Anatomical/musculature question

[pantheist462]

Hi, I've recently gotten into the whole fitness realm and I was wondering something: If I did a hypertrophy program with weightlifting with the intention of getting the same lean body mass and proportions as an elite gymnast, then ate maintenance calories, dropped the iron, and trained with rings and bars instead, would that work out in the end? Or would I be totally screwed? I care more about aesthetics at this point in my life than athleticism but I do want to be an advanced athlete one day with a nice amount of bodyweight control -- in theory the weights should get me the mass quicker and as long as I don't get too much muscle mass and cut down the bodyfat I should have a good starting point for gymnastic training? Or would I be worse off than if I had started gymnastic training at my current physique (skinnyfat)? Sorry about the poor grammar and run on sentences. I hope this made sense. Thanks for any input, it's appreciated

[Joshua Naterman]

I definitely think you are looking at things a bit sideways.

If I had to start over from scratch (which I am doing currently) I would use dumbbells for lateral raises, shoulder W drills, and various other shoulder raises. I would also use them for biceps curls as prehab and for supinated shoulder press to train the long head of the biceps. I am currently doing all of this. That's all prehab stuff, it DOES build muscle and is making a noticeable impact on my body but the primary purpose is to build strong, stable shoulder girdles. The side benefit for me (and main benefit for you) is that this makes the entire shoulder region bulge with manly might!

Along with this would go the basic support positions:

1) parallel bar support: you should feel this strongly in a lot of places but if you're doing it really right you will have a lot of tension in the traps, long head of the tricep, lats, and rear delts + other external rotators. Build progressively up to a few sets of 60s.

2) front plank: You should actually feel this in quite a number of places, many similar to PB support with a LOT of tension in your core. Build to 3x60s and then do this again on rings. Don't do rings first, you won't have a good enough foundation to build a ring plank with good form.

3) Hanging bent leg L: You can just do the dead hang, but either way focus on locking the elbows by squeezing the triceps hard the whole time. You should feel this in your lats, rear delts, and perhaps a few other places depending on where you are tight or weak (the grip comes to mind). If you do this with the bent leg L it will help begin to ready your body for good HLL as well as L sit pull up variations and the L sit itself.

4) wall handstands, stomach facing the wall. You'll need to dig around for the details of proper form on this, but the basics are that you should have completely straight arms, be pushing into the floor with the upper traps, and be pushing your chest towards the wall with your traps and deltoids while keeping a hollow body position.

5) Hollow body hold: Build up to a few sets of 45-60s with whatever hand and leg position you can perform the hold perfectly. At that point extend the legs and raise the arms towards the head enough to drop max hold time to 20-30s and build up again in this new position. Continue this until you are in a fully laid out hollow with the arms in handstand position for 3x60s.

6) Arch hold: Build up to a few sets of 60s.

Use deadlifts and front squats as the basis of your lower body strength program, and jump rope with a speed rope (light and fast, not a heavy rope). Preferably follow Buddy Lee's program, it's extremely time efficient and will be of extreme use to you in looking how you want to look AND being a high performance athlete.

As you get used to all this, practice dips and push ups with proper form. If you want to look ridiculously good, it is imperative that all your muscles are working correctly. Otherwise you won't get growth where you want it. Push ups have to have the plank form at all times. So do dips and pull ups... they all have a hollow body position. This makes them much, much harder which is why you are going to build much more muscle and strength with them.

Finally, since you are after looks primarily you are simply not going to get them by working out. You will get them by eating correctly and working out. You need to figure out how many calories you need, eat up to 1g of protein per lb bodyweight (and space it out as evenly as possible across the day, don't have more than 15g at one time) and get 55% from carbs. Go to google and use a calorie calculator to predict how many calories you need, and split that into as many meals as you can practically consume. 6 should be the minimum you go for, with 8 really being more ideal. Remember, meal = 55% carbs, whatever the serving of protein is, and the rest is healthy fats. Start by figuring out your carb calories for the meal, then add in protein calories, and whatever is left needs to come from fat. You will be leaner if those extra calories come from fat than if they come from carbs or protein.

That's all there is to it. You will be training your entire body, you will be giving it perfect nutrition and so you will look incredible AND be able to perform impressively.

If you want to lift, lift. Doesn't matter to me, but if you are eating correctly and performing exercises correctly you will have an easier time developing your upper body with bodyweight exercises. If you can't be bothered to do this, go lift and be happy. You can always do this stuff later, but that is really pretty silly. Pull ups, dips, and push ups are your best upper body exercises. As you get stronger you just add weight to them with a vest or a belt or a bookbag. There's really nothing else that will build as impressive a body. Probably not worth worrying about handstand push ups until you have a solid 60+s wall handstand AND are strong with dips.

Good luck.

[timg]

This is an amazing post. Exactly what most people want to know when they're starting out, especially the ones interested in aesthetics. Deserves a Sticky.

[norbeex3]

wow. this is incredible. I heard this hollow pull-up thing before. How can you stay in a hollow position if you need some arch with retracting the scaps if you want to activate the lats properly?

[Quick Start Test Smith]

This is your lucky day, pantheist462! 8)

This should be sticky. OR posted in a new thread as The Joshua Approach.

[Coach Sommer]

... OR posted in a new thread as The Joshua Approach ...

Or more accurately the Gymnastic Bodies program as these are all items that Joshua learned at GB Seminars. 8)

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Quick Start Test Smith]

... OR posted in a new thread as The Joshua Approach ...

Or more accurately the Gymnastic Bodies program as these are all items that Joshua learned at GB Seminars. 8)

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

I suppose you're right, Coach.

Josh put it so concisely, though. I guess the real Joshua Approach is to simplify it so the rest of us can understand it better.

[Joshua Naterman]

It really is just the very first progression of the basics in all major areas, I mean this has been out on the forum for what, 8 months at least now in the various pre-requisites threads?

I'd say this is what, maybe 5% of what gets covered at the seminars? It just so happens to be the 5% that the other 95% is built on. If you don't start with the basics and maintain the basics, your attempts at more advanced fitness will fail. I don't know how to say it more directly than that...

This is why the Gymnastic Bodies program is so incredibly good for pretty much everyone, regardless of goals. There are aspects of this program that will enhance the performance of everyone from powerlifters to wrestlers to sprinters, and the coolest part is that the parts of GB that benefit athletes across the board are the basics. More advanced strength stuff becomes more specific to certain sports but the condensed approach above is where the GB program is meant to begin from and that approach works wonders for everyone, whether your goals are purely athletic, purely aesthetic, or somewhere in between.

When you consider that this approach also takes a fairly small amount of time to fully implement, you can go ahead and throw high efficiency into the "Why GB is Awesome" column along with everything else.

Coach has given us quite the system here, let's use it properly!

Nothing I have said here is my own aside from the beginning part about dumbbells and shoulders, and even then there is a specific and very complete dumbbell routine that Coach has for his athletes and that is available to everyone who goes to the seminars.

I have tried to develop some small talent for condensing and de-mystifying the things that I learn so that it is easier for others to learn and implement, but that is the extent of my contribution.

[Quick Start Test Smith]

You're right. I can't wait to get to a seminar.

[Robert Rowland]

I definitely think you are looking at things a bit sideways.

If I had to start over from scratch (which I am doing currently) I would use dumbbells for lateral raises, shoulder W drills, and various other shoulder raises. I would also use them for biceps curls as prehab and for supinated shoulder press to train the long head of the biceps. I am currently doing all of this. That's all prehab stuff, it DOES build muscle and is making a noticeable impact on my body but the primary purpose is to build strong, stable shoulder girdles. The side benefit for me (and main benefit for you) is that this makes the entire shoulder region bulge with manly might!

Along with this would go the basic support positions:

1) parallel bar support: you should feel this strongly in a lot of places but if you're doing it really right you will have a lot of tension in the traps, long head of the tricep, lats, and rear delts + other external rotators. Build progressively up to a few sets of 60s.

2) front plank: You should actually feel this in quite a number of places, many similar to PB support with a LOT of tension in your core. Build to 3x60s and then do this again on rings. Don't do rings first, you won't have a good enough foundation to build a ring plank with good form.

3) Hanging bent leg L: You can just do the dead hang, but either way focus on locking the elbows by squeezing the triceps hard the whole time. You should feel this in your lats, rear delts, and perhaps a few other places depending on where you are tight or weak (the grip comes to mind). If you do this with the bent leg L it will help begin to ready your body for good HLL as well as L sit pull up variations and the L sit itself.

4) wall handstands, stomach facing the wall. You'll need to dig around for the details of proper form on this, but the basics are that you should have completely straight arms, be pushing into the floor with the upper traps, and be pushing your chest towards the wall with your traps and deltoids while keeping a hollow body position.

5) Hollow body hold: Build up to a few sets of 45-60s with whatever hand and leg position you can perform the hold perfectly. At that point extend the legs and raise the arms towards the head enough to drop max hold time to 20-30s and build up again in this new position. Continue this until you are in a fully laid out hollow with the arms in handstand position for 3x60s.

6) Arch hold: Build up to a few sets of 60s.

Use deadlifts and front squats as the basis of your lower body strength program, and jump rope with a speed rope (light and fast, not a heavy rope). Preferably follow Buddy Lee's program, it's extremely time efficient and will be of extreme use to you in looking how you want to look AND being a high performance athlete.

As you get used to all this, practice dips and push ups with proper form. If you want to look ridiculously good, it is imperative that all your muscles are working correctly. Otherwise you won't get growth where you want it. Push ups have to have the plank form at all times. So do dips and pull ups... they all have a hollow body position. This makes them much, much harder which is why you are going to build much more muscle and strength with them.

Josh, I am someone who would also like to "start from scratch" and would like to take what you've written here and turn it into some form of MWF, MTTF beginners program. While I wait for the release of BtGB 2.0, I'd like to get started somehow. I have access to rings, bars, and can deadlift (can't do bar squats). Can someone please help me develop a weekly routine that would correspond to the programming Josh is recommending here?

[Robert Rowland]

Read the pre-req and getting started correctly stickies.

Mon-Tues-Th-Fri: jump rope or whatever plus # 1 through # 6 from above as a warm-up followed by the WOD followed by pre-hab

If you don't have time to work out for hours on end, do your pre-hab stuff in the AM and pre-req/FSP warmup & whatever workout in the PM or vice-versa or whenever your schedule allows. I like the concept of 'mini' workouts for busy people.

Squat/DL programming outside of leg work in the WOD - lots of options. Add bar lifts to the leg strength WODs or drop the leg WODs and add your own SQ/DL programming. Really depends on your goals. Basic linear progression is a good starting point, 3x5 or 5x5, adding weight every workout until you stall (miss reps) then drop 10% or so and work up again, repeat until you get bored. There is a good thread recently with incorporating Olympic lifting into the GB schedule if that is of interest to you.

As they are, the WODs are too challenging for me at the moment, and finding easier alternatives is quite complicated. I'd rather correctly follow a static, pre-defined routine than poorly follow the WODs by approximation.

[Joshua Naterman]

Rob, all I can tell you is what I am doing right now.

Deadlift, stiff leg deads, front squat, back squat 3x per week, 2 sets each. 10 reps per set, very light weight due to some hamstring injuries that I am rehabbing. If I was healthier, M would be light stuff, W would be 1 light set and 1 moderate set, and F would be 2 heavy sets.

Often I do single leg work for M, double leg work W and F. Warm up is usually single leg but always super slow.

Every day in warm up I hit hollow hold, arch hold, support hold, hang, support with L, and repeat 3x. That's MWF.

For FBE I would suggest starting at the bottom of each movement family in BtGB and moving forward from there, taking the time to properly master each movement.

In the beginning, you will probably have your best results with full body workouts. 2-3 sets horizontal pressing (start with push ups), 2-3 sets horizontal pulling (foot supported rows), 2-3 sets vertical pressing (wall HS and dips, if you can) and 2-3 sets vertical pulling (pull up progressions, starting with static holds at the top if you can not do proper pull ups).

Start with 2 sets of each, and build up to 8-10 reps or 50-60s per set, which should both be similar. Start off with 1 set being slow, 10s up and 10s down, and one set fast which would be 2-3s up and 2-3s down. Eventually, when that feels easy, you should add a second set of fast reps. When all of that is easy, move the push ups to the rings. It will be a bit longer before that is easier for the other exercises. The rows and pull ups will take the longest, but are also the most important. Don't move the fast reps to a harder exercise until the slow reps are ready as well.

[Robert Rowland]

Josh,

Thank you very much. I'm going to get to work designing my routine with your program in mind. Thanks for being so helpful and thorough in your response!

[Aaron Griffin]

It really is just the very first progression of the basics in all major areas, I mean this has been out on the forum for what, 8 months at least now in the various pre-requisites threads?

Sure, but a couple of unique things here in your post would be the hanging L-sit and the way the hollow hold progression was explained. You also skipped the reverse plank in there

[Joshua Naterman]

It really is just the very first progression of the basics in all major areas, I mean this has been out on the forum for what, 8 months at least now in the various pre-requisites threads?

Sure, but a couple of unique things here in your post would be the hanging L-sit and the way the hollow hold progression was explained. You also skipped the reverse plank in there

True. I did forget reverse plank I am not comfortable with my shoulders doing that ATM, which is why I don't do it.

The hanging L is just a level 4 progression or something like that, it's what the really little kids do. We all have to start as little kids, I think. There is a very real benefit to this approach.

[Nic Branson]

Most of us should dream of moving as instinctually as the little ones do again.

Edit: re-worded for clarity.

[Joshua Naterman]

Most of us can only dream of moving as instinctually as the little ones do again.

I don't know, if we start off the same way I think we would get there. Crawl, roll, bounce, climb up and down things slowly, climb faster, etc...

[Nic Branson]

I agree. We can get most of that movement back, we just have to want to. I meant it should be a goal we should all strive for.