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[Anthony Bhaskaradas]

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[Jon Douglas]

They have absolutely followed progressions. Most of those have frankly been ripped off in some form from Coachs first book or articles around the place.

Its the difference between performing something in training (and gaining from it) and performing party tricks (and getting away with it.... or often not). It's also the reason why its quite rare to see non gymnasts perform GST elements at levels beyond what Coach regards as beginner (ie. Foundation series level). Form is a consideration here too. Fact is some people are crazy strong by dint of talent, training or sheer guts and don't need all the steps.

I am not one of these, but I had a reasonable SL (15+ seconds) a couple years ago, but I havent yet finished F4 SL progressions. I keep getting stronger with easier exercises, why jump straight to SL and risk impinging my shoulder as I and others have before?

Taking it a little further, I might be able to get away with a cross right now although I haven't completed the progressions for it. A couple of times maybe, until I didn't crosses are undeniably cool and I'd love to do them in training, but I'm not strong enough to gain on it and there'd be a certain amount of inevitability to me suffering a nasty injury.

Flairs are somewhat different to circles as they are performed with legs apart. I'll leave it to Ale or Josh to explain the difference between breaking and gymnastics flairs, I think both of them have done that before and done it well.

Coach posted a guide on beginning circle training around here somewhere... I'm pretty sure it was discussed not long ago in the movement forum. I'll see if I can find it and edit in a link after posting this

[Jon Douglas]

https://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/topic/895-basic-bucket-circle-training-tips/

Here's an essay from Coach. I have found a fair bit of use from this in getting my circles

[Jesus Rojas]

Most of those individuals you're talking about are the ones that have bodies better build for these kind of training. If you're an average person you're not going to progress anywhere without the right progressions to address your weaknesses.

[Jesse Kim]

As Jon and you yourself had stated, it's because of their training. Some use the right progressions and some skip them, but it depends n the individual. Some people have more "suited bodies" than others, making their progress easier. But, in this site, it is common knowledge that proper progressions are more important than the actual goal, although the goal is important in itself.

[John Kiggundu]

Hi everyone,

 

There is something that I have noticed and im sure others have too. And that is that there are people out there who do not do gymnastics nor do they follow a gymnastics type progression like Gymnastic Bodies, YET, they are able to do some of the exercises. Some of which (according to Foundations template) can take years to master.

 

BUT regardless of that, it does make me curious as to why some of these exercises, seem to be learnt without any progressions towards it first. You can find youtube videos of this.

 

Problem with seeing people do some of these moves and concluding that maybe a few of the GymnasticBodies progressions might not be that necessary is whoever does the showing, assuming he's a non-gymnast that is pretty much self-taught, will almost never talk about the part when he got injured and the months he spent recuperating from that injury, or how many other injuries he's prone to sustain in the future. 

 

Have you noticed that more than a few of the athletes make videos in which they're wearing elbow sleeves? Ask yourself why that is so. 

 

Nor do the videos tell you how long the person "stalled" during his training, or how many other weaknesses (muscular or joint-related) that he hasn't yet addressed because either he isn't aware of the progressions that would address those weaknesses or he went ahead anyway simply because he wanted to show that he could do a move, despite failing to address some of the weaknesses.

 

Knowing what I now know about handstand especially is that those videos where one sees improper form (arched backs, lack of ppt, etc.) have more to do with not addressing specific weaknesses than with the athletes not knowing what proper handstand form is.  

[Paul Gray]

I have known people that try a muscle-up a couple of times and can then just do them and also people that can do tuck planches - ok the form is a little messy, not up to the standard for foundation - but impressive nonetheless as some of us have to work hard and consistently at all the previous progressions (and I still don't have a muscle up).  But this is the reason for foundation - filling in those gaps.

 

I've found that these same people don't know what to do next, or know how to improve their form / strength / time in the position and just get bored, or alternatively injured because they've tried to do too much too soon and not prepared their bodies sufficiently for the exercises.

[Christian Nogueira]

Also in addition to all this, Foundation isn't the fastest way or more direct way to build up to those moves. Foundation is about building a foundation not about moves in the end. The moves in the end are just a tool. 

 

Also a lot of these people, while they may not follow a structured approach, they are very dedicated to what they do. Stubborness and luck can go a long way.

 

There's also something to be said for the selection effect in youtube. You probably won't see many videos of people who get tendinitis from training levers and you'll probably won't see videos from the multitude of people who stall at say tuck planche.

[Chris Hansen]

The individual's background probably plays a big role.

 

Years ago, when I was heavy into martial arts training, I had no problem doing L-sits. I didn't even think about it or know it was a thing, I just tried it and did it. Years of training just gave me strong abs and hip flexors.

 

I've lost it since I stopped training and would like to regain that ability. I couldn't understand at first why it was so hard because I remembered it being easy.