol that suits most. It can be adviseable for people new to training to start off with less volume sometimes.

For your purposes ( I'm guaging this because you said you are working on tuck BL), I would recommend mainly L work, HS and skin the cats and ya can throw in some frog stand work or plank/hang series in your WU, perhaps just as shrugs (shrug in hang and support and in pushup "scapular pushups.") Perhaps do some forward and reverse plank ag walks in your WU instead of holds.

p.s. an ag walk (there is a video on the youtube page) consists of being in a plank form and moving your body with your hands while your feet are on something that slides, say a frisbee or furniture slider or piece of carpet depending on surface.

Are you a competitive lifter or is OL just something you love?

I ask because my opinion would be different if you are competitive since that would have to be your primary focus and would limit the amount of GB work you could reasonably include, at least if you have high level aspirations. You'd still be able to make progress, but in that case I would certainly suggest L sit, arch hold and hollow hold work, handstand work and cast wall walks. I'm pretty sure your lower body is well taken care of.

I would hesitate to worry too much about HSPU because overhead pressing will limit your jerk at a world level, at least according to the literature I'm familiar with. I don't know if horizontal pressing would do the same, but straight arm work shouldn't be a problem. I suppose that there is a certain amount of bent arm pressing that wouldn't mess with your jerk too much but forum member Jeff @ CFST would know more about that than I do.

Now, if you're just doing things for fun then I would start with the same statics and start with the beginning FBE. Depending on what kind of pull up and rowing strength you have built you might be ready for some beginning multiplane pulling work, but starting off with the foot supported rows and pull up variations is a good idea just to make sure you are ready. I would start at the beginning with the pressing and focus more on building your HSPU and PPP than anything else until those are good and strong.

Skin the cats are definitely an important exercise, have you worked on your german hang?

Thanks guys for the responses. Just a recreational lifter for now, so no competitive stuff until I get more proficient at snatching and split jerks. Im far from being a proficent lifter, but I feel some of this gymnastic stuff has huge carryover to the lifts more so for core stability and isometric strength/flexibility in the extreme ranges.

Blair, I will try and get some furniture sliders for those walks. I do have a powerwheel, but being that its winter, I don't have much room for that going down the hallway.

Slizzard, I have to start incorporating the pullups again. I have slacked on them lately, but can usually pull off 10 or 12 in a single set when fresh from a dead hang. I had some shoulder issues going on with pullups(soft tissue related), and still am correcting some of those imbalances such as the anterior deltoid, pec minor, and lat muscles being excessively tight according to my massage therapist. I just have to dedicate more time to stretching I guess. I try to do the mobility wod stuff 4-5 days a week, but am finding I need to do it daily if I want to get gains faster.

Jeff, the day I can do a 60 second handstand(I suck at the wall handstand to begin with), I will definitely incorporate those for assistance work.

Jeff @ CFST said:

Here is a video of the current 77kg world record holder doing HSPUs. Its rumored that they do them for 10 minutes at the end of each session.

Eo5N5WMB6oY

Sliz - I am not saying just because these guys made it work that it will work for all of us. It is just a cool video. Honestly, I can't call it.

That is awesome! You know, all things considered they are moving pretty fast and I have always wondered how accurate the pressing thing is... I mean, when you're pressing fairly heavy the bar usually moves a good bit slower than these guys are performing their reps due to the instability of the heavy bar in an open kinetic position so maybe they are just moving fast enough or are able to put more effort and power into the HSPU since they have their hands anchored as well as a spotter holding the legs... and maybe the speed is keeping them from suffering any losses in their jerk? I dunno, but that is a really cool video. How did you find that?

What I am familiar with is that specific work on trying to raise your max overhead press as high as it can go starts to interfere with jerking at a very high level of performance because of the drastic difference in speed and thus muscle fibers trained. These guys didn't look like they were anywhere close to a maximal effort, which is pretty humbling from where I stand! I hope I am there one day.

Results speak for themselves in the end, and high speed explosive HSPU seem to be working out pretty well for those guys.