Starting my first cycle

Hi Guys,

I have been training almost my whole life, be it in soccer, martial arts or rowing. The last I did at a pretty high college level (training up to 10x/week). But starting three weeks ago, I began getting interested in gymnastics training. Partly because I don't really like going to the gym to train with weights, but most of all because I really like bodyweight training even though I am not that good in it at the moment.

So I bought a copy of BtGB and read a lot on this forum. I wanted to start out very slowly, as I know that I have the tendency to overtrain (my mind can keep going even when my body says no, something you learn in rowing). So for the last two weeks I have followed my own program, based on the information I got here. My focus was on the prerequisites, pushups and body rows. It looks like this:

Wrist routine for warm-up

10' rope jumping (five rounds of 90" jumping, 30" rest)

Front Hold 60sec

Reverse Hold 60sec

Hollow Hold 60 sec

Arch Hold 60sec

3x20sec stomach to wall handstand, 30"r

3x30sec dead hang, 30"r

6x10sec Tuck L-sit, 30"r

3x5 pushup, wide, perfect form

3x5 body row, wide, slow

stretching

Now, I am fairly happy about a few things. I think my warmup is pretty good (wrist+rope jumping). After that, the prerequisites are good, working up to do at least 60" at all of them, fairly off for some, already there for others. Am doing L-sits because I don't have a very good place to do the PB support, will look further for these. The prerequisites take me about 13'30'' at the moment, so not even close to the desired 6'. But for this part of my training I feel pretty good. I really want to start slow and proper, so I can continue for a long time without injury or overtraining.

But for the last part, I feel like I am lacking. the 3x5 perfect pushups go pretty well and easy at the moment, so I want to keep doing these for at least one more week and than increase to 4x5 and later 5x5.

The rows are too easy at the moment. I will buy a pullup bar to put in my door today. So I will be able to do something with that one. Don't really know what I will do with it once I have the bar, as I am unable to do a proper pullup at the moment (yeah I know... shame on me..).

So my question comes down to this. I feel that my program at this moment is too light, both in terms of strength increase as in terms of duration. I don't, however, know how to improve on these aspects without stopping with 'taking it lightly', if that makes sense.

I am 24, 1.93m, 75kg and will train 2x/week at the moment at gymnastics where I would like to be able to finish a workout in about 60'.

I hope you guys can help me out!

Gr.

Tom

I would personally use the prereqs as a warm-up and start on the easiest variations of the statics hold. You say you can't do L-sit because you haven't got parallel bars, but have you got two chairs?

Then finish of with two Fbe`s

Two chairs for PB.

Way more volume on the FBE's. Put a chair under your pullup bar and sort of do a jumping pullup with a hold at the top or negative.

If you're just going to do 3x5 for those FBE's, I would add in a 2nd FBE. Thing is if you can do a pullup, you sure can't do an inverted row/body curl. If you can't do a dip, you sure as heck can't work HeSPU.

So 5x5 minimum. I'm not exactly opposed to something along the lines of 5x5-10 for a beginner.

More HS work, more L work; heck more prequisite work. Instead of 1m of total volume, try 2-3m.

Thanks both!

@Matth: I just found a great place to do the PB support. So for now, I will drop the tuck L-sit and start working on my PB support!

@Blairbob: You say I should double/tripple my preq work. But to complete the sequence I am doing right now, it already takes me about 12 minutes (probably less once I swith the L-sit for the PB support). So that would be very time consuming. I do realise that it will be worth while.

Also, I am working toward 5x5 on the pushups and rows. Am at 4x5 atm, and will increase that to 5x5 in week 35. From there, I will try to work that up to 5x10 before moving up to a harder variation.

I also do Grease the groove for my pullups, starting with negatives. Hupefully, this way I will be able to train with pullups within a month or two-three. So probably the volume isn't that bad really.

I do like to put more time in my handstand, but notice that I am absolutely spend after those 3x20sec. I don't like this, but I guess it is because I work too hard in those sets that I can't recover enough to progress. I would like to do more handstand work though! Maybe some tips?