Introduction And Opinions Please.

Hello everyone! My friend and I (This is Kratos, my friend is Alpha) have been training gymnastics on our own as hard as possible for the last year or so. We are mostly going off of Coach's book, but we study other gymnasts as well. We have some pretty insane goals, namely that we would like to reach competitive level in rings in 2-3 more years. We are both pretty bummed that we didn't get into gymnastics as kids, but c'est la vie. We put together these videos in the hopes that we could get some advice or opinions on how best to develop our ring and gymnastics strength. We would greatly appreciate anything you can offer us. Thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HgGWgEperg

and our additional workout

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMzKiRVkymc

We thank you for the help, and hopefully you will see us in Rio 2016!

I stopped watching after 3 minutes into the first video. You need to focus on body shape. Not trying to be a jerk but I didn't see one fully correct movement. The manna wasn't retracted. Planche isn't protracted. Leans aren't far enough on your straddle planche. Hspu were ok but you should build up strength against the wall so you can do full rom.

Read through this forum you will find good topics on all the things I mentioned.

Your dedication and work ethic is impressive! I'm sure the experienced members here can offer you many tips about your form, so keep it up.

I have advice, but you're not going to like it. 

- Decrease the difficulty of the exercises you are attempting. Only perform exercises that you are capable of executing with good form. Attempting to progress when you have holes in your form may let you go forward a few steps, but ultimately your weaknesses will catch up to you and you will have to go *all the way back* and start over to correct the problems you skipped over. While scaling back the difficulty may be a bit of a blow to the ego, you will find that in the long run it is much more satisfying, because you will progress much faster. 

- Stop doing skill attempts and negatives. The most effective form of training is to perform movements that are within your current level of ability but still pose a significant challenge. Attempts and negatives can be fun every once in a while because they give a sensation of what the 'real' skill feels like, but ultimately they do little to help you improve your strength except under some very specific conditions. 

- Work out less frequently. You're both in a developmental stage where you are building strength and muscle mass. When anyone works out, they cause damage to their muscles. You gain strength from working out because your body rebuilds the muscles to be able to handle the stress that damaged them. If you work out before your body has finished rebuilding, you are not gaining as much strength from the workout as you could. It's like trying to bail water by filling up the bucket, pouring out only half the bucket, and then filling the bucket up again. 

- Have patience. Merely becoming a competent gymnast takes several years even for the most gifted athletes. If you try to progress too quickly, you will soon find that you have accumulated so many injuries and flaws that you can not go any further. Going back and fixing flaws always takes longer than doing it right the first time, and some injuries can only be healed by ceasing all workouts for prolonged periods of time. 

Wow, this received replies quickly.

@Daniel Burnham: You aren't being a jerk at all, I very much appreciate the comment. Like I said, we are new to all this, so any help would be great. We don't know the subtleties of the exercises, as we do not have a coach who can hands on correct us. Thus far we have been trying as best as possible to get correct form all on our own, and more often than not we have had to go back and refine our form.

I have read through a number of topics, so I will continue to do so, and pay really close attention. As for the HeSPU's, we can do full ROM on the wall, and we can usually max out at about 8-15 depending on how fresh we are. Would you still recommend continued wall practice?

@Patrick Smith: Thank you for the compliment! I really hope to get the best advice possible to refine everything. I have a lot of work to do, but I really enjoy all of it.

@jfslocum: Actually, I do like your advice. You have more experience than I do, so I will humbly take any advice you can give me. We have stopped doing double days, and incorporate those exercises into our regular routines. I was against skill attempts from the beginning, but my friend (the blonde) thought they were worth attempting. So thats out.

I really only have an issue with two bits of advice. The negatives and the frequency. Are negatives not a good way to develop strength for a skill? Is it because form can suffer on the negative, or is there another reason that negatives should be avoided? Back when I did weightlifting, negatives were an excellent way to develop strength, so I thought the concept may apply here as well. As for the frequency, elite gymnasts train daily, do they not? We have since altered our routines a bit so that we don't work the same skills hard every day, but we make sure to get some practice in.

Please understand that I am not doubting you in any way, I just want to clarify all these points. Thanks again for the advice!

Negatives are not an efficient way to develop strength. They cause more fatigue and muscle damage than other exercises. It's best to avoid them in general.

Hold attempts can also have uses, but they also should not be a staple of your workouts.

With regards to frequency, you guys are not elite gymnasts. You should see their workout schedules as a target to work up to, not a template to adopt. Elite gymnasts have many things you do not that help them recover faster: years of conditioning that has helped their bodies adapt, professional trainers, masseuses, world-class coaches, and a knowledge of how their body responds to different training stimulus that takes years to develop.

Try doing only three workouts a week:MWF. Use the extra 12 hours to research and read. Read "Building the Gymnastics Body" again. Read "Overcoming Gravity" and "Olympic Gymnastics" and any other book on the subject you can get your hands on. Look for gymnastics gyms in your area that you could learn from. Read up on optimum nutrition. Learn some physiology and kinesthesiology. You're going to need to know all of those things if you want to train yourself to an elite level.

Also, be prepared to spend more than 3 years. Elite gymnasts start young and peak in their early 20's. That's on the order of 15 years of training. You are trying to go 5x faster than them without the benefit of professional coaching.

Wonderful dedication and effort with your mate, props to you guys!

Listen & implement the great advice from the community, and you'll get to your goals

@jfslocum: Alright, I understand, we have a lot to work up to, and rushing will not help us. As for nutrition and physiolofgy, etc, we are both actually majoring in those fields right now, so all the classes we are taking are focused on exercise and nutrition fields.

Also, we are not getting into exercise cold-turkey, both of us have been rigorously training for years. We come from extremely varied backgrounds including bodybuilding, martial arts,tennis, running, swimming, etc. We will scale back the workouts to some degree, but one exercise I can't give up on daily training is handstands. I have heard everywhere that handstands are fundamentally important to gymnastics, so I will practice them more or less daily, but alternate the difficulty so that some days are more rest and just to work on balance. Is that alright, or even with handstands we should take time off?

@FredInChina: Thanks, we really want to make it to elite level on rings, so drive is there. Both of us just really wish we got into the sport much younger. Hopefully you are right and we will reach our goals, that would literally be a dream come true.

AlphaKratos said:

@jfslocum: Alright, I understand, we have a lot to work up to, and rushing will not help us. As for nutrition and physiolofgy, etc, we are both actually majoring in those fields right now, so all the classes we are taking are focused on exercise and nutrition fields.

That's a good leg-up to have, then. 

AlphaKratos said:

Also, we are not getting into exercise cold-turkey, both of us have been rigorously training for years. We come from extremely varied backgrounds including bodybuilding, martial arts,tennis, running, swimming, etc. We will scale back the workouts to some degree, but one exercise I can't give up on daily training is handstands. I have heard everywhere that handstands are fundamentally important to gymnastics, so I will practice them more or less daily, but alternate the difficulty so that some days are more rest and just to work on balance. Is that alright, or even with handstands we should take time off?

The thing about Gymnastic Strength Training™ is that it puts stress on joints and tendons in ways that most other sports and weight training programs do not. These tissues are very slow to increase in durability. The fastest way to grow their strength is to train hard and then give them time to recover. 

The 3-day a week limit I recommended is only for strength training. If you're already in good shape (and you both appear to be), technical skill work, mobility work and stretching can be done 5-6 days a week. Do NOT neglect stretching and mobility. Developing adequate shoulder and hip mobility will be crucial in mastering the more advanced strength elements, and will aid you greatly in developing technical skills. I would very strongly recommend doing stretching and mobility work 5-6 days a week. Handstands every day is a good idea, provided your wrists and forearms can handle it. If you feel soreness or pain starting to build up, you need to back off for a while and let it heal. Once you master a handstand, work on pirouettes, and work on a handstand on rings.

Do not be afraid to rest. Psychologically this is one of the hardest parts of training because it is so counter-intuitive. It takes hard work to get stronger, so how can sitting around doing nothing possibly help? The thing to remember is that resting comes after hard work. Think of your body as your partner. You spent four hours strength training: that was your part. Now you need to give your body time to do it's part: healing and growing back stronger. 

Excellent, thanks for all the advice. I am pretty good at knowing the limits of my joints, so with more technical stuff I tend to be cautious, but handstands have never given me problems in my wrists. I did shot put for track and field and this meant I had to stretch and strengthen my wrists to take the weight of the ball. I was even able to move up two weight levels when I  competed.

With our flexibility, we start with a run to warm up, and then we do full body stretching for close to an hour, with more stretching in between. We are also doing a bunch of Coach's recommended stretches. Since there really is no shortcut on gymnastic strength development, and our goal is to compete on rings, should we alter our workouts to be more ring strength exclusive?

With our flexibility, we start with a run to warm up, and then we do full body stretching for close to an hour, with more stretching in between. We are also doing a bunch of Coach's recommended stretches. Since there really is no shortcut on gymnastic strength development, and our goal is to compete on rings, should we alter our workouts to be more ring strength exclusive?

RIng strength should not be the focus of the workout until you have mastered the basics.  This includes the prerequisites and many of the fundamental static positions mentioned in the book.  

I have read through a number of topics, so I will continue to do so, and pay really close attention. As for the HeSPU's, we can do full ROM on the wall, and we can usually max out at about 8-15 depending on how fresh we are. Would you still recommend continued wall practice?

If you can do HeSPU agains the wall for 8-15 reps then you should move on to deeper HSPU using paralettes agains the wall.  This should be done for strength work.  Feel free to continue HeSPU after you have a good handstand so that you can learn to balance while pushing.

Also realize that even if you decide to specialize in rings, there are a lot of skills that you will need besides ring strength.  In fact only one element group in the COP is strength holds only.  The rest involve a swing which takes some time to develop correctly.  You will need to work these often and not always on the rings.  Floor tumbling will help with body awareness and dismount.  There is similar carryover from other events in the basic development stage past the basic development stage it becomes ok to specialize more. 

It is my advice that at the very least you go to an adult gymnastic class to get coaching on these things.  It is not the focus of this forum to help develop a competative gymnast and there are only a few here who could actually give you advice on non-strength related skills.

Sounds good, thanks everyone. We are trying to get hired at Cal Sports Center, which specializes in gymnastics. they have coaches and equipment, so that is our goal now. This was very helpful stuff, and I think we have a better idea of how to continue our training.