What's up, guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx.com. So today I'm putting myself in the corner,
I guess we can call it the coach's corner, because I'm going to go over a question and I'm
kind of going old school back to the brick wall to answer it. And the question is, why are gymnasts
so frickin strong? And I guess for that matter, we can throw in there calisthenics, athletes, anybody
who really can command their body weight in space. I mean, look at this guy right here. That's pretty
damn strong. As a matter of fact, the guys in the background who are lifting weights are in awe of
what he's doing here. And that's what happens oftentimes with these impressive calisthenics
and bodyweight type exercises. They're not really capable of being done by everybody,
even the strongest athletes. So, it begs the question, how do these guys get so strong? Well,
I think you have to actually ask yourself first, are they actually strong? Right? Are they,
by definition of strength, actually strong? We're talking about the ability to produce force
against an external resistance. And we're talking about, more importantly,
absolute levels of strength. Look, Jesse's strong, he's gotten way stronger, but he's not as strong
as Thor Bjornsson. And even though Thor outweighs him by about 1,000 pounds, it's actually not being
used to his advantage when we're just talking about absolute strength, the fact is he can lift
more than Jesse, he's stronger than Jesse. But when we look at these movements again,
we realize you have to be strong to do them, so is there a secret? Well, I think the first thing we
need to consider is the body weight of the people doing the exercise. And oftentimes, yeah, they are
going to be lighter guys that do these exercises but that's where the concept of their relative
strength comes in. They're able to take that body weight and command it in space and ways that a lot
of us cannot. And certainly there's other reasons that cause that but it does demonstrate a level of
relative strength that's pretty damn impressive. Now, that doesn't mean that at the same guy
went and stepped over that trap bar in the background there that he can actually lift that.
I'm just saying, though, it's an indicator that their relative strength could be high, but the
letter body weights are definitely something that allows you to move your body in space easier.
Let's face it, a guy who weighs 260 pounds might struggle to do more than five or six pull ups.
However, with everything, there are exceptions, and this guy right here certainly dispels the
myth that big guys can't command their body in space. Which brings us to the second point,
and that is leverage. Leverage is one of the key things that helps us to do what we do,
whether it be with weights in the gym or whether it be with our own body weight.
Think about when you do a deadlift. If you are even over the bar by an inch further than you
should be, your ability to break that bar off the ground is going to be incredibly challenged.
The same thing would be, let's say, with a bench press, if your elbows drift even an inch forward
or an inch back, your forearms are no longer centered directly underneath the bar and your
ability to produce the force and leverage to get the bar off your chest is going to be diminished.
Now, when it applies to the calisthenics or the gymnast, they basically have the ability
to align and orient their center of mass in a way that effectively lightens their body weight.
Even at these already light body weights, they can take what's there and make it lighter and
that's key. If you think of an exercise like the human flag, a lot of us can't even get
in position to do this. But they have mastered the ability to get the perfect amount of push
and the perfect amount of pull on that bar behind them that almost makes their body float up as if
it's effortless. The same thing can be said about a planche being able to almost balance
their body in space as opposed to making their triceps work like hell to hold them there.
And the same thing can be said about any one arm variation of, let's say, a pushup
or even a pull up, both of these become so much easier where you know how to manipulate your body
in space as you do the exercise, to take advantage of those leverages to work in your favor.
But I always point to this other concept, and that is the ability to get your stabilizers working for
you as well. So not just leverage, but how to recruit stabilizers to the exercises that you
do throughout the exercise, and this is where calisthenics athletes have mastered the concept.
Because we talk about this thing called energy leaks. When you do a pull up,
how you do the pull, it matters. I've gone through this in great detail in previous videos, so much
so that I say if you can just learn to keep your core tight and your shoulders packed and even your
quads contracted, you can remove the looseness from your body that oftentimes dissipates the
force that you're generating into the bar and robs you of the pull ups that you're capable of doing.
When you do this properly, the number of pullups you can do instantly goes up like literally in
the next set. And the same thing applies to the pushup to when you can engage the right muscles
and provide stability and rigidity through your body, it moves more efficiently through space.
The front lever is another example of this to being able to keep those glutes contracted
and the core engaged is going to make your body float up, particularly if you know how
to engage the lats and utilize them as the main driver of the movement. These are all
things that you may not have naturally unless you work at these exercises and these skills.
Now, if you're in the weight room, how does this apply? Well, think about a bench press.
When was the first time that you actually learned how to utilize your legs and produce leg drive
during the exercise? When you did, you likely increase the amount you could lift instantly.
Casey Mitchell has been in this gym before, and he has swarmed that even through just that one leg
he can generate an additional 40 of force into his bench press to increase his overall strength. It's
important so when you learn, though, that this is actually not just driving the bar up on its own
but getting your low back into an arch position that stabilizes the entire back and assist with
keeping your shoulders down and back, it increases your ability through increased stability. So,
the concept is the same, but we need to learn how to do it through all of the exercises that we do.
But I think you have to look into the specific exercises that oftentimes are being done
with gymnasts and body weight athletes. And we talk about isometrics, there's a lot
of research backing the efficacy of isometrics in terms of increasing your strength levels,
although it's within a defined range of motion. So, if you're performing the isometric in let's
say the mid-range position of a curl, well you're increasing the strength within that
range of the curl and maybe a little bit up and a little bit down. Well, again, the benefit of
bodyweight athletes is that they're not usually just performing isometrics in one portion of the
range of motion of the exercise. Even just through the attempts at getting better at the exercise,
they're performing isometric holds for that temporary body control at different points
along the range, which just increases that overall strength. And most of these calisthenics exercises
actually do require full range of motion. So, the time under tension that's generated through these
exercises is off the charts, which also goes into and feeds into their ability to not just
get better at the exercise, but to get stronger at the movement as you perform them. And you cannot
have any discussion about calisthenics exercises without talking about the built-in fun factor,
can I say, or at least the challenge of being able to perform something that you couldn't do
even a day ago or a week ago? Look, when I was trying to do this exercise here, I didn't get
it the first time or the first 100 times. It took me quite a while to be able to get to
the point where I could balance myself. And yes, it was about learning the leverages. It was about
learning how to create that stability and recruitment of those stabilizers. It was
also about being able to just conquer the damn exercise, right? Wanting to get better at it. And
as I attempted and failed and attempted and failed and each time got a little bit closer to the point
where I was like, oh, that was 5 seconds, oh, I can hold it for seven. I wanted to actually, I
just got really competitive. Well, guess what that brought with it the natural increase in volume
that comes along with trying and trying and trying again. And we know that at sub maximal lows, the
volume increases are oftentimes capable of driving the gains that we're looking for. Now, don't
confuse the fact that some of these exercises, as I just mentioned, could be sub maximal. It doesn't
mean that all of them are sub maximal. Look, we could talk about a one arm chin up. If you could
only do one, one arm, chin up with maximal effort. How is it different than, let's say, one overhead
press with maximal effort, at least in terms of your ability to exert the force required to do
the exercise? It's still a maximal effort. So, overload is possible, and we know through
overload we can create muscle gains in strength. So again, we can see very easily how these
exercises can do that. The bottom line is, I say all the time, if you want to get the
best of all worlds, you've got to do both. You want to dedicate some portion of your training
to classic strength training and work in the weight room and trying to build up that absolute
strength because it's only going to serve you when you go back to doing that other really
important aspect of training that sometimes gets overlooked. And that's the body weight mastery,
trying to learn how to command your body in space. When we're talking about athletics in
the realm of athletic training, you've got to be able to do both. As a matter of fact,
there's ten calisthenics exercises that I believe every single person should do, regardless of what
training style you're following right now. I'm going to link that video for you here. If you
found this video helpful, and you like this style of video, make sure you leave your comments below
and tell me about it. And if you're looking for a complete body weight program, guys, we have one in
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you're never miss a new video when we put one out. All right, guys, see you soon.