New here, trying to get started with gymnastics/calisthenics

[Piotr Ochocki]

Really want to try and get my wrist health/flexibility up, as it's been messed up for a while, so not sure if any calisthenics could help with that

Proper stretches and exercises will. You will find that in Handstand 1 course here. Just remember wrists are delicate, work on them but take time and don't go too hard on them.

[Joshua Slocum]

I feel as though, if you want to get good at something, you do it a lot. If I workout 7 days a week, eventually my CNS will adapt, and I'll be better off, in my opinion.

Working out 7 days a week is a sure path to overtraining and overuse injuries. Start with gymnastic work just 2-3 times a week and slowly ramp up from there. Keep the weight-training on the same schedule you currently use, with perhaps some drop in the volume of work on days that you do gymnastics strength. 

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

(...) if you want to get good at something, you do it a lot. If I workout 7 days a week, eventually my CNS will adapt, and I'll be better off, in my opinion.

 

I tried that before... it did not work out too well for me!

[Falcon63]

I tried that before... it did not work out too well for me!

I understand most people are against it. Guess I just have good recovery genetics, because I never lose a single step training heavy every day.

[Klaudius Petrulis]

I understand most people are against it. Guess I just have good recovery genetics, because I never lose a single step training heavy every day.

.....lucky.....

[Marcos Mocine-McQueen]

A note on recovery: It could be possible that that is a miracle gene that makes 7 day training cycles the best option for you, but it is unlikely. I'd like to suggest a few other possible explanations. Please understand that this is in no way meant to be sarcastic or snarky. I'd just like to throw a few other ideas your way...

 

1) "Possible" is better than "optimal". Is it possible that you can train 7 days per week (i.e. that you can choose to go to the gym and exercise each day)? Of course. You can do it. Does that mean that you will get optimal results by doing that? No. Can I make cookies where I cut back on the amount of butter? Yes. Will that make the best cookie possible? No. It will taste like crap. It is easy to confuse "possible" with "optimal". You might be able to train seven days a week, but your results might actually be worse than if you trained less. There are a few reasons for this...

 

2) Muscle mass, strength and endurance aren't built during workouts, they're built during rest. When you workout, you're causing damage to the muscle, tendons, vasculature etc. This is on purpose. This is the goal of the workout. If you are doing it right, the damage is small, controlled and safe. When you rest, your body says, "Hmmm, that hurt. I've got damage. I better fix that, but this time I'll make it bigger, stronger, last longer etc...". If you don't rest properly, your body doesn't have a chance to do the repair work it needs. There is, of course, a possibility that you have a rare genetic mutation that speeds this rebuilding up, but it's unlikely  Anyone who has had sore muscles from a workout knows that the peak soreness is often on the second day after the workout. It takes days to repair muscles, tendons ect... The idea that this super recovery gene would have sped things up so much that your body does in a few hours (overnight) what it takes everyone else days to do is highly unlikely. 

 

3) The nervous system operates in a similar fashion. Training the nervous system in a fatigued state is a sure way to slow gains. What's worse it might even hamper them. While it's not a perfect analogy, think of training your nervous system like building a road through a forest. Each time your brain tells a muscle to do something, the road gets wider, smoother and faster. When your nervous system is fatigued it starts using shortcuts (your nervous system is no dummy). Instead of building the road you want to, it starts building a bunch of paths that go to the wrong place. Now, not only have you failed to get the nice smooth road you wanted, you've got a maze of confusing trails.

 

4) There is a difference between "safe" and "a disaster that hasn't happened yet". The problem is that our human brains have a really difficult time telling the two apart. It's not just you, it's a mistake all of us make. I'll try to explain using an example from my job. I'm a firefighter/paramedic. I sometimes drive the ambulance with lights and sirens. Driving under these conditions is very dangerous for the people in the ambulance and the public in general. The biggest risk factor is driving speed. The rule is that we should drive no more than 10 mph over the speed limit. Drive too fast and your chances of killing someone increase. Still, it's exciting and fun and you want to help the patient get to the hospital quickly. So during one call I might drive 15mph over the speed limit without having an accident. It's scary, but it works and we all arrive safely. My brain makes a note "15mph caused no problem." Soon, I do it again (it's a little easier this time because of that last note). My brain makes another note. Next time it's even easier (two notes, now). Eventually I have 50 notes and it's really easy to ignore the 10mph rule. Now, when I do it, the note reads "Wow, MMM, you're really good at this driving fast stuff. It's dangerous for normal people, but you're special!" Of course, I'm not special, I've just been lucky. I'm thinking that because I haven't had a crash means that I'm a special kind of driver. In fact, it's just been dumb luck which will run out. The accident could happen on the very next call.

 

This is a very long way of saying that you should really consider what folks are telling you about rest. Ultimately, you will do what's right for you, but a wise man heeds wise counsel and the above posters are speaking from experience.

[Falcon63]

Well, to be fair, I've been lifting for a while, so I have a great understanding of my body's capabilities. Obviously, I understand the importance of rest, but I subscribe to John Broz-type thinking. I think the CNS will adapt.

 

Is it optimal? In theory, no, but, when put into practice, it seems to yield great results for me, so I just do what works for me.

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

.....lucky.....

LAG...

It will come

 

Have you tried twice a day yet Falcon?

[Falcon63]

LAG...

It will come

 

Have you tried twice a day yet Falcon?

I don't see why people are getting upset? I am making great gains, so who cares? 

 

The frequency of my workouts has nothing to do with the OP.

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

I don't see why people are getting upset? I am making great gains, so who cares? 

 

The frequency of my workouts has nothing to do with the OP.

 

I did not see anyone getting upset Falcon63, do your thing; it is great if it works for you, and if eventually it doesn't, the consequences won't affect anyone else.

[Marcos Mocine-McQueen]

I don't see why people are getting upset? I am making great gains, so who cares? 

 

The frequency of my workouts has nothing to do with the OP.

I respect that you're doing what works best for you and didn't mean to highjack the thread. I just wanted to make sure that other new folks who read this thread don't head down this path thinking it's a standard or endorsed practice. No disrespect intended.

[Klaudius Petrulis]

I'm not upset.. Maybe a little concerned. Maybe a little jealous. 5x a week on F1+H1 is about all I can take without falling apart, and I'm only on Week 3..

 

I hope you train safely and that you avoid injury and overtraining, because even though it is a good lesson, that shit is not fun at all.

[Falcon63]

Well, I KNOW I'll get crap for this, but I believe that, unless you're doing like 100 max deadlifts a day, you won't overtrain. I have trained 7 days a week for 3+ hours/day for a while without any problems. I HAVE had injuries, but those were from football, before I even started lifting. The high frequency has really helped sooth my arthritis pain, believe it or not. If I DON'T squat one day, I can't bend my knee the next day, so really, my body has been FORCED to adapt to constant stress...

[Klaudius Petrulis]

I don't know what to say. Maybe I'm sub-human. But if I train at anywhere near that level I instantly get cold/flu symptoms and my training is ruined for 2 weeks.

 

I can deal with muscle soreness with joy, but when I get sick I have zero energy to train. I'm actually thankful the deload week is coming up so I can give my system some time to recover because I'm pushing it pretty close.

 

I mean, I used to train crossfit 5x a week at maximum intensity sometimes twice a day, but it ruined me and I've never been the same since

[Bjørn Harald Grimås]

7 days a week training is entirely possible. Even multiple sessions per day. In fact, this is pretty much standard fare for top tier weightlifters. Dont be so Quick to criticize something you have had no experience with or exposure to.

I trained like that for nearly Two years and made great progress.

This type of training is all about repeated exposure to near-Max weights while never straying from perfect form. Its incredibly effective when done right.

[Samuli Jyrkinen]

It is all about building up your body to withstand the stress. Building up the work capacity. Basically the more you train, the more you will be able to train. As a beginner one cannot just start training like a pro, he needs to build up his body & nervous system for years to do that. Also the intensity affects the training frequency A LOT.

[Falcon63]

It is all about building up your body to withstand the stress. Building up the work capacity. Basically the more you train, the more you will be able to train. As a beginner one cannot just start training like a pro, he needs to build up his body & nervous system for years to do that. Also the intensity affects the training frequency A LOT.

Well yeah, I know that. And, while I'm new to gymnastics, I've been training a while.

[Joshua Slocum]

Well yeah, I know that. And, while I'm new to gymnastics, I've been training a while.

 

Please keep in mind that gymnastics work, particularly straight-arm strength, will stress areas of your body that weight-training will not necessarily have built up. For this reason I would recommend that you begin your foray into gymnastics training at a lower frequency than your weight-training. If you are capable of weight-training 7 days a week, that's excellent; keep it up. But weight training is an imperfect predictor of gymnastic strength capability, so you want to ease into GST carefully and methodically. 

[Philip Chubb]

Well, to be fair, I've been lifting for a while, so I have a great understanding of my body's capabilities. Obviously, I understand the importance of rest, but I subscribe to John Broz-type thinking. I think the CNS will adapt.

 

Is it optimal? In theory, no, but, when put into practice, it seems to yield great results for me, so I just do what works for me.

I am a big John Broz fan as well and I train with a much higher volume than most people (made possible because training is pretty much my job, along with good food, recovery, and supplements). While I won't say that 7 days a week won't work, I will say to be careful with certain movements. Squats and leg work are much bigger stronger muscles. Some gymnastic work is based on tendons and connective tissues. So for those low leverage movements, I would be careful with them. The higher leverage ones should be more okay. Good luck to you, my friend. Happy to see someone else who knows the true value of a big work capacity but make sure you know how to use it properly!

[SuperMan]

Didn't think there are people who know John.

I tried his method of training every day at my max and I so overtrained that my weights dropped I felt so f@#$#d and sick and started

to hate training then I just stopped training for a few months and then came back and then I once decided to try it again

but this time I read much more things and understood that training at near maximal intensity every day without overtraining

is impossible so I dropped my intensity and used the method of "grease the groove" of pavel tsutsu-something with my pull ups

and went from 3-4 to 8 while I trained evey day and did 1-2 pullups several times a day. But then I again upped my volume and 

overtrained because I forgot about not training too hard every day and boom. OVertraining.

In my opinion training 3 times a week is good enough and the every day training takes much dedication and doesn't mean

your results will be better if you are not some professional.

I know another man who told the exact opposite, training once a week-ten days and I heard people got results with it too.

ohh it's Mike Mentzer.

[Jon Douglas]

I am a big John Broz fan as well and I train with a much higher volume than most people (made possible because training is pretty much my job, along with good food, recovery, and supplements). While I won't say that 7 days a week won't work, I will say to be careful with certain movements. Squats and leg work are much bigger stronger muscles. Some gymnastic work is based on tendons and connective tissues. So for those low leverage movements, I would be careful with them. The higher leverage ones should be more okay. Good luck to you, my friend. Happy to see someone else who knows the true value of a big work capacity but make sure you know how to use it properly!

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[Joshua Naterman]

 

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Lol!

 

I train pretty much every day too, now. 3 days per week have quite a lot of volume, since I'm doing the full F1 now (though I do a 6 day split instead of a 5 day, with just one day "off"), and the other days are just one or two sets for the muscle groups.

 

If done properly, training every day makes a huge difference.

 

Falcon63: Like Alex Chubb said, there's quite a difference between certain gymnastic exercises and weight training. Anything that involves straight arms... just take that slow. I highly recommend that you follow the F1 protocol, in general, and use your weights for 2 sets per training day to maintain your strength with the weights. it won't go anywhere, but if you focus too hard there then you won't be able to do quality work on the basics.

 

If you are serious about becoming a better athlete, gymnastics will help more than any other single discipline... BUT there is a catch: You have to treat this just like something completely new. Start with the noob drills and work your way up.

 

Personal story: When I first went to Tommy Gant to box, I had been Thai fighting for 6 months. Trained 7 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I was pretty good with my hands. So, I go in, and he puts me in front of a mirror, on parallel two lines of tape. For the next 30 minutes, I was to take a 3 inch step forward, throw a very slow jab so that I would reach near full extension just before my foot hit the ground, bring my rear foot 3 inches forward, and repeat. Always looking at my mirror image's chest. The next 30 minutes were spent doing the same thing, but southpaw. After that, he took me to the speed bag, showed me how he wanted me to use it, and set a timer for 30 minutes. I could rest when I needed, but I owed 30 minutes on the bag. That was four days a week, every week, for a month. Every so often, he'd let me move a little faster. After a month, he was satisfied enough to let me throw a single cross with the same drill. I warmed up for 10 minutes with the jab, spent 30 minutes on the cross, and switched stances, then went to the speed bag. Two weeks later I was allowed to throw a jab, cross combo at the mirror in the same drill. Two weeks after that, over 2 months since I started, was the first time I was asked to come into the ring and hit pads for 2 rounds. Same drills, but with pads. Following him around the ring, learning how to move in the ring, little by little.

 

This is the kind of slow progression you need to take if you intend to truly master something. I ended up mastering ring movement, hooks, and slips to the point of absurdity, and I had very solid punches with everything but uppercuts.

 

If you make your gymnastic journey like this, it will seem a little slow in the beginning, but before too long you will be doing very cool stuff without hurting yourself, and you will be a MUCH better athlete (versus trying to find what you feel is your level, and going from there)

 

The fact that you have shoulder issues, especially with your pull ups, tells me that you have scapular control and mobility issues. The drills in H1 are probably the best things you can do for your shoulders, along with some very basic stretches for the major internal rotators of the shoulder: Pecs, lats, teres major and subscapularis. With such an unbalanced body, the only thing that working hard with gymnastics will do is strengthen the imbalance and make it even harder to correct.

 

I cannot tell you how many people have had to come back to me over the past 3 years just because I told them this, they didn't listen (they did for a week or two sometimes), and then they got hurt several times in a row before they finally gave up and asked me if I could help them. I would ask what they were doing, and it would be completely different than what I told them to do, and most of them STILL couldn't wrap their heads around spending ~6 months fixing their form and balancing their bodies so that they could spend the next 10-50 years making strength gains without injury. This is human nature, apparently.

[Jon Douglas]

 

Personal story: When I first went to Tommy Gant to box, I had been Thai fighting for 6 months. Trained 7 hours a day, 7 days a week, and I was pretty good with my hands. So, I go in, and he puts me in front of a mirror, on parallel two lines of tape. For the next 30 minutes, I was to take a 3 inch step forward, throw a very slow jab so that I would reach near full extension just before my foot hit the ground, bring my rear foot 3 inches forward, and repeat. Always looking at my mirror image's chest. The next 30 minutes were spent doing the same thing, but southpaw. After that, he took me to the speed bag, showed me how he wanted me to use it, and set a timer for 30 minutes. I could rest when I needed, but I owed 30 minutes on the bag. That was four days a week, every week, for a month. Every so often, he'd let me move a little faster. After a month, he was satisfied enough to let me throw a single cross with the same drill. I warmed up for 10 minutes with the jab, spent 30 minutes on the cross, and switched stances, then went to the speed bag. Two weeks later I was allowed to throw a jab, cross combo at the mirror in the same drill. Two weeks after that, over 2 months since I started, was the first time I was asked to come into the ring and hit pads for 2 rounds. Same drills, but with pads. Following him around the ring, learning how to move in the ring, little by little.

Solid story, familiar situation to me.