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bodybuilders v gymnasts


mattdaly
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Nic Branson

They do show dedication to their training and their diets but....you will never find me saying I am a fan of watching orange tinted men in pink banana hammocks flex on stage. I personally do not believe in training only for vanity reason.

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Want to hear something interesting and funny?

You wouldn't believe how popular P90X, Beachbody have become within the coaching and judging circles. They could do gymnastics, especially as some of them were collegiate and elite athletes, and yet they just buy into "muscle-confusion". It makes me want to go bonkers.

When gymnastics coaches think of Strength Training, guess how many think of Bodybuilding and the Globogyms?

I've heard from a fair amount of female gymnasts about their aspirations into bodybuilding post gymnastics career. Oddly enough, I've never heard it once from a male gymnast in the past 10 years.

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Sailor Venus

this thread is still alive? I hate weightlifting/bodybuilding, uggh. I wish this world has less weights gym and more gymnastics gym instead, open 7 days a week. And I wish gymnastic conditioning was more marketed to the mainstream, more of this and less of dumbbells/barbells.

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Doing what I can to keep it so. Well, there were some interesting posts recently but they're gone now, lol.

There is nothing like Olympic Weightlifting and StrongMan. ROWWWRRRRR!

It would be good if there were more drop-in gymnastics gyms or mini gyms out there.

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Nic Branson

I'm all for weightlifting, strongman and powerlifting. That's how I got started. It's doing it simply for the image that is the problem.

Muscle-confusion....oh how I hate that term. So much fail there I'm not even sure where to begin.

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John Dalton
this thread is still alive? I hate weightlifting/bodybuilding, uggh. I wish this world has less weights gym and more gymnastics gym instead, open 7 days a week. And I wish gymnastic conditioning was more marketed to the mainstream, more of this and less of dumbbells/barbells.

I think I understand why you hate bodybuilding. The bodybuilders today IMO have truly ugly physiques and most don't have any exceptional physical abilities and it is weird to see many muscular men flex and pose in tiny speedos, but if you look at many bodybuilders of the past such as Jack Lalanne, John Grimek and George Eifferman, they all had physiques which any man would want, amazing gymnastics abilities and amazing strength. Most of their physiques resembled the physique of today's male gymnasts.

But I don't understand why you hate weightlifting, it is an awesome sport along with strongman.

I'm just curious because of the sailor venus pictures, but are you a girl?

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Sailor Venus

I think I understand why you hate bodybuilding. The bodybuilders today IMO have truly ugly physiques and most don't have any exceptional physical abilities and it is weird to see many muscular men flex and pose in tiny speedos, but if you look at many bodybuilders of the past such as Jack Lalanne, John Grimek and George Eifferman, they all had physiques which any man would want, amazing gymnastics abilities and amazing strength. Most of their physiques resembled the physique of today's male gymnasts.

But I don't understand why you hate weightlifting, it is an awesome sport along with strongman.

I'm just curious because of the sailor venus pictures, but are you a girl?

Back in my football days as a defensive back, I was introduced to weightlifting to develop strong muscles so I can make tackles, absorb hits, withstand tackles, push/barge people out of the way, obstruct/block people and be more physically efficient in general on the football pitch. After retirement from football I continued to lift weights until I came across this forum and researching all things gymnastics (excluding rhythmic, trampoline and acro).

From that point, I discarded my weightlifting plan and changed my attitude towards weightlifting for the negative and replaced weights with calisthenics and other gymnastic conditioning. At the risk of me being a hypocrite, the only weight lifting I still do now is clean & jerk and snatch, boy I love these exercises.

The only thing I'm cool with lifting weights that some people do it to build relevant strength for their sport be it track & field, ice hockey, boxing, wrestling, lacrosse, rugby. But I still don't understand how it helps since weights don't help with functional strength.

I don't like bodybulding/weightlifting anymore for a number of reasons:

(1) Most people do it for one thing: hypertrophy. Have big muscles. Thats it. What are you gonna do with all them big muscles? Big muscles will serve as a detriment to us gymnasts. Next time you do a back somersault or a handspring its gonna be harder cuz you're heavier due to large, dense and cumbersome muscles.

Here, this'll deter you from weight lifting: http://www.livestrong.com/article/54566 ... t-weights/

(2) Its a pain in the arse to maintain bodybuilding outside the gym: eat eight times a day or something plus some protein shake to go with it. Jesus christ! I ain't doing that! I eat about three times a day on average. Its just unnatural to eat that many times, for the purpose of getting big muscles. Just eat when feel fucking hungry. I doubt gymnasts eat like a mother to go along with their conditioning programme - unless I'm wrong.

(3) Too overrated. Why is it so damn popular? Pisses me off. Why are the majority of men obsessed with being big?! Be big for what?

(4) Steroids. Whats with that? Why are body building douchebags using it (obviously not all of them do)? I hope its not for allowing them to take in more protein, hypertrophy and stuff more than their bodies allow it. Do gymnasts touch that stuff? Do you see Gabrielle Douglas or Alexandra Raisman using steroids? I don't need steroids, I'm too good to using it.

(5) Weight lifting doesn't have any carryovers strength or functional strength. Calithenics training pwns. Can Arnold Schwarzenegger do a press handstand followed by a pirouette? I doubt it, he'll fall on the floor when he tries it and scream, "Aaaargh! I fell over and hurt! Get to tha chopper! Aaaargh! You son of a bitch! Arrrgh!"

We gymnasts want strong bodies, NOT bigger bodies. To help to support our own bodyweight during moves such as handstands.

That Jack LeLanne guy? I got a fitness magazine with a small article with a photo of him doing a handstand. I don't know much about him so I can't give an opinion on him plus I have no idea what his training consist of.

I don't care about muscles or being big - as long I can do somersaults, handstands, press handstands, l-straddles, handsprings, mannas, giants, pirouettes, dismounts, flyaways, flairs, planches, front/back levers, etc then I'm happy. If you can do those gymnastic stuff, having a badass physique will be inevitable. Plus it looks natural too, can't get any more natural than that.

And no I'm not a girl, I'm a man. I just have a thing for making my internet forum accounts feminine, I don't know why.

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1. A lot of Olympic Lifters from many countries are juiced to the gills. Sorry, that's life. Many of them can't believe the Americans aren't or don't.

2. Sorry to rain on your parade, but the classical strength enthusiasts lifted weights and they did gymnastics and they posed in underwear. It was all under one umbrella, then.

3. Personally, it sounds you are just dealing with a disconnect from football. You get into a new sport and are supremely gung ho about it. Piss on everything else, it's the bomb. I see that in a lot of myself right now dealing with Olympic Lifting.

4. Have you ever watched StrongMan? Yeah, they juice too but you can't say they don't have functional strength. And they don't give care about how muscular they are. It's about how much weight I can pick up and then move it around. Bloody awesome. I've always admired it.

5.

But I still don't understand how it helps since weights don't help with functional strength.
Load on a bar or your bodyweight is still load. Yes, it's moved around a bit differently, but it's still load you have to move. Get over it.

6. That you have a disconnect with Bodybuilding is fine. It's fracking strange and odd. We were over this earlier. Your beginning to sound a bit like that girl from Norcal who went bat crazy on my posts and well got rude. I'm almost considering tracking your IP's but honestly, I don't care really.

7. To each their own. You want to CrossFit, go for it. You want to go in and do cardio and lift watching yourself in the mirror, go for it. You want to Powerlift or Olympic Lift, do it. If you want to wear lululemmon and do yoga, sure. You want to wear tights and do ballet or skate, sure. Hell, you want to do yoga in a briefcloth, why not.

8. Some women like muscles. Bingo. Some women don't.

9. Gymnasts also eat enough. Some follow bodybuilding protocols like John Horton. Chicken, rice and broccoli to eat out. I don't remember him saying if he was eating 6x/day though. Again, bodybuilding is just odd. But other sports and activities can be just as odd to other people. Do I want to wear tights or flex my glutes for people. Not really, but for some people- they love it.

Get over yourself, man. It's none of your damn business what they do and enjoy. Fitness shouldn't be your end all be all nor should anything. Be a good person, travel, read, meet interesting people and sit and talk and (date them). Take in some drama in any form, do some form of play.

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Steroids.

Dude seriously, there are few people that are doing their sport on pro level and didn't use these. Get over it :lol:

I don't care about muscles or being big - as long I can do

Ah, that famous sentence :D I see you've just arrived at stage "I dont wanna be big but I wanna be strong" :D You'll get over that sooner or later, trust me :wink:

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I think this thread should really be locked if possible. Even though it may have been started under honest intentions, it just boiled down to a "who-has-a-bigger-dick" debate. If we can't keep things respectable I think it shouldn't be allowed. The GB community is always nice, understanding and tolerant with each other (I was VERY surprised by this when I joined, no other online community is the same), and if we can't do that to other forms of strength training or sports, we shouldn't have such a conversation in my opinion. :?

Keep it civil guys.

-Oka

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It's not too uncivil right now but I'll lock it if I have to.

I was looking at this one site last night, GirlswithMuscles...clicked on it off some other fitness board. You can click gymnasts and there are scores of gymnastics girls doing the classic ab bodybuilder shots. Too of my old gymnasts swear they want to get into bodybuilding post gym career after HS while in college.

Gymnasts...closet bodybuilders in the making. Not all of them are this way, but there is a crossover. UC Berkeley's men team had plenty of guys trying to flex in their team picture which was a bit comical since they were all bare chested and pale. Some of them are/were damn strong but really...c'mon.

Look at little Giuliano and his brother, Claudio. Same thing going on. And while they are being influenced by their father, I've seen scores of child gymnasts who love to flex and show their abs. It's probably human nature.

Which makes sense seeing as Sandow and LaLanne did everything back in the day. Strong feats, gymnastics, showing off their muscles, etc. There is a good article over on StartingStrength about how anabolics came to play in the states. York Barbell eventually pulled their funding from their WL club because of the overuse of them. Originally, I think they were used for medical patients.

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Sailor Venus

6. That you have a disconnect with Bodybuilding is fine. It's fracking strange and odd. We were over this earlier. Your beginning to sound a bit like that girl from Norcal who went bat crazy on my posts and well got rude. I'm almost considering tracking your IP's but honestly, I don't care really.

Get over yourself, man. It's none of your damn business what they do and enjoy. Fitness shouldn't be your end all be all nor should anything. Be a good person, travel, read, meet interesting people and sit and talk and (date them). Take in some drama in any form, do some form of play.

I apologise for my rude behaviour and closed minded attitude.

Never heard of 'strongman' since I don't have access to American television for obvious reasons. Just looking at this on youtube to find out what a strongman is. Is this what you on about?

It made me speechless! These guys should be in London and snatch/clean & jerk god knows how many kgs (I don't think I can count that high!) and bring the gold medals back home!

I was told to eat loads back in my weightlifting days to maximise protein/calorie intake and especially more cuz of my high metabolism. I never listened to those who told me to eat loads so in the end I never got big! Even if I did eat loads, I never put on weight anyway! Ha ha ha ha! My opinion is bodybuilders generally eat a lot more than gymnasts. I found an interview on that jon horton guy you mentioned and what he ate is mentioned: http://uk.askmen.com/sports/bodybuildin ... rview.html

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Larry Roseman

Jon Horton said he trained 6 hours a day 6 days a week. A bodybuilder maybe does 60-90 minutes a 4 days a week and a couple days with 30-60 mins of light cardio, right? That's kind of makes comparing the disciplines apples and oranges, no?

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I would think the pro bodybuilders train more than that. But I would have to look it up and care to. Meh

Yeah, StrongMan competitors often work cleans in their training, dunno about Snatches. I came across watching as a kid.

Dunno, they are strong as heck but I doubt they would medal in the Olympics. The other nations are just that good. Maybe here in the states they could hold their own or as SuperHeavies in their own countries.

I dunno but I thought StrongMan was popular in Europe. I thought it was a lot of Germans, Scandinavians, and Russians.

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Different people want different things, wouldn't life be boring if everyone liked and did the same things?

I don't have a problem with either. I started off 6 years ago or so in the gym because I was a skinny skinny boy! I didn't have much confidence and always hated being so thin. I joined the gym and messed about for a few years not really knowing what I was doing, learning as I was going and have made great gains since then. I'm now at a stage where I am relatively happy with my body after years of weight training and would now like to develop some gymnastic style training.

Those who are saying weight lifting does not translate into real world strength are talking nonesence; look at power cleans, clean and press etc, not everyone is a curl cowboy.

That being said, I may have lifted weights and trained as a bodybuilder at times, but I am not a bodybuilder. The physique of Coleman does nothing for me, infact I think it's horrible, but I still appreciate all the effor and dedication it takes to get there.

Strength and Size - I wouldn't want to be one without the other. It IS possible to be incredibly strong and not have a great deal of mass, and it is possible to have a lot of mass and not have a great deal of strength.

I want both; who doesn't want a nice physique?

Gymnasts are phenomenal althletes and I have the upmost respect for them.

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Sorry guys that I haven't been following this thread.

There is no problem with a healthy discussion, but keep it clean gentlemen. Keep the profanity to a minimum on the forum.

I've personally been through all this weights are bad nonsense from my yoga days. It's all about your goals, and the way you use the tools at your disposal to get there. Beyond that, taste and preference are not things that can be forced on others.

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As far as steroids go I think most top gymnast do there fair part as well as all other power orientated sports.

Ive been/trained/helped with some of the top BBers in my country. Those guys have an iron discipline and I repect the sport although I dislike the steroid part and everything which comes from it. Everyone should make the choice for their own but imo distroying a healthy body for just a few bucks and a cup which wont be even enough to keep your family alive let alone pay for your steroid use is a sad thing. Its a subgroup which are more interested in the substance than in the beauty of the sport.

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I was looking at this one site last night, GirlswithMuscles...clicked on it off some other fitness board.

Had a look there and found this picture of Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber:

BFj4k.jpg

Those are some serious muscles :shock: . The difference in musculature between USA and for example Russian or China women is quite noticable.

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It's not too uncivil right now but I'll lock it if I have to.

Haha sorry, maybe I just overreacted. Either that or I'm just stupid and read everything with a negative tone in my head :lol: I guess I'll contribute...

I think gymnastics is superior to bodybuilding in that it will develop a superior body in form and function, with the only downside being time invested. What I mean is that, to develop a gymnastic body, it will take much longer than it would for people who are pumping iron. For example, I watched my friend go from small muscles lots of fat, to low fat and pretty well-defined in about a year. Whereas it could take a year to just be able to learn one FSP here (not including all other things you're working on). So if you want a get that beach body by next summer, weight lifting is probably the way to go, but if you want ultimate performance I'd have to say gymnastics is the way to go. That's not to say both utilized together would not be outstanding. After all, many of the premier bodybuilders in the muscle beach era mixed both forms of training and were excellent in strength and looks.

Didn't mean to come off badly! Maybe it was a bad day when I wrote that, and I apologize :facepalm:

-Oka

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William Bateson

Anyone willing to test the limits of the human body, and all that it is capable of, will have my respect. I may not understand or wish to emulate what they have achieved, but I respect it. You have to understand, these are the people (especially the pioneers in any endeavor) that push our race forward. Think back to the earliest times; someone, somewhere, was the first person to climb a tall tree to get a lay of the land. Perhaps nobody understood why one would risk their life for such a thing, but this person saw a mountain in the distance. This mountain was the limit of the WORLD for all they knew. But, again, someone one day decided to climb that mountain. In the distance they saw more mountains to climb, and oceans to cross. I think I often view things too philosophically, but I believe as a species we have a need to explore. When we finished exploring the world around us, we started to explore ourselves more. How high could we jump? How fast could we run? How strong could we become? Though I may not always understand others' motivation, I am grateful that they are willing to always ask; what's next?

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Well, honestly, if you want to get that Beachbody ASAP, maybe go with P90X. I have heard a lot of great things about but it's not my cup of tea. I do catch watching the commercials a bit too long. Not so much so for Insanity because of those exercises look a bit too assinine for my tastes.

For bulking up, I would have to say weights are superior. You can microload them and you can use more load than just bodyweight. Yes, you can play with leverage but that doesn't mean jack with regards to lower body. Humans spend so much time on their feet anyways, so it's not like the load is the same compared to holding yourself up by your arms.

Well, American women have always tended to be bigger. Part of this is due to the fact that other countries generally prefer smaller gymnasts, period. Svetlana Khorkina might have been a giant as a gymnast but she was still a toothpick.

However, not all american gymnasts have been "american" ethnically. Think Moceanu and we've had plenty of others as well. I think it's just more accepted that we have bigger female gymnasts. Especially of the short, stocky variety ala Mohini, Sacramone, Retton.

Given the right sport, there is a LOT of money to be made with steroid use. Look at Weightlifting, StrongMan, Bodybuilding, Track&Field, Football, Baseball, Basketball, etc. In the West, it's through endorsement contracts not the paltry sums won in competitions.

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Joshua Naterman
Well, honestly, if you want to get that Beachbody ASAP, maybe go with P90X. I have heard a lot of great things about but it's not my cup of tea. I do catch watching the commercials a bit too long. Not so much so for Insanity because of those exercises look a bit too assinine for my tastes.

For bulking up, I would have to say weights are superior. You can microload them and you can use more load than just bodyweight. Yes, you can play with leverage but that doesn't mean jack with regards to lower body. Humans spend so much time on their feet anyways, so it's not like the load is the same compared to holding yourself up by your arms.

I have a few issues and clarifications with this post.

First, Blair is mostly correct about the lower body. If you want excellent growth you are probably going to need to find a bar and do squats and deadlifts. SLS take a hell of a lot of strength to move slowly with for any decent volume, but if you take Coach's suggestion about using stairs or any other variable seat height to slowly build volume in an increasing ROM then you can do this with SLS as well, but you won't see identical results when compared to bar squats. Your back will become far stronger with the bar squats. When moving slowly (5s up and down for a 10s rep, for example) you will see similar growth in the thighs and buttocks though I think that bar squats will be a bit better for butt growth than SLS. SL as well as regular romanian DL are really the best thing for your glutes and hamstrings when talking about muscle growth, but you can do something similar with natural leg curls and natural GHR as per BtGB.

Ok, on to upper body:

1) P90X is really the only commercially marketed fitness program that is worth anything, and it is pretty good. It is founded on solid ground because you are encouraged to eat well (it comes with a pretty decent nutrition guide, which they say very clearly is a necessary component if you intend to get the advertised results) and you are encouraged to use good form but to push your strength-endurance to the limit. In other words, it is higher volume training with good nutrition. That is why you get good results.

2) Good nutrition + high volume training is very, very easily done with the GB exercises and you'll need fewer exercises in order to get what you need. The loading also doesn't matter until you get to the point where you can perform HeSPU, dips, chin/pull ups, PPP and foot-supported rows for more than 90-120 seconds with constant tension (non-explosive reps with no rest between reps). Obviously this can then be extended to planche push ups, FL rows, yewkis, and reverse yewkis all in various position (tuck, straddle, etc) as well as full ROM HSPU, advanced dip and muscle up variations, and OAC/OAPullups.

If anyone here can meet that requirement you need to have that video on youtube because you will have exceeded the entire human race's physical abilities.

3) Remember: Loading doesn't matter. Reaching failure with each set matters. There is new research backing up the experiences of bodybuilders across the ages that confirms that. Going to failure is how you build mass, because that is the only way to fatigue the maximum number of motor groups. It is fully functional mass, do not believe the hype that higher volume with lighter weight doesn't build the potential for strength. The vast majority of hypertrophy in both light and heavy load training is myofibrillar, and much of the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy with lighter training is mitochondria and glycolytic enzymes, which will disappear pretty quickly when you train primarily with heavy loads consistently. You will get lighter and somewhat smaller because of this, but you will lose zero strength because mitochondria and glycolytic enzymes do not produce contractile force. You'll lose a fair bit of strength-endurance work capacity in terms of the volume can handle, but you'll also build it back up to its peak in 10-12 weeks as well by switching back to high-volume training.

You will also lose some injury resistance, as the rest of the sarcoplasmic proteins are primarily part of force-distribution networks inside the muscle, like desmin as an example, that links myofibers to each other and to the various layers of the muscle.

It will only take 10-12 weeks for someone who has been training high volume for any period of time, including multiple years straight, to use heavy training (traditional 3-5 sets of 3-5 reps, for example) to teach their body to actually use the muscle to maximum effect. That is how neural adaptation works.

All you have to do is to work to failure with good form and give your body the food it needs right when it needs it. If you do this, you will grow like a weed. If you do not, well... that is why you are not getting what you want. It is that simple.

It does not take a genius to make this work with GB exercises, and the best part is that you will both have the body you want in the same period of time AND will have built the stabilizing structural support that will allow you to achieve your goal of planche or full lay FL, etc in the process.

Let me provide a little perspective, based on the research showing that the same hypertrophy occurs with 80% of 1RM and 30% of 1RM as long as you go to failure.

A push up's resistance is 60-70% of your bodyweight. If you are 135 lbs that's 81-94.5 lbs. So we know for sure that that is enough to give you excellent hypertrophy up until that weight is 30% of your 1RM. That means you would have the muscle mass to perform a 1RM bench press with 270-315 lbs. That's over 2x BW. Now, you would have to go through a neural adaptation cycle to actually achieve this because you have not been teaching your body to use all of that muscle you have built in perfect synchrony. That will take you 10-12 weeks of heavy training (3-5 reps for 3-5 sets). This will, of course, take time... just like it does when you lift weights. You don't grow overnight, but you will experience consistent growth if you eat and work out the way you need to.

This growth will not, I repeat WILL NOT, happen if you are not feeding your body appropriately and at the right times. In this, it is no different than weightlifting. The same goes for reaching true failure: If you don't, you won't get what you want.

That's how you build a beach body, and you can build a beach body that far exceeds what it looks like it is capable of when you build it with GB work. It's as simple as that.

I'm not going to go into any more detail than that, I mean this post lays out exactly how to get what you want in terms of aesthetics.

I will also clarify that neural strength gains may continue for quite some time after that initial 12 weeks. When you have an enormous amount of muscle mass that is completely untrained in terms of neural strength it is completely unknown whether it follows the same timeline as an untrained person in terms of reaching full potential.

As real world examples of this working, there are a number of bodybuilders who very quickly became high-ranking powerlifters once they left bodybuilding to compete in the strength sport. The high volume training simply gave them the raw material they needed during their BB days, and once they shifted to heavy training they got immensely stronger.

When you look at the strength gains that newbies make in 10-12 weeks, their strength doubles in many cases, and in some cases can nearly triple.

You won't see quite the same percentage increase because you will have already had some training, but it is reasonable to expect that initial strength on day 1 of heavy training (assuming you have never trained heavy before) will go up 40-70% by the end of week 12. I don't think anyone here or anywhere else would be disappointed in that kind of result.

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Gymnast learn new sports faster than other athletes.

Olympic lifter can apply more useful power to more activities than other athletes.

Powerlifters are stronger than other athletes.

Sprinters can match the cardiovascular performanceofendrance athleteeven at extended efforts.

Endurance athletes are woefully lacking intotal physical capacity

Bodybuilders can't punch,jump,run or throw like athletes can.

Segmenting traning efforts delivers asegmented capacity

Optimizing physical capacity requires traning at unsustain able intensities.

The world's most sccessfl athletes and coaches rely on exersices science the way deer hunter rely on the accordion.

The kip is a transference of movement first generated in the horizontal plane, where it comes cheap and easy,to the vertical plane,where momentum and a perfectly timed pull from the back launch the athlete forcefully upward

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