Easing in?

Discussion in 'Health and Fitness' started by Pkhamidar2com, Mar 2, 2012.

  1. Pkhamidar2com

    Pkhamidar2com Panda Member

    A few questions here about easing in, all in different situations.

    1) How should i ease in to doing a lot of training per week. For example, if i wish to do judo 2 - 3 times a week, along with resistant training 3 times a week, as well as cardio 1 - 2 times a week? Is there a set amount of time i should wait between adding another activity?

    2) How should i improve my tendons for gymnastics. It is known that you need strong tendons when doing gymnastic exercises and you need to let them get stronger. Also it is known that tendons take longer than muscle to get stronger... but how should i go about this? you cant just jump into a full front lever as your tendons might not be ready, even if you possess the lat and abdominal strength.

    3) This is the most important one at the moment. I hurt my knee about a week back. Then for this week i have had no pain at all but just to be on the safe side i have not put much stress on it in terms of running or swimming or leg training this week. But to get back into squats, how would you go about getting back into them? At what rep range would you start at and then work towards to get to a 3x5 because i cant just jump into the 3x5, and over what period of time?

    These questions may seem a bit strange, maybe simple even... but its something that has been bugging me for a while now... I thought i would put it all in one thread to save the hassle of several threads.

    Thank you
     
  2. Frodocious

    Frodocious She who MUST be obeyed! Moderator Supporter

    1. The time you wait between introducing more activities will be dependent on a number of factors personal to you - your current fitness, your ability to recover (so how well you sleep and eat and rest between sessions) and the intensity of the exercises you are doing. I would recommend starting out with adding one extra session to what you are doing now and seeing how you feel after a few weeks, then adding another if you feel you are ready for it etc

    2. Tendons do take time to build strength. Coach Sommer of http://gymnasticbodies.com/ (where you should go and read as much of the forum as possible and buy his books and videos if you can afford them), recommends at least a 6-8 week cycle at each progression level, so if you're working on an advanced frogstand and doing 4x15 second sets (because your maximum hold is 30secs) advanced frogstand, you should work at that for 6-8 weeks. At the end of the cycle you do a maximum time hold and then divide that by 2 to get your new time for the next 6-8 weeks. So if you increased your maximum time to 40secs, your new cycle would be 3x20secs.

    This thread talks about the prerequisites for some of the basic holds:

    http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=4313

    Many of the holds have progressions from tuck to flat tuck to straddle to half lay to full version and each progression should be perfected before moving to the next most difficult one. Some holds may progress more quickly than others, e.g the basic frogstand may develop fairly rapidly.

    3. It's difficult to advise you on how to increase your lower body work because we don't know what the injury was or how serious it was. The most basic advice is to start with 1 set of 5 bodyweight squats and see if it hurts. If it doesn't you can gradually add sets and weight to build up to your previous level. If it hurts, don't do it or try an easier exercise.
     
  3. Frodocious

    Frodocious She who MUST be obeyed! Moderator Supporter

    Just a short note to say that if you're thinking of buying the book, it would probably be worth waiting for the second edition which is due out at some point this year (although I'm not holding my breath for it to appear). The second editions is supposedly going to contain more detail on stretching, mobility, prehab and prerequisites than the first one - which was sadly lacking in many of these details.
     
  4. OSu,

    Patience takes time... the answer to your questions is: take the time! :)
    Building work capacity takes time.
    Adapting your tendons takes time.
    Healing your knee takes time.


    Why do you want to do more?
    More is more, and better is better; they have different meanings...

    Set your goals, add two years to your desired date, then set the training you need to reach them two years later...
    Along the way, if all goes well, you could, maybe, try to speed things up.

    But you won't!
    You will set 3 years goals and say: "Not me! I can do that in one!"

    I hope you get lucky... out of 7 billions people on spaceship earth, you will always find a few freaks that can do things in a year that every other will need 3 or 5 to reach...
    But those that tried and died trying you never hear of!


    Osu!
     
  5. Pkhamidar2com

    Pkhamidar2com Panda Member

    Thanks frodo!

    I read your review here about that gymnastic bodies book, and you said something about joint preparations, liquid steel... i looked around and it still isnt out is it?

    So what have you been doing for joint preparations?

    The gymnastic bodies forum is huge.. it will take time to go through that stuff...

    But in terms of my workout plan i plan on doing 3 different things... I have 3 workouts per week.

    One workout will be pure strength with reps... So Dips, Pullups, pistol squats/BSS etc...

    The other workout will be Isometric workouts, like front lever, back lever stuff, handstands, isometric pistol hold and i will do that 6 - 8 week cycle thing that you were talking about.

    The last one will be explosive, explosive pushups, very fast pullups, explosive squats and if i find a decent place, box jumps etc...

    Obviously there will be some rep workout in the isometric, but it will be predominantly isometric strength.
     
  6. Frodocious

    Frodocious She who MUST be obeyed! Moderator Supporter

    Liquid Steel is apparently not going to be released as a separate publication any more. The information in it is going to be incorporated into the other books in the series at points where it is relevant, which is why I suggested waiting for the second edition to come out.

    For prehab stuff start off in this subforum: http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=17&sid=2a7ca9b6ce56f5f52b775f323e149a4b

    I'm doing shoulder work for prehab and stretching, but I'm not really actively programming it into my routine. I was doing some wrist and knuckle pushups but haven't for a while because of my shoulder issues.

    Old_kyokushin is right when he says

    If you are training hard at MAs then you may find 3 strength sessions a week are too much. 2 sessions might be better, particularly if you want to do some cardio/conditioning work as well.

    I've just checked the book and the recommendations for the steady state static hold progressions are 8-12 weeks not 6-8 weeks, so bear that in mind.

    I would also suggest that if you want to progress the static holds, you'll need to do them more than once a week. You can combine them with your strength training routine, so you'd do a static hold then your dynamic lift:

    This is the way I programmed them when I was working them seriously:

    Day 1:

    Press: Planche variation (Frog Stand), Pushup variation (ring push up)
    Pull: Back lever (lower to tuck back lever), Ring Row (feet on ground)
    Legs: Front Lever variation (tuck front lever), Deck Squat
    Core: L-sit variation (tuck L-sit), v-ups, russian twist, good mornings

    Day 2:

    Press: Planche variation (Frog Stand), Dip variation (dips)
    Pull: Back lever (lower to tuck back lever), Curl variation (inverted ring curl)
    Legs: Front Lever variation (tuck front lever), Glute Ham raise
    Core: L-sit variation (tuck L-sit), hanging leg lifts, Windshield wipers, arch ups

    Day 3:

    Press: Planche variation (Frog Stand), Handstand Pushup variation (Box HSPU)
    Pull: Back lever (lower to tuck back lever), Pullup variation (jumping)
    Legs: Front Lever variation (tuck front lever), 1 leg squat negatives
    Core: L-sit variation (tuck L-sit), side to side arch ups, v-ups


    Coach Sommer also suggests combining pushing and pulling sets and core and leg sets. So you'd do the press set and go straight to the pull set and repeat for the total number of sets required, then do the leg set and go straight to the core set and repeat for the number of sets required.


    Obviously you'll need to adapt the routine to your schedule, exercise choice and equipment and you need to be patient with static hold training. You won't be increasing your times weekly and progress will be slow, but that allows the ligaments and tendons to adapt to the training.
     

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