Elite gymnasts have the ideal bodies. Not only are they incredibly strong, but they are also extremely flexible. What do all gymnasts have in common? They all do bodyweight exercises. Many of them occasionally dabble with weights, but their training regimens are overwhelmingly dominated by bodyweight exercises. Go to any gym and it would be a very rare sight to find any gymnast working out with weights.
In a recent interview posted by Gymnast.com , Jonathan Horton was asked [...more]
By Guest Blogger: Logan Christopher of www.lostartofhandbalancing.com
Did you catch the Men's Gymnastic Rings final the other night? For anyone who has never mounted a pair of rings its hard to comprehend the difficulty of even basic moves.
But when you have, no matter your skill level or lack there of, you'll have a greater understanding of what these Olympic athletes are going through.
It's not just one move they do, but to string several [...more]
by Michael S. Yessis
reprinted from Men's Fitness , March 1996, page 105
[3(f+s) + 2b] (v+c+i) * ÷ 3p = TOTAL SCORE
Deciding which sport is the world's toughest is difficult. It requires knowledge and research. Time and patience. Science and the kind of math skills rarely seen outside a ninth-grade algebra class. Well, we have all of that, and we did our homework. We logged hours playing in the field. We interviewed elite athletes from former Soviet-bloc nations. We spent countless hours watching ESPN2. Eventually, we developed an exclusive formula - the formula - to determine the planet's toughest sport.
[...more]
The following is a link to a great post we found on a forum at Fighting Arts. It contains a very comprehensive list of bodyweight exercises. The list contains workouts for novices and advanced exercises for seasoned veterans. Check it out — it is very impressive.
Bodyweight Exercises
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Bodyweight exercise is strength training using only the body as resistance. The word "only" hardly conveys how much power is possible: the athletes that use "only" their bodies for their resistance training are pound for pound the strongest athletes in the world. Bodyweight exercises get you in shape to do things. It doesn't pump your arms into Sponge-Bob-inflatable biceps that look good oiled in a calendar photo. What it does is give you the strength and flexibility at once that will power you into moves and activities at your top potential. Gymnasts know this from the bottom of their strong, pumping hearts. [...more]
