How to develop the strength to perform gymnastics skills?
One of the things we often see with gymnastics skill seekers who are trying to progress through their gymnastics movements is a lack of strength through a full range of motion.
What dose it mean to lack strength in full range of motion?
Let's use the ring muscle-up as an example.
There's different components here.
We're working on the false grip pull-up, the transition and the dip.
Let’s start by talk specifically about building strength in that ring dip. But the same principle applies to the false grip pull-up, the transition and all gymnastics strength exercises.
Where would you start when building the bent arm pushing strength that is required for in the ring dip?
Push-up!
But, not just any push-up. We often see a lot of people performing push-ups with limited range of motion or with poor form. They don’t touch their chest to the floor, they struggle to maintain a hollow body shape, or their elbows flare out to the sides.
These mistakes impact the range of motion, the strength development, and therefor the ability to progress to harder upper body pressing movements.
I get it.
Push-up can feel pretty boring and we want to jump ahead to ring dips and muscle-up training. But perfect push-ups are a key progression in the journey towards bent arm pushing movements. If you're not strong in the perfect push-up, how can you expect to be strong in dips?
You might be able to do some ring dips, but are they full range of motion dips? Do you shoulders go below your elbows? If not, you’re not going to be able to perform a ring muscle-up because you won’t have the strength in the bottom of the ring dip.
When your try to move from the top of the false grip pull-up into the bottom of the dip, you won’t have the strength (or possible the flexibility) to complete the transition or to press up from the dip.
When I was learning about strength training, one of my mentors, the late great Charles Poliquin had the principle that strength is only gained in the range of motion trained. Simply put, if you don't train a specific range of motion you're never gonna get strong there.
This is why you want to be able to perform chest to floor perfect push-ups. You want to be able to use the bent arm pressing strength of the perfect push-up to build the strength needed in the full range of motion ring dip.
PERFECT PUSH-UP
If you watch the perfect push-up video you’ll notice that the elbow stay vertically stacked above the wrist as the shoulders move forward and down. Mechanically, this is a strong position, but a lot of gymnastics skill seeker find this technique far more challenging.
It’s a new range of motion. A new position that they’ve not trainer before, and hence they’re week here.
But this perfect push-up technique carries over into our stationary dips, where again, the elbow stays stacked vertically above the wrist as the shoulders move forward and down in the dip.
This technique transfers into the bottom of our ring dip. Again, elbow is stacked over the wrist, shoulders are forward in the bottom position. It allows us to move into a full range of motion dip and start building strength in this range.
RING DIP, BOTTOM HOLD
When you start training the ring muscle-up you’re going to end up transitioning into a deep ring dip position. If you’ve developed the upper body pushing strength and technique correctly you’ll have no trouble pushing our of the dip.
RING MUSCLE-UP, STRICT
If you’ve not developed strength in the bottom range of the dip you’ll increase the chances of injury and struggle to learn the muscle-up.
So you've gotta get strong in these key positions so that a you don't get injured.
What’s the best way to develop the strength to perform gymnastics skills?
Our advice is to regress, go back, train the basics with the correct technique and work on building strength through the full range of motion.
Cuz this is gonna help you build strength, increase flexibility, and learn sick gymnastics skills much faster.
If you’re an adult gymnastic skill seeker who wants to master your body weight and unlock skills you never though possible, TSTM can help.
Enquire about our online personal training and check out our skill-based programs.
