The best way to start?

Hey Guys,

My name is Victor Grossman. I’m a 24 year old Swede, which explains my poor English ïŠ I have no whatsoever experience of gymnastics before visiting this website. Like the most of peple I do train but mostly running, soccer, floorball etc. Going to the gym has never worked out for me since I don’t see the purpose of lifting just for the fun or for building mass.

Apart from the ballsports I do enjoy all kinds of outdoorsports therefore I believe that the functional training which BtGb propose is perfect for me!

I have been in and out on the forum for the last 16 months and at the same time read BtGB a couple of times. Despite all this I can’t say that I know how to construct my program and which exercises that are good to start with.

However, I have now decided to start training 3 times a week following exercises from the book and from what I read on the forum.

From what I have been reading at the forum I understand that the following should be my warm-up:

60s plank

60s reverse plank

60s perfect hollow hold with hands over your head

60s arch hold in the superman flying position

60s Parallel Bar support.

60s chin up grip dead hang

After the warm up I will perform the following static exercises each day:

Frogstand 60 sec tot

Front Lever Progressions

Back Lever Progressions

Handstand 3 x 20sec

The question i have for you guys are, which FBE excerises should i perform and rotate in my 3-day schedule?

Cheers/ Victor Grossman

Hi!

I'm new to this as well (är också svensk) and I started out by just doing pullups and dips on rings, which has given me most of my strength.

You haven't given us much information about you, like what you can do in terms of strength. Because I'm assuming that's why you're here. But...

When beginning, I recommend doing some basic ring work for upperbody strength. There are a million exercises you can to, depending on your strength level. For instance, hanging leg raises are good and can be very challanging to do with correct form. Of course, working legs are important and can be done with basic squats or pistol squats etc. If you have access to a gymnastics facility I'd recomment doing basic work on all apparatuses. For instance, some parallel bar walks, ring swings etc. Pullups and dips are essential as well as handstandwork, and eventually handstand push-ups. There are a million more basic strength exercises, but like you, I'm a beginner and this is what I can say right now.

I do not consider front levers and back levers being an everyday exercise, they're strength moves that requiers rest between workouts, especially the back lever, as it strengthen your ligaments and joints, which needs more time to recover than regular muscles. And these will not be easy for you, as it can take months to develope good-form levers.

When you grow stronger you can start training muscle ups and maybe some planche work, but do not jump into strength moves that are way beyond your level. I started training iron cross too early, I got hurt and my progress has taken much more time than it would have been supposed to.

I do not know if I anwsered your question correctly, but I hope someone more experienced can give you some advise, here on GB:s forums.

Good luck!

Kristoffer

Btw: where are you located in Sweden?

Hi guys, I´m also a Swede been following this website for a couple of years know. My recomedation is to get the book and start out with integrated training (page 178 in the book). I did that for about 7 months then attended my first seminar i Mallorca. after the seminar i started to do the wods.

Going my third seminar in November which is helt in Finland. If you have chance I would realy recomend you to go!

Hey Guys,

Sorry for my late answer!

Thank you for the answers, i just made 2 of 3 passes the past week.

And to answer the question of my capacity i would say its fairly low.

I perform 60 sec plank 3 times not totally exhausted but almost.

I can perform 3 x 5 chin ups

push ups 20-25 x 3

Otherwise my core strength is pathetic.

I train at a regular gym, have to buy some rings but i want to try without them for a while to see that i can and will continue with this.

I live in Stockholm btw, where are you guys from?

Cheers

I obviously misunderstood your sentence before... You said you were going to work front and backlevers every SESSION, which is fine. Still though, you should definitely build up some more strength before front and backlever work, 10 pullups and 10 dips at least I'd say...

You don't need rings to do this, just a pullupbar and a dipstation, though it's much more fun with rings. "Träningsspecialisten" in "Sollentuna" has some rings which are great for use in a regular gym (you can order them from the web). They only cost 250kr!!! (regular rings cost about 2000 kr)

I bought a pair of rings and installed them earlier this summer. I must say it's one of the best decisions I've made, as my strength has increased in a very rapid pace.

Sigtuna is my hometown, but I train in Uppsala (@fyrishov).

Do you have access to some rings?

Kristoffer

hej hej =)

I am not swedish but I do live i sverige (vasteras) and I have to say I started doing the killroy template doing pushups and rows one day and then pull ups and dips the next day but being a rock climber I was used to a heavier workload so I then started doing 4 FBE's about 4 times a week. Pull ups, dips, push ups and rows. I saw much more improvement when I did that. After a bit i started to stagnate and decided to have a main focus (front lever) so I did the same FBE's I was currently doing but added 360 pulls and front lever pulls as well. Once that started to stagnate I switched to more of a focus on pushing took away the 360 pulls and added box handstand push ups. anyway what I am getting at here is start with one push and one pull exercise from each plane of motion and once things start to seem to go no where add a bit more volume to the exercises or add a new focus like I did.

Example being

monday

pull ups

dips

rows

push ups

tuesday

rest

wednesday

pull ups

dips

rows

push ups

thursday

rest

friday

pull ups

dips

rows

push ups

saturday

rest

sunday

pull ups

dips

rows

push ups

monday

rest

start with the hardest progression you can do for 3x3 and then add sets when you feel able to until you can do 3x5 then build up your reps to about 6-8x5. After that is accomplished move on to the next progression. If you have a main focus you could always switch the exercises up to focus more on that but I think what I wrote could be a good start.

hope this helps anyone else with more knowledge feel free to step in!

P.s. do handstand practice as often as possible! just trying to kick up into a handstand every day has increased my push ability greatly.

good luck!=)