swedish gymnastics and bent arm exercises

[Alvaro Antolinez]

Hi again, here goes a question about Swedish gymnastics ( a friend of mine told me they call it like that)

Some guys at the gym are training at the hanging stairs, rope and rope stair. They do a lot of 90degrees looked arms

Forth and back the stair (also a 45 inclined one).

The question is: I googled Swedish gym and it says is pretty old.

How effective is? Some times seems to me is some kind of old trainig for fire fighters.

The guys who use it are strong. But not to the level a gymnast is.

Maybe serotonin knows something about that.

[griffdrc]

well i can attempt to shed a little light on the question...

when you train isometrically you generally gain strength within 10-15 degrees of the angle trained... however, when the muscle is lengthened when trained isometrically there is more carry over throughout the range of motion... so if you were to apply this very simplistically... straight arm work would not strengthen the triceps as much as bent arm work and bent arm work would not strengthen your biceps as much as straight arm work... however this gets complicated very quickly when you take everything into accounr like leverage and the fact that the biceps are the antagonist is straight arm work...

i'm curious to hear more about it...

[Alvaro Antolinez]

Is a kind of training I didn't see before to this august. Is pretty efective, the guys who do it are maybe the strongers of the gym. They focus on wide pull ups , some dips and lots of locked at 90 degrees arm at the horizontal and 45 degrees stair at the ceiling. It seems they are lacking that straight arm and full contraction that you mean. Maybe someone here knows what kind of training is.

[David Picó García]

Yes, they are strong, specially all of them have a big and strong forearms. They usually do 10 to 12 hanging stair series, changing the way they grip the stair, with hands looking in front back, front, side. It's really hard on the hands (skin) and no one uses gloves :shock:, i'm used of rope climb and rings without protection but a few series on stairs leave my calluses really happy .

Those people also use to do a lot of rope, series without touching the ground (and without feet of course), but they don't do cirques, as they usually go down quickly, and then they climb a long stick (like the rope but rigid), this is very hard for the grip as is a bit slippery, then they go to rope stairs. They do a lot of series of this really hard training, and you can see it on their arms.

Just a feet away from the rope are the rings, and i've never seen someone used. It's strange as they do a different style of training (from a bodybuilding style) but i think the inestability of the rings at first are very challenging and people dont persevere a bit to get the stability, and some people don't know how to get on the rings (they are fixed on length) and don't know what a false grip is.

It's a bit like an old gym.

[Timy7]

Can anyone explain what swedish gymnastics is a little bit better? I am very interested as I already do lots of straight arm work, but curious to what exercises they are doing and where it comes from!?

Cheers for any answers.

Timy

[kbryk]

I too am very interested in this, have an article?

That picture is from John Gills website correct?

[Alvaro Antolinez]

The fact is they dont do straight arm work at all. They do lots of locked bent arm (90º bent) at the stair, pull ups, some push ups and dips.

they also do this wich is similar to what they do at the woode stair:

the thing is they focus so much on pull strenght, I thing they must be decompensed. But how effective is this method of training the pull?.

for the record I´ll mention that I only practice with coach Sommers exercices and im sticking to them, but I´ll like to know more about this training I never saw before.

Thank you

[David Picó García]

Well the main exercise they do on the gym is to go throw the horizontal ladder you can see in this video (behind the one doing muscle ups, it's my nephew)

http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=9JROPBhFokE

You go hang on it then do half chin up (because otherwise you hit with the head so you are in the mid position of a pull up or chin ups and then you go throw the ladder rung to rung using one set the pullup grip (palms of hand facing away) another with palms facing you, another with neutral from outside (as it was just a parallel bar). And then you do all of this changing grips IN every rung before going to the next step.

Then the more classic rope or/and stick(post) climb or ladder rope and the exercise shown on the video by omegant. That one is hard because you can assist a little with feet but you have wooden cilinders on the hands and in order to climb you have to put them on he holes so, you only suport on one arm and with the other tries to put the stick on the hole. in those exercises the range of motion is very little, specially on horizontal ladder (we also have 45 degrees ladders so is the same but as you move you go up, but it's a bit easier as that way you can flex more the arms no just 90 degrees arm as you have more room for the head to move althoug you are figthing againt more gravity as you go up) and its hard for biceps lats and forearms.

The picture was taken from beastskills, i dont really know what gym is that, i put ir as you can see there a lot of rope ladders

[kbryk]

Ok, so basically pulling strength in locked arm 90(degrees) I use to climb so I would train lots of locked arm 90(degrees) stuff. I've always wanted to rig a rope somewhere in or out of my house.

[David Picó García]

Yesterday i asked a guy at gym who was climbing rope how many reps he usually do (he had a forearms like my quads :shock:, you can see him strong, really strong, but not big as a bodybuilder, not pumped but dense) . Well he was doing rounds of climbing the rope, then the pole, and then the rope ladder, he usually did 2-3 reps of climbiming per set (1 rep is going up and down the rope WITHOUT touching the ground). The total numbers of reps he did were.... well i thought 5 reps would be ok, 10 reps, well this would be intense, 20 reps, hey!!! this must be like hell, well..... he did 48 reps per workout :shock: :shock: :shock: Yes he climbed the rope 48 time!!!!! in one workout. The rope i think is about 5-6 meters high. Reps are starting seated on the floor of course.

Just an example to see that if you thought you are training hard, think twice

[Coach Sommer]

Thank you for sharing. That is a great deal of volume. Could you please provide more details of his workouts? How were the rope, pole and ladder climbing combined into a workout? What other movements were included in a workout? How many days per week? He is at this level now; however where did he begin and how did he progress over time to avoid elbow tendonitis with such a high volume?

If possible, would you mind posting a youtube video (like your nephew's muscle-ups) of their rope, pole and ladder work?

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[David Picó García]

Yes, i'll try to get more information about his training, that day he only did climbing, 1 set on rope, 1 set on pole, 1 set on rope ladder, and then repeat that super series. a few minutes of rest between sets but not really long rest. at firs sets are 2-3 reps and after some workout the set are 1 rep. When i asked the numbers of reps he answered me in a terms i didnt know, (something about 4 quintuplets).

On saturday i saw him doing just horizontal and 45º ladder, a lot of volume. He must do something more on the other days as i could see he also had a good calves and trapezious develpment.

[Andrew Flach]

For what it's worth, there's an old-time physical culturist, by the name of Staff-Sergeant Alfred Moss, who advocated a system claimed to be an evolution of the Swedish Gymnastics system. He is a fellow of extreme interest to me, and it is most unfortunate that there is seemingly so little information available on him. Apparently, he was quite a colourful character.

If nothing else, his photo will serve to show the kind of physique it is possible for one to obtain using the system or something similar. The link also provides another to one of Moss's courses, The Handbook of Free Gymnastics. Although, I would be much more interested to see some of his other works, such as those on the vaulting horse, rings, ladder, rope, pole, and the horizontal bar.

http://sandowplus.co.uk/Competition/Moss/moss.htm

Cheers,

Andrew