How has gym strength training helped you in other sports?

Hello all,

It seems to me that gymnastics falls under the old Soviet heading of Gpp. I recall in the the 80's watching the Soviet national volleyball team warmup to play the U.S at the old LA Laker forum in Inglewood. It looked like a circus with one guy ,i believe it was the setter rotating either arm in opposite directions(windmill motion). If my concept of GPP is the correct one gymnastics should be used for active rest more often as one progresses.In other words for the Oly lifter it's non-specific training but has great carry over. Andrew Charniga who runs the site Sportivnypress.com has stated that it's relatively easy to teach a gymnast Olympic lifting. My advice would be to use more often the elements of gymnastics that have more direct carry over and progressively use the rest as active rest.

Brandon Green

hasnt really helped me in any sports cos i havent played sports since highschool but yeah weighlifting can certainly help out gymnastic training if done correctly. after a few weeks of low reps heavy ATG back squats, my pistol squats have definately improved. I am able to stay more upright and the support position at the bottom is alot more stable.

By the way i definitely feel gymnastics helps weightlifting much more than Weightlifting helps gymnastics. Just because gymnastics involves so many complex movements and strength through all angles it definitely improves weightlifting. Weightlifting has less carryover to gymnastics tho there is some.

One of the weightlifters at my club who is an extremely good lifter (155-160 snatch, 200 C & J as a 94) is actually not a bad tumbler. He can round off backflip pretty nicely. He has a HS not a great one, but can do it. And every lifter is already easily strong enough to do HSPU they just need the skill.

In the end they are very different sports weightlifting you have to be awesome at doing a couple of things, gymnastics you have to be very good at many things. For me the best combo is both!

Demus said:

By the way i definitely feel gymnastics helps weightlifting much more than Weightlifting helps gymnastics. Just because gymnastics involves so many complex movements and strength through all angles it definitely improves weightlifting. Weightlifting has less carryover to gymnastics tho there is some.

One of the weightlifters at my club who is an extremely good lifter (155-160 snatch, 200 C & J as a 94) is actually not a bad tumbler. He can round off backflip pretty nicely. He has a HS not a great one, but can do it. And every lifter is already easily strong enough to do HSPU they just need the skill.

In the end they are very different sports weightlifting you have to be awesome at doing a couple of things, gymnastics you have to be very good at many things. For me the best combo is both!

I think theres alot of bro-science when it comes to weightlifting in the *average gym* which does not help application to other sports etc, which lead to bad habits which then become standards over time. e.g for some reason a large majority of people believe deep squats are bad for your knees, so whenever i go to the gym and ATG back squats i always get people giving me looks as though im doing something wrong. And people are also uneducated about rep ranges and rest times, they don't know whats the best program for themselves so they just do the average bodybuilder workout which ends up hurting their sport specific skills.

btw where do u train for gymnastics demus? im gonna start tumbling at a gymnasium in caroline springs. be great to train with you one day when i become proficient enough to be in your presence ahah!

I train at wesley college in prahran. Good place to train, some good coaches, some not so good ones, you learn to pick who to listen to.

And you'll definitely see people there who are much better gymnasts than me, tho I'm one of the strongest. Good group of guys we have, who all try to help each other out, we are all good at different things. Come down and try it sometime.