Adding a little gymnastics to your training – wait, hang on…what???
If you’ve done CrossFit before you would have done gymnastics in one form or another. Whether it was a pull up, a sit up or a plank hold, through to a handstand push up or muscle up, these all (and many more) come under the banner of gymnastics. So why gymnastics?
Let’s start with a few definitions of gymnastics (sourced from a simple Google search):
Gymnastics: “physical exercises designed to develop strength and coordination” – Merriam-Webster.
Gymnastics: “of or relating to physical exercises that develop and demonstrate strength, balance, and agility…” – Dictionary.com
Further, according to Livestrong.com, literally translated in Greek gymnastics means “to exercise naked”, although we’re not advocating this!
Anywho, the key take-away points are that gymnastics can help you development your strength, coordination, balance and agility, all of which are portions of the 10 general physical skills that form the basis of CrossFit training (development of cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, strength, stamina, flexibility, speed, power, coordination, agility, accuracy and balance).
And if you’ve had a go at even basic gymnastics you can see why it can help develop these attributes…It’s hard! Holding your body in prone positions (static holds, planks, core hollows, L-sits, etc.) to moving your body through space in an extremely coordinated manner (pull ups, muscle ups, dips, handstand push ups), relying heavily on body control and strength, whilst difficult, is great for your athletic development…and it cannot be denied that the sculptured look of gymnasts is unparalleled.
Further to this though is the transferability of the movement patterns to many other modes of training, including Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting and sprinting. All of these forms of training recruit an explosive hip angle opening from flexion to extension (i.e. closed hip to open hip) in order to perform various movements – for example snatch, clean, jerk, deadlifts, sprinting, etc.
This explosive hip angle opening is also extremely important in many gymnastics movements, e.g. pull ups, ring dips, burpees, sit-ups, muscle ups, rope climbs, parallettes, box jumps, handstand push ups, and many others.
Taking this another step, gymnastic movements are also completely transferrable as movement pattern developers for many mainstream sports that rely on running, jumping, sprinting, coordination, balance, agility, accuracy speed, power, strength, etc.
So, the take home message is that adding some gymnastics to your training will not only help you become a better, all-round athlete, you will also look better naked!
- Adam
