What's up, guys?
Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.com.
What is it about gymnasts that allows them to get the level of muscularity that they're
known for?
Particularly in the fact that they don’t spend a lot of their time in gyms lifting
weights.
As a matter of fact, most of their time is spent on skill work, or doing bodyweight training
to improve their skill work.
So check out this clip of this gymnast making a pretty regular transition for them and see
if you can spot what you think it is that's attributing to their gains.
Now, if you've ben watching me for any length of time you know that I'm a big fan of tie
motor tension.
Tie motor tension is one of those factors that can allow us to build muscle.
But is it what's causing the muscle growth that we know and find in gymnasts?
It's not because if you think about tie motor tension I could take a band right here, put
it under my feet and get into a curl position.
I have tension here on my biceps, but is this enough to cause a growth in overload, certainly
to the degree that you see in the gymnast?
It's not.
What about eccentric?
You saw a lot of eccentric transitioning between movement and movement here.
Well, we know that eccentric training and overload is a great way to cause the muscle
damage necessary to spark new growth.
However, I will say that again, an eccentric overload can happy in any exercise.
I could be experiencing an eccentric load, again, right here with this band, and as I
come down this is an eccentric contraction.
Again, this is nothing, but is it a stimulus to cause new growth?
It's not.
So that's not the answer.
There's isometric components to gymnastic, but I could do an isometric like this and
hold my hands together as hard as I possibly can.
Is this going to cause muscle growth in my body?
It's not.
So what you have to notice is that the one key element of a gymnast training program
is the transitions between movements under high loads.
So what am I talking about?
Well, I put together a couple transitions that I actually work on and do in my training.
It's just a way to kill two birds with one stone and create a more efficient movement
pattern and the exercises kind of blend together nicely.
More so, it demands that my body has complete control under high levels of tension and able
to move my own body through space throughout that tension.
I call that a dynamic isometric because we're having a lot of holding exercises, but we're
doing transitions between them.
So if you'll look first at this lever raise into an L-sit pull up, then into a swiveling
L – to the right and to the left – this is a much different movement than if you tried
to do any of them in isolation.
That, I think, is the key for why gymnasts are as strong as they are.
There's tie motor tension, there's eccentric training, there's isometric components, and
there is this transitioning between all those elements while having to have complete control
of your body and core and plug up the energy leaks that lead to these immense amounts of
growth.
I carry it over to another move here as well.
This one is a dip, combined with a plus – the plus is great for the serratus, for our shoulder
blades, for the strength of our entire shoulder girdle – and I can go into a gymnast ab
tuck, which allows me to pull my pelvis up high using only my abs.
Then I can come back down again and I proceed into another dip, back into the plus, and
back into that gymnast ab tuck.
So now we have a pushing movement combo, and we have a pulling movement combo.
Now, these are hard.
These are not easy.
I don’t expect you to be able to run out and do these same exact transitions.
I'm going to come up with more of these transitions for you, but the fact of the matter is, I
believe it's this combination of those elements I talked about, placed into transitions that
creates the level of muscularity that gymnasts see from their training.
Now if you can't do any of this, but you want to start to at least experience what I'm talking
about, then dial it back a little bit.
Go back to that dip position and put yourself in a position of the plus.
So engage all those muscle of your shoulder girdle, get your core activated, plus yourself
out, you should feel it in your chest.
I've talked before about having your shoulder blades be pressed.
Now do this backward and forward bicycling.
What you're doing is you're experiencing this movement of your body under tension.
You've got this isometric position held and you have to move your body around and through
that.
You feel how much different that feels from all the muscles that you just engaged by forcing
yourself to control it as your bodyweight drifts forward and as your bodyweight drifts
back.
As your bodyweight drifts forward, and as your bodyweight drifts back.
It is a major difference in how it feels as opposed to just holding it in, or if you've
been doing dips by themselves.
Same thing can happen here on the pullup bar.
You've probably seen this before.
I'm not trying to do this in sync with music, or anything like that.
That's not what this is about.
This is not choreographed.
I'm just trying to place my body and move it through space, transitioning through space,
while I have my legs moving and holding this pullup position.
Yeah, I'm going up and down into a pullup, but that's not the focus of the exercise.
It's more about engaging the muscles and then moving through it.
So guys, I hope you've found this video helpful.
Start figuring out ways that you can experience that transitioning in some of the exercises
you're doing.
As I've said, I gave you two of the more advanced ones here.
I'm going to give you some more here in the future, but the main point is, if you're looking
for a bodyweight training program that uses nothing but your own bodyweight and creates
the overload needed to create muscle growth; I've got you covered there.
That I know.
That's our ATHLEAN0 program over at ATHLEANX.com.
It's a six week program that uses no equipment at all.
Just your own body and space to allow you start building some serious muscle.
All right guys, I'll see you back here in just a couple days.
I hope you've found this one helpful.
Make sure you leave your comments and let me know whatever else you want to see here
with our bodyweight Wednesday videos.
See you.