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Greetings community, I myself just became a coach and it is common practice in most clubs around here to do exercises like rope climbing, push-ups, Hanging L, etc. when it comes to strength training. The problem I see now having read "Building the Gymnastics Body" is that doing so we are mostly training strength endurance and as Coach Sommer stated: "focusing on metabolic conditioning or strength endurance training is far more efficient if a solid foundation of basic strength has first been established. In my experience, strength always comes before strength endurance and indeed is the necessary foundation from which ALL impressive displays of strength endurance occur." As climbing the rope repeats the action of a pull-up about 20 times, we can all do 30+ Push-ups, hold the Hanging L for more than 20s, etc. it seems that we are not actually gaining a lot of strength (that being maximal strength/basic strength) doing those exercises, is that right? Should we be doing other exercises instead of which we can only do 3-5 repetitions or hold for 3-15 seconds? Why then is it so common to do these exercises all the time, if they do not lead to a lot of strength, which is obviously direly needed for gymnastics? I also had a look at the Foundation series, but they seem to focus on a different group of people (not actually gymnasts, rather ordinary adults trying to get that gymnastics strength), as for we are gymnasts aging 6-20. Also in the series you do a lot more reps than just the 3-5 suggested in the BtGB and analogously hold more than 15 seconds. Why in the series do you focus more on strength endurance and in BtGB on pure strength? I thank you for your time and would appreciate any help in me understanding what is best for our gymnasts. Alexander

Hello Mates! I was always wondering which rep/series choice is better - 3x8 or 5x5. Generaly before starting with gymnastics and all the way to this day I have used 5x5. What do you think about it?