Post: #26

(03-09-2018 08:06 PM)churros Wrote:  Steve I'd info on where the hell to actually do gymnastics, apart from at home...

Can't you look for a gymnastics gym near you? My city has a bunch and it's a relatively dead city.

Post: #27

(03-09-2018 09:18 AM)Ringo Wrote:  

(03-09-2018 01:58 AM)flanders Wrote:  

(03-08-2018 11:19 PM)churros Wrote:  Anyone got updated recommendations on a decent set of home rings? Was looking at those amazon ones above, but am not sure about the plastic...

There is a glut of highly reviewed cheap gymnastic rings for home use on amazon. Amazon really is a decent place to get all kinds of shit nowadays, you can even buy weight plates for about as cheap as used with free shipping.

Here is a good tutorial on building homemade rings. I made a few pair using these instructions a while ago and haven't used them as much as I should, but they do work great.

http://rosstraining.com/blog/2011/11/10/...tic-rings/

Homemade rings are too much work and too high risk.

The plastic rings on Amazon are more than safe. The ring itself is made out of thick, solid plastic - chance of breaking is close to zero. The critical component is the strap buckle, but even these cheapo rings come with sturdy metal buckles.

If the plastic bothers you, you can get a set of wooden rings for 5-10 bucks more.

No they're not.

The straps are rated at 3000# apiece and I've had 300+ pounds hanging off them for reps and they do fine. Total cost was like eight bucks. They're good for any garage gym.

Post: #28

Tldr: you can do it anywhere.you might need multiple places to train. The last half was getting into how you can blend training with lifestyle and my personal experience as to why rings are superior for the upper body.

Gymnastics gyms usually have an open gym once a week or might let you usr the facilities if you talk to the owners and say what you're doing. Obviously this is optimal because there's padded floors,high p bars,rope climbs,and all the equipment you need.

If you have a gym membership bring your rings and hang them on the pull up bar. Nice thing about normal gyms is they have boxes for you to use and dip bars. Also you can workout your legs with weights which is the best way to do it. In addition to that sometimes weights are usefull for prehab, or can be usefull as an accessory. You can always talk to girls who are dancers,gymnasts,yoga,strippers,etc about scapular strength,handstands,and mobility now...

Bad part about normal gyms is you really have to learn to not give a fuck what people think and stick to the plan.You have to have the mental fortitude to keep doing what appears to be soy Woo woo b.s. in front of people having fun deadlifting and benching so your training might get scewed . when you do this stuff for the upper body its hard to stick to it sometimes because you wanna get big quick and gymnastics forces you not hypertrophy as quickly and bicep curls are all to tempting even if you know your biceps will get bigger with proper training.

Find a bodyweight workout park near you. Find an adult bodyweight workout park with pull up bars and p bars. This is 80 of what you need but the bad part is that you still need to get creative with your environment. These places will not have boxes for you to do elevated foot rows,or walls to do handstands on.

GO for a walk. Find a tree,pillar,or whatever to hang your rings on. I lucked out and used to have a perfect out door training area on the beach walking distance from my house. I could do everything I needed to do with the set up I found on my walk (literally just a wooden pillar and concrete walls and a hill to sprint for legs) and hot girls in bikinis passed by all the time. I'd get tourist phone numbers on rest sets and sometimes get interrupted mid set by girls.....I got to hangout and meet strippers older than me as Normal girls while doing this.

I just wanted to workout and get stronger without a gym because I didn't have transportation. When you leave the comforts of a gym and steel plates it forces you to get creative,and get to the root core of your training. I also got lucky and found out its one of the best ways to meet girls without trying . I have training videos to check my form and one time on camera these two brunettes walk by me doing handstand pushups. They start flipping out,playing with hair,fixing bikini bottoms,etc

I was a solid 168-170 at 5'6 with no legs. Im naturally a skinny bastard and easily was 10-12 % shredded. I looked noticeably swole with delts,traps,and arms in a proper fitting t-shirt. I couldn't wear normal clothes because of my v taper. admittedly I lifted weights for years but I was only skinny muscular. I went from looking like someone who's played a sport before in clothes to looking like a shredded dude who only cares about how his body looks in clothed. All from training outside with no,equipment other than rings hung from a pillar,concrete floors for pushups,concrete walls for h andstands,and a concrete hill for sprinting.

My mobility and ability to move was amazing. I was dangerous on the wrestling mat even though I never listened to my coaches. The thought I took steroids because I could pin kids in a bjj guard and got out of crazy positions that you shouldn't because I had strength in weird angles and could move my body. I got slammed on my neck but didn't have to go to the hospital because my rear delts and back had enough muscle to take the blow. Most training programs neglect musclez that saved my life. I've seen smaller kids get slammed just like I did and have to go to the hospital because they didn't have the "armour". I was the only one on my team who didn't have shoulder problems despite being somebody escaped sketchy positions and had my shoulder socket stretched out good from being on bottom do to lack of wrestling skill.

The above paragraph doesn'mean im special. I just had the armor,muscles in strange places,scapular strength,mobility,bodily awareness,etc to get away with things in a brutal sport because of gymnastics strength training. You dont train the scapula for 360 degree strength like you do in rings training. I am the epitome of uncoordinated to.

Post: #29

Just set these up yesterday, very excited to get into it.

How important is the "false grip" everyone keeps talking about? Just seems to be for muscle ups unless I'm mistaken?

Post: #30

I am also a member of Coach Sommer's Gymnastic Bodies.
Right now I do a mixture of the Fundamentals and Foundation 1 program every week.
It doesn't take long to do, it is at most a total of 2 hours a week worth of physical activity.
The Fundamentals and Foundation 1 have tremendously helped my Movement, Flexibility, and Joint/Tendon/Ligament Strength for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

I still train Weightlifting and Calisthenics for all around general Strength, however Gymnastic Bodies really heals and optimizes your Ankle/Knee/Elbow/Wrist , Joint/Tendon/Ligament Strength like nothing else can.

Before Gymnastic Bodies my Ankles/Knees/Elbows/Wrists were always clicking/popping/sore/tight, not anymore.

Post: #31

scrapper f1 is awesome. I just hate that the gymnastic bodies forum got ruined after sommer released f1. Now its like a fucking cult and its said to see a place where some of the most ground breaking and high qaulity information on training for sprinting,gymnastics,weight lifting,etc has taken place turn into a desert of "buy f1".

Ido portal,gregor,and joshua naterman should be required reading.......its truly a shame that those guys never got together and created a book or website of orginized training info.
Ido portals hatred for being "dogmatic" has to come from his experience with coach sommer. If he was more open minded and had the capacity broader interests like boxing,bjj,surfing,parkour,freediving,kungfu,or whatever he probably could have revolutionized strenght and conditioning forever. I'm pretty sure that his dogmatic,systemic,elite level focus on gymnastics are to thank for the fact that we even have such good information available though. Give it a couple years for us to figure out how this stuff works and research it and the fitness world will change.

Seriously for me gymnastic bodies was like this thing that i was looking for my whole life but never found it. Elliot hulse always talked about similar ideas like structural integrity,transverse adominous,and posture,but he didn't know what to do with those ideas. He just knew they were good ideas and made his best attempt to warn us about the dangers associated with going full "meat head". Gymnastic bodies was like "ooooh shit" moment for me.

Its not everything but for the upperbody rings are king. Theres no replacement for band work or weighted external rotation stuff so you need some equipment,but again 360 degrees of strength through multiple planes of motion while maintaining complete body tension is obviously superior to huge amounts of strength through limited ranges of motion. Bonus is you are forced to get more mobile vs weight lifting allows you to have shit mobility and still progress.
Even bicep curls may be usefull for people who have hyper extended elbows though. I'll admit my elbows are super weak,and my biceps don't grow so that extra volume helps for injury prevention. If you don't have hyperextended elbows and no biceps head then they are a waste of time.

Weights,bands,bodyweight,use it all.

just don't focus on to much at once. Its not that weights plus bodyweight is a bad idea,but you can't do them all at once and progress. You have to improve specific things in 'blocks' vs going all out on everything.
It takes a hit on your ego / desire to "improve" to say "im not going to get bigger for these months im going to improve mobility" or "im not going to make my legs bigger until I can do a straddle planch" but theres a price to pay for everything.

Post: #32

(05-14-2018 08:38 PM)SteezeySteve Wrote:  scrapper f1 is awesome. I just hate that the gymnastic bodies forum got ruined after sommer released f1. Now its like a fucking cult and its said to see a place where some of the most ground breaking and high qaulity information on training for sprinting,gymnastics,weight lifting,etc has taken place turn into a desert of "buy f1".

Ido portal,gregor,and joshua naterman should be required reading.......its truly a shame that those guys never got together and created a book or website of orginized training info.
Ido portals hatred for being "dogmatic" has to come from his experience with coach sommer. If he was more open minded and had the capacity broader interests like boxing,bjj,surfing,parkour,freediving,kungfu,or whatever he probably could have revolutionized strenght and conditioning forever. I'm pretty sure that his dogmatic,systemic,elite level focus on gymnastics are to thank for the fact that we even have such good information available though. Give it a couple years for us to figure out how this stuff works and research it and the fitness world will change.

@bold 100% spot on, it's not even funny how bad the forum is now.

It used to be "sure buddy, no problem, I'll help you out. You want to use barbell weights and gymnast stuff? No sweat man, we can work around your goals, and you can be "big and strong" and "lift weights" while doing gymnast shit. Hell it will probably help you out since you're a bigger guy and all." Kilroy template ruled the roost for a long time.

Now the forum is all "spend $800, buy our shit, do the program, and if you get results far slower than you think is sane, go fuck yourself." Everybody says the same shit, eager to agree with Coach on everything, nobody experiments. God forbid you INJURE yourself or actually MAKE GAINS. Some people just don't respond to the same cookie cutter set/rep schemes. And I hate to break it to the GB forum but for all the great shit they get right, the really revolutionary sports science that's a hundred years ahead of any trash I've read from fitness guys on the internet, elbow tendinitis isn't a death sentence.

There used to be some huge guys on there who post stuff like "Big ass cheat curls with a barbell, we're talking 135# minimum for reps, that will help you with all straight arm shit." Then they'd give you a protocol that made some sense if you needed a little direction. Come to think of it ... yeah it probably was just Josh Naterman. He has a youtube that was pretty good.

I'm not a huge fan of Ido Portal since he pushes some cult of personality, no substance "mindset" stuff in the same vein as that geeky dork Logan Christopher. He never seems to give enough information to be actually useful and keeps things to himself so you're always fiending for that next crack hit youtube video. If he has a pdf anywhere that you know of let me know.

If you want the unvarnished version of probably 85% of all that training knowledge you should check out Chris Sommer's "Gymnastic Bodies" book. It's still 100% relevant. Or figure out where to find a GB affiliate gym and hang out there for a week.

If I had the option I'd move to Colorado where there's no doubt several affiliate gyms and just show up every six months to get a new workout scheme to follow.

I try to read everything up on what gymnasts actually do while in training and it's illuminating to say the least. Did you know that the Chinese gymnast team does twenty-thirty minute (wall supported) handstands for active recovery?

Post: #33

Josh naterman had an interesting approach. Your talking about the bodyweight bicep curl thread awesome info on doing curls properly / wrong and an honest unbiased assessment. Great info in weights and bodyweight light years ahead of others. Even went in depth in bone density training in other threads and made sommers hamster spin by coming up with the idea that most of our core strength could be obtained by weighted crunches......aslong as you engaged the transverse abdominas...then all the gymnastics stuff would become skill work. I wouldn't be surprised if that's what started their fallout.


Ido doesn't give much practical info but his old blog ,Facebook posts,and forum posts have gold nuggets and eye opening perspectives. It's a shame that he doesn't create a product but whatever. maybe he just wants to leave the rest up to people who were inspired by him. Bringing this shit to the masses is a fucking headache because then you have to deal with the lazy,fat,be nitpicked,etc. This way he makes a humble living and doesn't deal with retards directly.(that's the number one draw back of the fitness industry. Dealing with retards)
-His band mobility work is spot on.i swear to God it's like magic for the shoulder girdle.
-his old training programs on his blog are great for learning how to program training. Especially movement stuff that isn't a lift.
-big advocate of the Cuban rotation which is awesome but I do disagree and think the face pull is better. Both have their place though.
-popularized hanging work for shoulder health.

Ive read the building the gymnastics body PDF many times. It's great but the info on the forum is necessary to fill in the blanks. Pre-reqs, programming,prehab, mobility,etc. Handstands, heavy protraction work,etc without proper care = shoulder issues.
The forum is necessary to see things like the hollow hold as a progression for front lever or realize that mastering pressing on the floor is priority before doing it on rings and many other details.

Did not know that about the Chinese but that sounds like a thread on gb. Lots of good info from those deep youtube 100 view random videos of Russian/Chinese olylifting and gymnastics. Am I right or was that from your own personal research? Send it my way...

The one thing that was weird is studying/learning from videos of children executing movements half the time instead of some roided up dude talking about making gainz..

Post: #34

^^ Right, I believe it was that thread by Naterman. Should have saved a PDF. Some parts of the forum were made private, "migrated", lost, or deleted, it seems. Maybe they changed servers at some point or made a bunch of it private, it's hard to say.

That is also true about just activating the transverse abdominus, and something a lot of guys on that forum go bonkers about. Why bother complicating things so much when you could just come up with one useful strength move and have that carry over to nearly all skill work? Ross Enamait style ab wheel rollouts and hypers should be more or less sufficient. A set of stall bars would be nice for mobility and some extra core work (l-sit/full hanging leg raises). Ross has a very strong front lever built on seemingly nothing but ab wheel and l-sit work and chinups, all done in his spare time.

There are high-level gymnasts out there who do nothing but (weighted?) rope climb and heavy bench press with pronated shoulders for training, then some skill work, and that's enough to keep them competition ready. They had already put in years of training to get to this point, however.

F1s mobility work is great, but the fixation on things like dumbbell windmills and the toe-touching moves are a little much. The lower body work is mostly trash too. I don't own a $500 bouncy floor or giant wrestling mat for what amounts to introductory tumbling work and know nobody who does.

Weighted shoulder dislocations with a bar (10-40# or so, sometimes more), weighted pike stretches on a bench or floor, and maybe some splits work should be all the average joe might need for mobility *(granted that doesn't touch the requirements for manna, but who can even do one of those?). Even that is light years ahead of what the average gym rat can do.

I never bothered with any prep work for handstands and had no problems at all. Hand/wrist pain is usually just the lower arm misrecognizing pressure as nerve pain (sometimes tight/knotted muscles messing with the wrists), so oftentimes if you have some history of bench pressing or military pressing at any decent fraction of bodyweight then usually no wrist pain happens. Planche work is a different animal entirely and not something I have attempted with any seriousness yet.

I'll have to check out Ido's band mobility work.

Found this link on the long duration handstands, turns out Coach Sommers did a post on the 30 minute wall handstands the Chinese do. https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/to...handstand/
I think a long duration handstand is a worthy goal, and it's something that's been on my list for a while.

Post: #35

Anyone have exercises for shoulder width they can share? The iron cross is only one I can think of, but that's hardly an everday manoeuvre...

Post: #36

Face pulls for sure
Full depth hspu (multiple times harder than regular headstand push-ups )
Dip variations (weighted or straight bar,korean, Bulgarian, etc)
Overhead pulls

For shoulder width fixing your posterior imbalances will do wonders so lower trap work,mid trap work,serratus work,oblique work,etc would be advised first to reach full potential.
If you're in a hurry and want to rush things skip all that and just do heavy shoulder presses , sternum chinups,face pulls for high reps and say fuck bodyweight stuff.

Ask specific questions here (I'll have to make a training website once I'm back in shape) or search around for things one by one. I'd start with hollow holds arch holds and idos hanging stuff (lower traps).

Unless you grew up a gymnast no one who knows bodyweight well would say yeah man just do x for big shoulders because that's not the way things work.