I believe that when trying to maximize your athleticism, finding a good balance of high power, big weight, and high reps is important. This first video shows one of my favorite drills for mobilizing my back, hips and legs, and getting me ready for more intense exercise. The straddle forward roll is a fantastic drill to create body awareness, activate and stimulate many muscles, and get you dizzy as hell. Spread your legs while keeping them straight, roll over while using your arm strength to protect your head and neck, and pull yourself back up with momentum and core strength.
After my warm up drills, I like to begin most of my sessions with a variation of a high power exercise. This will be dependent on your goals and personal situation, but one of my favorite drills is simple jumping and occasionally flipping. If you are serious about learning gymnastics, see a coach and stop trying to learn everything via YouTube. I'm a 34 year old dude training in a park, I enjoy flipping and practicing basic parkour drills to enhance my athleticism. If you want perfection, seek out the best coach possible for personal instruction and learn whats best for you and your ability. These drills are just a few of the many movements I do for dynamic preparation. Sometimes done right at the begining of a heavy session, sometimes on a totally separate day. You can try and find the perfect program all you want, but nothing is more important than manning up and getting it done whenever possible, regardless of your situation. Insane work ethic trumps perfect planning every time. Like Dan John says, "If it's important, do it everyday."
Because I enjoy gymnastic training so much, and have fun teaching the basics to my athletes, I am heading out to Arizona in a few weeks to train with Coach Sommer and his crew for a 3 day seminar at his amazing facility. He is one of the most highly respected gymnastic coaches in the country. I am so excited about this 3 day workshop because of the amazing information I learned at the 1 day workshop a few months ago in Miami. Of course, as I acquire new skills and hone my coaching ability, I will have tons of new information to pass on to those who seek high quality training information from me.
Like I said, I am not a tricking or parkour pro, I just like getting out and having lots of fun and experimenting with my body. This is a great way to express my athleticism, but not necessarily my favorite way to develop it. These guys below, and many others like them, express amazing athletic ability with their tricking. But it is all almost purely dynamic effort. The best thing for them, in my opinion, to supplement their tricking, would be heavy slow movements, and not any more dynamic work. Squats, deadlifts and pressing is ideal for them to strengthen and stabilize their muscles and joints. Jerks, snatches, and other high power explosive movements in the gym are redundant because they are already doing plenty of that shit already with their tricking. It's similar to a basketball players in season training. There should not be a need for the basketball player to do any box jumps, or high power exercise in season due to the high volume they are already getting with jumping and sprinting in the games. The only thing they really need is basic strength and stability exercises to keep them strong and protected from injury. Off season jumping and power training is a different story, just like if these guys in the video took a few months off from tricking, they could add lots of power drills in the gym as well.
Speaking of the ability of the hips and torso to generate power, check out how efficient Sergey is, and imagine the power that he has learned to harness over the years of training full body exercises. He utilizes massive spinal flexion and extension to generate a tremendous amount of force over a very long period of time.
And of course, getting a few heavier reps in always feels great. This was my last set of five triples. To avoid being limited by my grip, I used straps and went double overhand grip to protect my elbow, which has been giving me minor issues lately with the increased gymnastic rings training I have been doing. I have been tweaking my pulling style and playing with sumo for a bit to see how it goes. It feels much easier to pull the weight and I'll keep experimenting until I get what I am looking for. Is this going to be the year I rip 600 off the floor?
I have tons more great training information on the blog, look around. Here is an awesome video of Dave Tate discussing the deadlift at one of his Learn to Train seminars I attended a while back. Below is a great video from Mark Bell from SuperTraining coaching the Sumo Pull. Check it...
I am very excited about what the future holds for TSS. The week after I return from Arizona from my gymnastics seminar, I go back to the Dirty Jersey to be one of the presenters at Zach Even-Esh's Underground Strength Conference, which is sold out by the way. Check out the link, insane info will be shared and there are some incredible coaches presenting on business, success, training, and life.
After that I am we are on our way back to Europe, this time Copenhagen, for my BBB seminar at CrossFit Copenhagen. There are a few spots left, so if you are in northern Europe, you need to get to this seminar. SIGN UP HERE! I will be fresh out of two amazing weekends myself, so the new information and content that I will have acquired will blend nicely with my current seminar information.
We also have a few more seminars in the works, the sign up links will be available soon! Thanks for stopping by, leave any comments or questions with what is going on with you. And Finally, if you're interested in joining our training camps here in Fort Lauderdale, contact me and we will set you up with a big time introductory discount. Be good, and Happy Mother's Day to all you Hot Mama's out there!
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