Lessons from gymnastics!

male gymnast just walking around looking jacked and ripped

Hey Fitness Friends,

Looking forward to the knife defense seminar coming up on Friday. If you aren't registered yet, feel free to contact me.

Alright, to start out today's tip I want you to indulge me for two seconds. I want you to close your eyes, breath in nice and deep, breath out and visualize something. I want you to visualize a male gymnast. Alright, do you have your picture in your mind. If you do, and you're 99 percent of people, you probably pictured a totally strong, powerful, fit, flexible guy. A guy with off the charts definition and muscularity. Someone totally ripped to the bone. Am I right? Probably a yes there.

Now, in the strength and conditioning community, mal gymnasts belong in the elite family known as "Super Athletes." They're in this family because they simultaneously poses incredible and almost super human levels of strength, stamina, power, speed, balance, endurance, flexiblity, stability, aglity, etc., etc., etc. And, if you take a typical, normal, run of the mill male gymnast and stick them into any other athletic event, they tend to be very good right away, regardless of the discipline. And, of course, their bodies are sick! They are some of the most impressive bodies in all of sports.

Now, let's compare a gymnasts training to what the mass media tells you that you should do to lose the body fat.

1.) Gymnasts don't train for a good looking physique. They train to perfrom better at their sport, period. The physique is a by-product of good training. Yet, even a below average gymnast has a more ripped and jacked body than just about anyone training at LA Ftness, Snap or any of the other gyms that advocate training for a ripped body.

2.) Gymnasts don't perform any "cardio" or "aerobics." Even though they build incredible cardio vascular and cardio pulmonary condition, gymnasts train for strength.

3.) Gymnasts train for strength. Gymnastics is a strength sport. Regardless of it being on the floor, the high bar, the parallel bars, the vault, the pommel horse or the rings; gymnastics is almost entirely based around strength and power skills.

4.) Gymnasts don't do high reps. I know, you've been told that you use lighter weights and higher reps to buil definition, gymnasts stay in the 1-6 rep range. Once they can do that easily they don't add reps, they move to harder exercises.

5.) Gymnasts contatnly make their training progressively harder. As they get in better shape, as they get stronger, gymnasts move onto the next harder movement.

6.) Gymnasts stay in the moment. You'll never see a gymnasts on the rings reading a book or watching TV. In order to perform the skills that they do,gymnasts need to be completely in the moment, with no distractions.

7.) Gymnasts train for high levels of tenion. They no that the tighter they get, the more strength they build. The more stregth they build, thetighter they can get. The tighter they get, the more strength they build. And so on and so forth.

8.) Gymnasts practice they same skills day in and day out. They know that in oder to do something well you have to practice it often. They don't partake in mucsle confusion prinicpals, or anything like that. They do the same work day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out, etc.

9.) Gymnasts train the entire body all the time. They don't do a, "I'll work chest on Monday, Back on Tuesday, Legs on Wednesday, Shourlders on Thursday and Arms on Friday" type of routines. They don't try to isolate their muscles nor do they worry about shaping them. They work the entire body hard, every time.

10.) Gymnasts train with high intensity. Working on skills like front levers, planches, reverse muscle-ups, etc. is hard and intense work. They can't talk while they train, the works to damn hard!

Alright, so now that we've looked at 10 things that gymnasts do to develop some of the most incredible bodies in the world, what can you take away from this tip. First, train for strength, power and skill. That'll do more good for your body transformation than all the cardio, high rep/low weight, long duration stuff ever will.

Second, always strive to push the envelop on what you can do and where you are. When something becomes a little bit easier, add resistance and make things harder for yourself.

Third, don't try to distract yourslef while you exercise. Be a part of it. Stay in the moment and concentrate on what you're doing.

Fourth, don't try to isolate your muscles, don't worry about confusing them (how do you confuse something that doesn't think anyway?), don't worry about splitting up your body into body parts. Instead, work yourself hard. Focus on full body or at least multi-part movements.

Fifth, become a master of tension. Knowing how to become totally tense and totally relaxed is where real strength, flexiblity and endurance are made. And remember, what is Muscle Tone? It's stored, residual tension in a relaxed muscle. So, therefore, how do we develop muscle tone? We put ourselves throught very intense resistance that causes a great deal of msucular tension.

Alright, take this tip and make it your own. Go out and train hard, heavy and smart and create your greatness as well as the body of your dreams.

Yours in strength and health,

Brett