The Tim Ferriss Show - #180: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training, Part Two — Home Equipment, Weighted Stretches, and Muscle-Ups

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Starting point is 00:02:50 that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, my savvy, sexy friends. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world-class performers from all different walks of life, industries, areas of speciality, to tease out the routines, habits, tools that you can use. This episode, we have Christopher Sommer, and this is his second appearance, but this is a standalone episode. He is the former U.S. national team gymnastics coach. His last episode was one of the most popular that has ever been

Starting point is 00:03:36 on the podcast. He's also the founder of Gymnastic Bodies, which is a training system I'm currently testing. I've been using it for a few months now. I have no affiliation with it. I don't get any kickbacks. As a world-renowned Olympic coach, Coach Sommer is known for building his students into some of the strongest, most powerful athletes in the world. We covered a lot the last time around, and this episode has many, many answers to a lot of your most common questions. For instance, what home equipment should someone invest in first for $100 or less? What are his thoughts on weighted stretches? If there's a place for them in gymnastic strength training, GST,

Starting point is 00:04:13 what are the best examples of how to use them? Sample exercises. What does lower body GST look like for a 40-year-old former athlete, for instance? We talk about, or he brings up, the best distinction between mobility and flexibility that I've ever heard. Exercise progressions for bar muscle-ups, what might those look like? Or at the very least, tests that you can use to determine if it's even safe for you to attempt training for such a thing. Foam rolling or mobility tools, what does he

Starting point is 00:04:43 think? And do you change gymnastic strength training or how do you change it for tall people, say over six feet tall or for women? So there you have it. And if you would like to test out gymnastic bodies, I again have no type of affiliation whatsoever, but coach will be putting up some sample videos that feature exercises mentioned in this episode and others on gymnasticbodies.com forward slash Tim. It's also a sales page. There are a couple of different discounts and whatnot for you guys if you want to try it out. But they should be adding and probably have already added videos at the very bottom or somewhere on that page for you to check out. And if for whatever reason they are not there, you can go to YouTube and look for

Starting point is 00:05:30 Gymnastic Bodies and find all sorts of good stuff. So without further ado, please enjoy my second public conversation. We have had dozens. Second public conversation with Coach Sommer. Coach, welcome back to the show. Thank you, Tim. It is very nice to be on the phone yet again. And I thought we would start with what we were talking about very briefly before we hit record. And I said, you know what, people might find this of interest. So as context for folks, I've been doing some rings work, gymnastic rings work, and with some assistance of equipment that you help to put together and set up, which includes the 50-50, some people call a variation of the dream machine, which basically is a harness

Starting point is 00:06:20 that allows you to decrease the weight you're supporting on your hands, and then power levers, which look like Robocop gauntlets. And you can attach the rings on top of your forearm in different places with many different holes running from the wrist to closer to the elbow so that you can shorten the fulcrum, I guess, to improve your physics. So in this way, you have progressive resistance with the rings, which is otherwise very difficult to achieve. So it's very, very cool. And I did something stupid while playing around, or not playing around, actually. I was taking very seriously iron cross work and hurt my right wrist. And I thought it was broken. I had MRIs. It appears to be a ligament strain. But here we are three weeks later, and I can't hold a pushup without decent pain on the back of the right wrist. So I was asking you what I might do at this point to speed recovery. And I would love to restart your answer

Starting point is 00:07:29 and go from there. Okay. All right. Good deal. Now, before we go into the healing part, let's review how the accident happened so that all the listeners don't think I'm an asshole who destroyed you. Oh, right. Yeah, exactly. And also one thing that coach asked me before we got started is he goes, I thought you were smart. And to which I answered, the older I get, the less sure of that I become. I was subconsciously compensating, I think, to cheat a little bit in this movement. So with the power levers, you don't need to use a false grip and you have metal very close to the top of your wrist. And as I was doing these eccentrics, well, I was where you're basically supporting the rings across your palm and wrist as opposed to solely in your palm. And that drove the top of my wrist into the metal to such an extent

Starting point is 00:08:35 that I sprained or, in other words. And kept driving it in. Yeah. Well, this is where I remember I was in a… Exercise after exercise. Yeah. So then I continued with Maltese and Vic's work because I was in Paris and it took me like three weeks to find a place where I could set up all this equipment. So I was like, God damn it.

Starting point is 00:08:58 I'm going to get this workout done. I literally coach. You'd be proud of this part. You'd be ashamed of how stupid I behaved otherwise, but I took a separate suitcase with me overseas, just full of equipment for training. And so we do it. So I finally, I get an Uber and managed to get to the one gym in Paris that might let me set this stuff up. And then literally in the first two sets, act like an idiot and hurts my wrist. And I was just like, absolutely no fucking way. I am

Starting point is 00:09:30 finishing this workout. So, uh, there you have it. But so yes, I take full, I take full blame for that one. What should I do? All right. So Tim and I were talking just before we started record and that this is a connective tissue injury where the ligaments in that on the top of the wrist got mashed, got compressed up into the metal, you know, over and over and over. So they're basically, they're really, really bruised. And because the connective tissue heals so slowly, remember from first podcast, that connective tissues, metabolic rate is one 10th that of muscle tissue. So basically once it's hurt, you know, there's, there's no way to get off the train. You have to ride this to the end and it's going to be a while. Now, what we can do to kind of finesse this though, is understanding that metabolic rate ice then for connective tissue work, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:26 we use ice initially to help reduce inflammation. But then after that, it will actually slow the metabolic rate because it doesn't have its own capillary system and it gets its blood through diffusion. So what we'll do instead is use heat. I first came across this, wow, early 2000s. We had an athlete who had severs. Usually happens when athletes, when they're growing, they're very, the strong athletes, especially when they hit a growth spurt. Severs is irritation of the Achilles where it goes down into the heel. So when they're tumbling, they're running, they're sprinting, you know, that heel gets painful. And he'd been growing for a while. So on and off for the better part of a year, we had tried ice with no results, no results at all. In desperation, if you will, trying to find other answers, which is usually how good answers are found when the everyday stuff isn't working, came across an

Starting point is 00:11:25 ultra marathoning site. And against all convention, they said use heat. They had had wonderful responses with it. So ours was super simple. Went and got a hot cold pack, throw it in some boiling water. Takes a little practice figuring out how long to leave it in. I think we were two minutes perhaps. You want it just warm enough that it's right on the edge of being too hot for comfort. And then just leave it on and let it cool naturally. In a week, we had better results from that heat a couple of times a day than we did from a year of ice. And at what point would you make the switch?

Starting point is 00:12:11 So if someone, let's just say an anonymous idiot who goes to Paris and mashes their wrist into metal repeatedly, is it two weeks later, three weeks later, or how do you course map the symptoms? 24 hours. 24 hours to control inflammation for as far as ice is concerned. And then I jump into heat. Got it. Okay. So it's a quick jump then.

Starting point is 00:12:40 And with this particular athlete, did you use any type of contrast therapy going from that hot to cold, hot to cold, or did you keep it to the hot? At that time, we never used any hot water. We used the hot packs. Right. And so we would just lay them on top. Now, I think it was at that time we weren't combining, but it could be very interesting. The issue that you run into if you do contrast baths with a wrist is that you have to soak the whole hand. Right. And then it's not like an ankle, the hands.

Starting point is 00:13:14 Of course, you're pulling out the oil, your hands. It's tough to get any work done where with an ankle going back and forth, no big deal. For those listening, a contrast bath is simply alternating between room temperature water and then ice water, two separate buckets, set a timer, go for a minute in the ice, and then just set your phone to beep in a minute. And what we'll have athletes do is just throw a movie in. The protocol is keep alternating buckets back and forth as long as you can stand it without losing your mind. And why use room temperature water as opposed to hot water? Excellent. Well, what happens is it's, I first stumbled across this. I don't remember the name

Starting point is 00:13:57 of the trainer, but it was the guy who was working with Michael Jordan back in his heyday. And Michael had had a game one evening, rolled his ankle and had a game the next night. So it was an old shit moment. So, you know, Michael, like anybody who's a high level performer is dedicated. He's obsessed with doing his best. So that evening he did the contrast bath protocol for two hours, you know, B switch, switch, switch next night on an injured ankle scored 40 points. Wow. Yeah. The nice, the nice thing with the contrast bath is the cold is there long enough to reduce inflammation, but then it goes back into the room temperature and it's not been cold long enough to reduce circulation by an extreme extent.

Starting point is 00:14:46 So you kind of get the best of both worlds. Now, is there any reason to keep the warmer water at room temperature versus hot water? The difference going back and forth between we've never used more than room temperature, it could be significantly uncomfortable because the ice water is ice water. Right. You know, we make that. So we, we just want to bring it up enough. We don't want to make it hot. No, we're not trying to make soup, but just, just enough to get a little blood flow back into the cold again. Got it. All right. I will go get some reusable heat packs or ice cold packs. Looking at home equipment, this is something that came up quite a bit after our first chat. What home equipment should someone invest in first?

Starting point is 00:15:38 To get started? Yeah, to get started, if anything. Let's look at the inexpensive, on the inexpensive side, like a hundred dollars or less. And then if you have unlimited budget. not, it's not, it's not always just a matter of, is it effective? Does it work? Obviously it's effective. Obviously it works, but then it becomes a matter of, you know, is this my flavor of ice cream that I like? You know, so basically they need some floor space and they need a bar, you know, they need an overhead bar, maybe some light dumbbells, a dowel, a dowel would be a long straight stick. And other than that, they're kind of pretty much good to go. I mean, we really went out of our way to make it as simple to get started as possible. What would someone use a dowel for?

Starting point is 00:16:35 And I mean, I have a few in mind, but for people who aren't familiar. So this is effectively a broomstick or even perhaps a PVC pipe. Yep. Broom handle, a long wooden dowel. We use that for different shoulder mobility. So when we train adults, so this kind of goes back to the general structure of development, is before we can get into the really cool stuff, light hair on fire, get all strong, yada, yada, yada. We first have to undo years of damage from desk patrol. And that means mobility is jacked up.

Starting point is 00:17:12 So we're going to use the broomsticks, the dowels with a little bit of weight on them to start rebuilding that shoulder girdle mobility. Got it. And so for those people interested, I mean, this is in that category, we would have various types of dislocates, right? Dislocates, some flexion work where they're working on lifting their arms overhead, probably for adults, their greatest deficit, especially those who've been having any type of a professional career, you know, that involves paperwork is they're going to have extremely poor shoulder extension. To describe shoulder extension, standing upright, hands at my side, lifting my arms back behind me.

Starting point is 00:17:59 Yeah, I would put myself in that category for sure. And the shoulder extension, I mean, I've seen some improvements. Now, granted, I've gone from absolutely disgusting to watch to just moderately offensive to watch, but still a large improvement. You would actually be very impressed with my progress that I've made prior to the wrist injury, that is, on one thing, which is if people look up dislocates and they use a normal grip, so let's just say people are starting with a dowel in front of them, they're holding it like a barbell in a deadlift

Starting point is 00:18:38 with their arms slightly wider, so it's an overhand grip. The opposite of that in some ways would be the dorsal grip, right? Where you start with the bar behind you and you're holding it as if you're going to try to do a bicep curl through your legs, right? So your palms are facing forward. So you might recall when I tried to get my arms, I couldn't get up at all. But then when we started at the top, my wrists were so inflexible that I couldn't bring the bar down at all. So I've made a lot of progress on dorsal. So it's really illuminating to me to look at not only the shoulder restriction that I have, but how it is affected by shifts in the grip, right?

Starting point is 00:19:20 Because this might be one reason why people are like, oh, I've got great shoulder extension and they're using regular dislocates, let's just say, to assess that. And then they go on the rings and they're not prepared for it. And they're going through all these different types of hand positions and arm positions and boom, they tear something and they're out of commission. The dowel, you could also use dowels. I remember, for hollow body rocks or arched body rocks, correct? Sure. That's something. Why is that helpful?

Starting point is 00:19:51 And so for people listening, the hollow body position would be, well, one way to think of it would be almost like a diver in the Olympics when they're jumping on the diving board before taking off. So they're not arched. They have sort of a slightly concave. If you were to lay on your stomach, put your hands out in front of you, put your toes on the ground and lift your body off of the ground a few inches. Is that a fair assessment? That would be the arch if they were laying on their stomach. If they did the opposite uh, that would be, that would be the arch. If they were laying on their stomach, they did the opposite laying on their back. That would be the hollow. Oh, right, right, right. So just what, what I'm just trying to explain is the hollow body position, right? So the, uh, if you're on your back, you're sort of rolling, uh, on the pelvis with posterior pelvic tilt, right? Yeah. Just everything tucked under. Think of the body

Starting point is 00:20:47 as a long flattened C, letter C. Yep. And what does holding the dowel achieve with the hollow body rock in that case, or the opposite where you're on your stomach and kind of doing a, again, that flattened C, but what does the dowel accomplish? Give them something visceral to feel. So with, as far as shoulder girdles concerned, if they shrug their ears, their shoulders up to their ears, that would be scapular extension. If we do the opposite, that would be depression. So when they have that holding it with just a regular grip and they push that dowel up above their head, that helps them physically to activate the to hold onto can address a lot of the problems that you have. At least in my experience, that was true with the Arch Body Rock in particular.

Starting point is 00:21:58 And what other pieces of equipment, if any? For getting started, that's a pretty solid list because a lot of their stuff, even though I know they would like to, they can't jump right in. They're going to have to pay their dues. We're going to take six months, maybe eight months. We're going to do some strength work, but primarily we're going to address those joint deficits, those mobility deficits. Because if you can't get in the correct position, how can you exercise in the correct position? You can't. I was speaking with someone the other day and we're kind of pointing out some of the fallacies in traditional training,

Starting point is 00:22:39 where it's just kind of accepted that as you get older, your body can no longer tolerate doing overhead weighted work. You can't do, I'm a strong guy, I can't do military press anymore. And rather than them trying to find out what the cause of that deficit is, they just kind of accept it. Yeah, my shoulders are fucked. I just can't lift my arms over my head anymore. And I'm the exact opposite. I said, seriously, you find it acceptable that you can't raise your arms over your head anymore? What if there's something on a shelf? I mean, we're not talking world-class performance. How about if you want to be in your closet and you just want to get a suitcase down? And no, shit, I just can't. I'm just going to live in a life where my arms don't go above my shoulder forever. And to me, that's just asinine. We're not trying to be contortionist or anything. We're just, you know, this is your natural range of motion and you're going to sacrifice this for the rest of your life rather than, okay, well, what caused this? Well, what

Starting point is 00:23:41 caused it was a steady diet and nothing wrong with these exercises. They just did them to exclusion, a steady diet of bench press and curls, which is going to make the pecs really tight. It's going to make the bicep really tight. Now there's nothing at all wrong with bench. There's nothing at all wrong with curl, but it has to be done in a way with a balance program that maintains that healthy range of motion in the joint. We don't just get tighter and tighter and tighter. What, are they just going to eventually lay there and not move? You know, sometimes some people, a nice thing to do, especially for the listeners here, they'll get a big kick out of this.

Starting point is 00:24:18 First time I saw this, blew my mind. Go to YouTube and enter in the search, enter high speed karate chop, high speed karate chop. Yeah, I know. So cool. Such a, such a corny thing to say. What they'll see is going to blow their mind. First thing they're going to do is going to be at regular speed. Uh, black belt's going to be there and he is going to break a cement block with his hand. I've done it. I'm sure a ton of listeners out there have done it.

Starting point is 00:24:50 No big deal, right? Breaking a cement block with their hands. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's not, it's not like you get, you get attacked. I mean, you'll, you'll see it. And for those of us who didn't say, yeah, yeah, that's what it was. Da da da.

Starting point is 00:25:01 There's training for it. But then what they're going to show is they're going to show what happens to the physical structure at 4,000 frames a second. It's astounding what happens. It's astounding. And it's also important to remember that this happens in all athletic activities. What we think happens when we're training is that our bones are getting denser and firmer and stronger. Well, what this video is going to show that as his hand comes down on that block and he's trying to break it, that you'll see the bones almost liquid folding over themselves going through. Oh yeah. The first time I saw I saw I was completely freaked. I was like, what in the hell is this? He's he's crippled himself. It's over. It's done. His What this is illustrating is our eyes aren't fast enough to see it, but this is the essential nature of what our skeletal system does. It's not to be strong and stiff and brittle. It's to absorb force and then rebound back against

Starting point is 00:26:19 it. So if someone's playing tennis, if it's a running back, someone jumping, any of this. So the bones are designed to be for plyometric training. They're designed for this. They've actually taken some older adults and we'll put them on something as simple and gentle as jump rope. And just that small impact from the jump rope built more strength than traditional weightlifting. This is why we'll see older adults when they fall and they break a hip. It's not that it's that the bone bent and it kept bending. It didn't come back again. With just to underscore something you said earlier, which is a lot of people give up, blame age. I'm just fucked. My shoulder's done. Sorry. I'm just going to assume this desk sitting position for the rest

Starting point is 00:27:11 of my life or whatever it is. There is an Instagram account that you introduced me to, which anytime I feel like copping out with some BS excuse that is repeated by a lot of people my age. I'm 39 right now. I look at, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing it correctly, but Matt's Train. So people should check this guy out. Matt's Train. N-A-T-S-T-R-A-N-E. Correct. So 53-year-old who's doing gymnastics training. Who started when he was 48. Yeah, started when he's 48. So this is a great account. It currently has about 2,500 followers, so I'll be curious to see where it is.

Starting point is 00:27:50 About to get a lot more. About to get a lot more, but very inspiring to watch this guy. Very inspiring. And Matt's was in the same position as a lot of the listeners. Matt started training with us because his doctor told him Matt's owns a restaurant supply company. He's one of the co-owners and it work in huge hours. And the doctor pretty much told him, if you don't start taking care of yourself and you go out and get some exercise, uh, you're not going to be here in a couple of years. I mean, it was literally that point blank. It wasn't, well, I'm a little concerned. Maybe you could do a little better.

Starting point is 00:28:24 Now the doctor flat out told him, you're going to be a dead fucker if you don't go fix this. I like doctors like that. I need to find somebody who speaks to me like that. We need more of those. So let's talk about just something we'll see a lot in that Instagram account, which is stretching. And specifically, I'm not going to belabor this point, but on the gear side of things, one question I often ask

Starting point is 00:28:48 people is, what have you changed your mind on in the last few years? And I don't know if this is the last few years, but could you talk about stretch straps for a second? Stretch straps. The straps that appear in the, you have Orange demonstrate using the straps for very stiff people in the hamstring series. Yeah, for years. And this was just all other national team coach our reality of what is average of what is normal becomes skewed over the years simply because of the quality of the athletes and how exceptional they are that we surround ourselves with and we quit looking at them as exceptional and it just becomes our normal day-to-day experience. And so we look at other people then, not as regular. We start looking at them as, my God, they're seriously fucked up.

Starting point is 00:29:50 How did they get out of bed in the morning? I don't understand. Well, we kind of at first brought that same one to their stretching. And so there's a piece of equipment called a stretch strap, which is basically it's a long circle of nylon strapping that is then sewn into a kind of mini loops. They just make a daisy chain of it. Then we also like to use yoga blocks. We use those to accommodate reduced range of motion. Now for years, I thought those were just silly crap. I

Starting point is 00:30:26 thought, you know, take the training wheels off the bike and go out and ride the damn bike. And I was completely wrong, completely wrong. What it does is you can use this combination of the blocks and the stretch straps to actually someone who's crazy, crazy tight. It gives them an opportunity to actually get some work in so they can start progressing down. Yeah, start progressing. I mean, and that's the name of the game. But what we try, where I've come to now is they don't need to start exceptional. We don't know how far they're going to go. We just had someone share, he's been doing

Starting point is 00:31:07 the stretch courses for a year, a really good student, Ryan Bailey. He just sent a testimonial in. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous how much progress he made in a year of just consistent stretching. He's got full chest to legs on his pike now. He can sit down. He can touch his head to his toes. His splits are almost all the way down. And he's astounded. He can't believe it. He's ecstatic. And part of that was we just started and let them scale the movement according to where they are right now. Because in order to make progress, you first got to accept where you are. Right. And if your starting position because of inflexibility is posturally unsound, right? Because you don't have the blocks you don't have, then you're just developing compensations and problems that will... Let's even be more specific. We've got people who can't sit on the floor. They cannot. And by that, I mean, they can't sit on the floor with their legs in a straddle and sit up straight.

Starting point is 00:32:17 Legs straight in front of them and together. Yep. Either legs straight together in front of them or legs apart, right on the floor and straight. They can't do it. Their back, their glutes, their hamstrings are so tight that in order for them to sit on the floor, they have to slouch. They have to slouch rather than opposite, right? Being able to sit up tall with a flat back. And instead of sitting on their sacrum or their tailbone, sit on their glutes and their hamstring. And so one potential way that you could use the block in that case would be sitting on one or two yoga blocks. Exactly. Exactly. And, uh, which I had to do if people really want to feel ridiculous, uh, you can try to do something called, I guess, what was I doing? It was straddle pike pulses.

Starting point is 00:33:11 I did enjoy those. Oh, yeah. I sent coach videos of these. There's a good chance you'll have a glute medius contraction, we'll call it. We'll call it contraction. Yeah. A severe cramp that will lead you to fall over in pain. For those who haven't seen the video, Tim is an excellent dancer as he was rolling around on the

Starting point is 00:33:33 floor. Why do you, when someone's doing, say, a hurdler stretch, and I'll just assume people know what that is. You can look it up if not. But why do you elevate the heel of the straight leg on top of a block? Well, it would depend, right? Because maybe if they are more advanced enough that they can be on the floor, we'll elevate because what that will do is most people will, without realizing it, allow the knee to go bent. So then where the hamstring crosses the knee and where the calf crosses the knee coming up, neither of those are being addressed then.

Starting point is 00:34:13 But more than likely what will happen, especially when they're starting, is rather than elevate the foot, we've had people that are so tight, they have to start sitting on a chair in order to try to get in the right position. They have their feet on the ground out in front of them and they actually have to elevate. And it's, it's not, it's what the hard thing for them is you just, you know, you gotta be, you gotta be understanding of where your body's at. It's not a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a what it is thing. And if we're expanding to weighted stretches, this is a question that a number of folks have had. What are your thoughts on weighted stretches? If there's a

Starting point is 00:34:54 place for it in GSD? Oh, it's essential. It's essential. What are some of the best examples of how to use them for novices or novices or intermediate. Yeah. Maybe before, before an example, you know, is why, why, why do a weighted stretch? And the reason is an adult is so tight. He's so tight and he's strong at the same time that the weight of his torso, for example, or her torso isn't enough to help them bend forward. So he can't make any progress. He can't make any progress. But if we take them and we stand them up, for example, and we let them hold a weight in their hand, it's not a giant, you know, we're not, it's important to separate mobility work from maximal strength work. Well, we're not, we're not Conan. We're not Tarzan,

Starting point is 00:35:46 which I saw that movie yesterday. It was kick-ass legend of Tarzan. Okay. We're not, we're not going out there and trying to be he-men and super macho. What we're trying to do is remodel connective tissue and it has its own schedule, 200, 210 days for first cycle of adaptation. Well, right away, that means I got to calm my ass down and I need to be patient here. That's six to seven months. There is no rush. You can't rush, right? Because this is hardwired into us. You can't force it. So what the weighted mobility allows is to gradually take that strength and that tightness that we have. And instead of it being a negative, use it as a positive. So now that have that little bit of weight, even if it's, let's say it's a Jefferson curl, it's kind of a curling deadlift movement. And they start with

Starting point is 00:36:37 a kilo or two, just that little bit of extra weight for the muscles to have to work against. Now the muscles start, think of it as flossing, start loosening up. They start fatiguing a little bit, which leads to them relaxing, which leads to that increased range of motion, which would never happen without using the weight. And there are a couple of, well, the exercise that comes to mind immediately is the one you mentioned, Jefferson curl. And for people who aren't familiar, just because I don't want to assume everyone's heard the first episode, Jefferson curl, and feel free to jump in and correct me here. you're standing on a step or a block and you have a barbell in front of you, empty barbell, and you would then tuck your chin and curl down kind of one vertebra at a time. It's basically a slowly curled back stiff-legged deadlift where you might target to have your wrists get past

Starting point is 00:37:40 your toes. Is that a fair description? That would. And probably the primary difference between it would be a stiff leg dead. It's going to have slightly bent knees, whereas the Jefferson curl is going to be completely straight knees. Right, right. So no soft knees. What are some other examples of very effective weighted stretches? Because I saw tremendous returns and progress with the Jefferson curl in pretty short order. And I remember I asked you, when should I be doing Jefferson curls at one point? Because I didn't see them in some of the workouts. And you said, oh, Jefferson curls are to us. Oh, Jefferson curls are like breathing to us. I said, oh, okay. So I should probably do them more often then. What are some other exercises that you find particularly effective as weighted stretches?

Starting point is 00:38:31 The shoulder extension work. So what'll happen is so few times, everything they do, most of us do conditioning wise is anterior delt, of the body they're going to do bench they're going to do curls they do all these things and they very rarely put their hands back behind them in extension very rarely so they actually create their own shoulder impingement so that weighted and now we have think about we have this the pecs are so strong that the shoulders are rolled forward. They're strong and they're tight. Sometimes people mistakenly think that in order to be strong, they have to be tight. That's not the case.

Starting point is 00:39:16 What are we now? Today is Friday. So it's opening ceremonies today. So real games are just getting ready to go. Gymnasts are going to be first out of the gate. Um, they're going to see ridiculous strength and power, right? Different strength, power is strength multiplied by speed. So they're going to see ridiculous amounts of power. They're going to see huge muscle mass, and they're also going to see an athlete that's very supple and mobile and agile.

Starting point is 00:39:48 So it's very possible to have both. And the shoulder extension works, would that take the form of dislocates with a little bit of weight on the bar? Probably the dislocates going to be from the front all the way to the back. The shoulder extension work is starting upright, grasping a bar, some kind of a bar with a little bit of weight. It might be as little as a pound. Our athletes went all the way up to 20 kilos, but start where they're at. And then without allowing the torso to move at all, just using the shoulders, lift the bar up behind them. And goal is to get to 90 degrees. If they can start rolling overhead, their grip is too wide. So narrow that grip in a little bit, lift again and keep going. Goal is to get down to shoulder width and still being able to lift

Starting point is 00:40:38 to 90 degrees. I saw a video on your Instagram account of a very peculiar exercise that I'd love to get your two cents on. And sometimes I wonder when I see some of these exercises, I'm like, did Coach Summer just come up with something for his own entertainment value to see how many thousands of people he can get to do this? But this one was interesting. It was someone standing on a bench, like a bench press bench. They were holding onto what looked like a 45-pound plate, could have just been a bumper plate of some type, underneath the bench. So imagine if you put the 45-pound plate, let's just call it a plate, directly underneath the middle of the bench. Then they reached their arms down on either side of the bench, grabbed this plate, stepped up onto the bench, and then went from bent knees to straight

Starting point is 00:41:32 knees, trying to bring their head to their toes effectively or shins with the plate beneath, like they can't lift the plate up because it's under the bench. What is this, what is this movement? And what is the, what are the applications or values of it? That's, that's a weighted pike. And that was part of my elite athletes daily warmup. And then because it's me, of course, so some of them, the 45 pound plate wasn't enough. So I was kind and generous enough to go over and help press down on the plate for them to give them some extra range of motion. Got it. And what would they do? A short number of repetitions?

Starting point is 00:42:14 For that particular one, yeah, they could go. There's a couple of ways we could program that. We could just go a straight 30-second hold. So straighten the legs, hold for 30. That was very common for us. We would also do what we call a 10 by 10. So that would be starting from a squat, straighten up, little pause, back down to a squat would be one. Do that 10 times. And then the 10 by 10 part comes from on the 10th one, hold that weighted pike for 10 seconds. Yes. No, I've done shorter versions of this for you before.

Starting point is 00:42:49 Just one more quick one. I kind of like people to stop. The reason we call it mobility instead of flexibility is because in their heads, they think flexibility is being rather passive, that there's, there's no strength involved. And I'd like them to start considering that usable flexibility or mobility has a strength component to it. That if we have extreme flexibility that's not supported by strength, that's actually dangerous. It's a liability. It's actually dangerous. Yeah, It's a liability. I can get my joint way out here and it can be under load suddenly on the field of play and I get hurt.

Starting point is 00:43:30 Uncontrolled range of motion. Yeah. But if there's strength throughout that range of motion, well, now we've increased our athletic ability. We haven't decreased it. This is a question that came up quite a lot from listeners. What does lower body gymnastic strength training look like? And let's just say for a 40 year old former athlete, right? So it's somebody who's not hobbled, right? But maybe there's a recreational athlete. They think they're not hobbled. They think they're not hobbled, right? They think they're not hobbled. Because I'll share a story to show that they're more fucked up than they think they are. Okay, sure. Go for it. Our very first seminar that I did working with adults way back 2007, 2008, had some really

Starting point is 00:44:21 athletic people show up, really strong, strong, you know, by, by regular everyday standards, they squatted, they deadlift, you know, they, they were strong. And, uh, when I tried to do our entry level plyometric work with them, so a kind of a straight leg bouncing that I would do with my introductory athletes, you know, my five-year-olds. They just, it destroyed them. It destroyed them. In fact, the stronger they were, the faster they went down. Now, just to dig into that for one second, I apologize, but just for the image in my head, we're not talking about like broad jumps. We're talking about sort of a jump roping movement where they're hopping like for 50 feet down the mat.

Starting point is 00:45:09 With straight legs. Yeah, got it. So when we train, we separate jumping movements where the joint is bending and then jumping from rebounding movements where the joints are tight and extended. So the Olympics getting ready to start, going to see some crazy stuff. When they're tumbling on the floor, there's no time to jump because it happens so fast. We're using that. So the body has to be strongly extended so that the connective tissue is what provides the power. There'll be a, if we look at it under, we'll get some people who fuss. Oh yeah, if I look at it under the thousands of frames a second, I can see a knee flick. I'm like, you know what?

Starting point is 00:45:53 Bite my ass. No one can see that as we're coaching. What the athlete is trying, I'll tell you both as a coach and as a former gymnast, what we're trying to do is be as extended as possible. So what happens then is you take an adult and what have they been doing for conditioning? Well, they've been doing what they know how to do. They're going in and they're doing leg press and they're doing leg extension and they're doing leg curls and they're doing squats and they're doing deadlifts, which are all primary muscle mass exercises. There's no joint conditioning as far as a plyometric factor is concerned.

Starting point is 00:46:33 And this is kind of what also leads to, and they're always notice, they're always exactly on track, which everything is in alignment. Well, that's a separate discussion, but there's no impact. So they get really, really strong. And this is what leads to that kind of weekend warrior syndrome where they go out now on the weekend, they've Monday, Wednesday, Friday, they conditioned in the gym. They've been working hard. Their diet's good. They're doing their cardio and they go out to play softball and they go to run around the base and they have these strong primary movers, but they haven't done anything for ACL, MCL, meniscus.

Starting point is 00:47:10 Their knee goes a little bit out of alignment. They pop their knee playing softball. So what would you prescribe to prevent that? And whatever we can give people, obviously, if they want to dig into the deep training, they need to look at the more in-depth and comprehensive courses but what are some movements that might help yeah they actually uh some people were really good on the last podcast we did and through the comments they put up sauce on our courses you know there are specific knee exercises because the trainers will tell you you

Starting point is 00:47:42 should always always always make sure your knees track over your toes, but it's literally impossible to do anything that includes change of movement, change of direction without planting the foot and pushing sideways or in an angle that your knee doesn't come off track. So if all I do is these primary squats and deads, I build this huge, strong muscle mass and I haven't done anything to prepare meniscus, you know, where it takes the knees off to the side and there's, you know, either direction and then twisting movements they've, and they don't have to be huge loads. And, you know, we, we cover all that. Well, we should put up some samples for him. Remind me, Tim, we'll put that up for him. But could you describe one of the movements

Starting point is 00:48:25 just for people who want to get an image in their head? What would one of these exercises look like? Probably the simplest one would be a twisting squat. So think of sitting on the ground, cross-legged, or we used to call it sit like an Indian when I was young. So sitting on the ground, cross-legged and stand up out of it without hands. What's going to happen is as they're standing up and then we're also, well, we'll ignore the fact that we're going to also push on the side of the ankles. But just from that standing up, right there, they're working the ACL. They're putting pressure on the outside of that knee and standing up. We had, we've never done more than body weight on

Starting point is 00:49:06 these movements. We've never done more than, you know, for our elite athletes, a single set of 10 in their daily warmup. But what it does is rather than praying and hoping, you know, on lighting candles and going to church and all this stuff that our knee will never, ever, ever go off track, you know, except that it's going to go off track and prepare for it, prepare for it. So are there any other recommendations that you would have? Uh, this is from a, this is from a number of runners in the comments for, uh, preventing running injuries besides not running? Well, were they specific on the running injuries? They were not.

Starting point is 00:49:51 So I'd say you could pick common issues and how you would address them. I'll give an extreme example. So we have a student, Douglas, who every year, he is a maniac for running. He loves to do ultra marathons and he lives up in Montana and he loves to run through the mountains. And he's insane. He's insane. He does. It's his thing. This is now he's been doing the GB stretch courses, which aren't running specific, but they're human

Starting point is 00:50:27 body specific, if you will. Right. He's been doing those for a year now. And he said, this is the first year that he's going out and doing his 20 mile runs and more where he has, he's not getting tight. He's not getting the injuries that he would have gotten before. He says, wow, my body feels good. And I was a little surprised. I was like, wow, you're feeling good with that mileage. I forget how much he's doing per week. It's something ridiculous. And he says, no, no, I feel really good. Now, that being said, he lives up in Montana. So obviously, there's not a lot of running going on in the winter because the snow is hip deep on a giraffe. No one's going out to run in that. So there was enough time for him to address deficits prior to getting back on the trail and running again.

Starting point is 00:51:20 So I'm not sure how effective it could be with someone who already has a high mileage program. And then we add this in. It will be effective, but it's going to be much slower than someone who is off-season. Yeah, let's say they're off-season. What would be some exercises or recommendations for getting to that point? Let's see. Well, something that they find out is when we do our front split course, a lot of people get really, not as many as before, but we'll get comments of, you. We're working on soleus, which is the lower calf muscle. We're working on the gastroc, which is the higher calf. We're working on extension and flexion in

Starting point is 00:52:09 the ankle. And we'll get people who are like, God damn it, coach. I can't fucking walk today because of these stupid exercises. Why did you put this in? So let me hit pause. So I remember the first time I did this particular sequence, and I'll just give people some details so they can get the idea. And it starts off with feet parallel, 60 calf raises, and then more stretches, and then feet pointed in, 60 calf raises. And I just remember this is the first time I did any stretch workout from you, and I was like, holy fuck. I am like, I'm going to get buried by this stretch workout. I thought this was going to be a day off, and I'm only five minutes into it. It isn't actually that punishing the entire time, but please, please continue. Yeah. Just want to add some, add some color. Yeah. Cause what, what happens is people, it's important to understand that our bodies are

Starting point is 00:53:17 capable of generating enormous amounts of power, but it was supposed to be on an as needed basis, not all day long every day. What we are by nature, just due to how our physique is designed, is we're endurance animals. So your calves are designed for endurance work. They're designed for you to go out and kill something, put it on your shoulders, and then carry it through the mountains six miles back home. And people don't train their calves like that anymore. So the calf is an endurance muscle. Your core is an endurance muscle. Your arms are an endurance muscle. And just why do it? For example, we used to take my, and we'll come back to calves, we used to have my athletes do very heavy weighted legless rope climbs. And when I stopped doing that a couple of times a week, when I stopped doing that

Starting point is 00:54:12 and had them go on a seven meter rope, a triple climb. So up, down, up, down, up, down, jump in the back of the line. Their turn comes back up on a seven meter, up, down, up, down, get in the back of the line, come back up again, up, down, up, down. So what is that? Seven, seven ascents in five minutes, right? Because they're just booking. And I'm not warm and fuzzy when we're working with athletes because this wasn't conditioning. This was warmup.

Starting point is 00:54:38 This is what we'd consider pre-strength, right? At an elite level, if you can't do that as part of warmup, you're not elite level. And you're not strong enough to do advanced strength and advanced work on rings. But what we noticed just as a consequence of putting that in their daily warmup is their arms exploded, which is kind of contrary for how I was taught coming up. You know, if you want to get stronger, we need more load. Well, yes, in certain circumstances, but because the bicep and the arms are endurance muscles, because think about it. I go out and I kill something. Does it do me any good if I can only carry something for 30 seconds? Right. Right. I got to be able to carry this for long durations

Starting point is 00:55:20 of time. Well, calves are the same. Calves are the same. So a good friend of mine, I mentioned the other podcast was the Bulgarian Olympic coach. I learned a lot from Ruman. Ruman was the one who found out that connective tissue like the Achilles tendon, which is what we're training with those high rep calf raises, thrive, they're healthy with high rep work. And if so, the converse of that, the flip side of that is if you're not doing high rep work, you're slowly starving that connective tissue. You're slowly starving it because it's not getting enough blood flow because it doesn't have its own capillary system. So it's fed by exercise and movement. Now it doesn't mean you can capillary system. So it's fed by exercise and movement.

Starting point is 00:56:05 Now it doesn't mean you can't do the high intensity work. You absolutely can, but at least, and especially the stronger you are at least once or twice a week, you need to feed these tissues. Feeding sessions. Exactly right. Tissue feeding sessions. And so if we're looking at these runners, right? And so you're having them engorge the calves, feeding the connective tissues, and then looking at different types of bent ankle work before the hamstrings, right? Right. And are there any other at their level of strength? That's that's probably sufficient later as they get more advanced. So once once we have healthy joints and we have some reasonable mobility, then we can start doing plyometric work for because plyometric work is what it's it's multiples of body weight on impact. What's running running is going to be a multiples of body weight on impact. What's running? Running is

Starting point is 00:57:05 going to be a multiple of body weight during their run. That's why someone who's really weak and deconditioned, when they go out to run, it's like a session from hell. They're just, everything hurts. They're flat footed. There's no bounce in their step. Their lungs burn. Everything hurts compared to someone who's in shape. For example, way back when, right, in high school, now we didn't have the nice floors, the nice gymnastics competition floors that we have now. So we tumbled when I was coming up on wrestling mats. Oh, I know. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You did wrestle. I know wrestling mats. Oh yeah yeah exactly you did rest i know wrestling that's oh yeah yeah you know them well and so what happens is i was i was repeatedly exposed to

Starting point is 00:57:53 10 to 14 when we've measured at olympic training center when someone does basic tumbling around up at canspring backflip they're hitting 14 times body weight. Well, not 14 times for one single time in training, but turn after turn after turn after turn. Because it turns out that how we increase the strength of connective tissue at really high levels is very high load, very, very short duration, micro fractions of a second, high intensity microbursts. That's the fastest, most effective way to build connective tissue strength on a joint that's prepared to do so. So I had a crush on a girl in high school and she was a big runner. I'd never ran a day in my life except from chores or something. So I immediately went out. She was going to run in the summer. So I jumped to, shoot, 12 miles a day. I went and joined their elite track club. Didn't notice a thing. Within two weeks, went out and ran 20 miles. Didn't notice a thing. I remember talking to people saying, I don't understand why people have to train for this shit. I don't understand. This is no big deal. And, but if, if someone can handle right, that higher level,

Starting point is 00:59:06 more advanced plyometric work where they're hitting 14 times body weight, 10 times body weight, are they going to notice when they're running and it's maybe two, two and a half times body weight? No, they're that's, that's nothing that doesn't even exist. You don't even notice that. Now we have to build up to it though. What, what are the, to shift gears to a different common question, what are the prerequisites for safe back tuck? So back, back, back flip. Now, now let me, I can go to a coach. I can, let me rephrase this. Like what pre what, what should the checklist be even before considering it? Because this is what a lot of people want to do. Yeah. I won't even touch them with it because they'll be all out there trying to do it and they're all going to die and they're all going to get mangled and they're going to land on their head and they're going to be mad at me. told me wrong. So yeah, for, for the technical stuff, anytime that there's inversion, then there's also risk of injury, especially for they're running outside and they're doing it on

Starting point is 01:00:10 their own in their backyard. So I really don't recommend it if, um, if they want to do it and it's awesome. I mean, obviously I spent my life doing this stuff. Uh, I recommend that they go to a good professional instructor. Don't, don't go to your neighbor and don't pull out YouTube and say, Hey, cool. Look at this. I think we can spot each other because you'll probably spot him well. And when it's his turn to spot you, he's going to fuck it up and he's going to drop you. So let's choose something a little, a little safer, not as much fatality risk or paralysis risk, prerequisites for a bar muscle-up. Okay.

Starting point is 01:00:54 And or the most common mistakes in training for muscle-ups. Okay. Muscle-up, you know, people will look at it and they'll go, all right, it's got a pull-up component and it has a dip component. And I'm just going to string them together. And what they're missing is that there is a transition. There's a transition where they're going from a pull-up where their elbows are pointing basically down at the floor on their pull-up to a dip where their elbows are pointing straight up. In between there, that elbow needs to transition through. And in order to make that transition,

Starting point is 01:01:29 you have to have shoulder extension. That means I need to be able to let my elbow go back behind my torso. If I don't have shoulder extension. I feel like shoulder extension, just to totally interrupt and be an asshole, is like, if you remember Seinfeld, do you ever see Seinfeld?

Starting point is 01:01:50 And something bad would happen and Jerry would go Newman. And I feel like for me, that shoulder extension. Anyway, please. I think it, I actually think it's for, uh, and it was something that I didn't realize because this isn't an issue with gymnasts, but it took a long time. Like obliques also for adults are huge. If we want wanted to go down the issues of adults who are, they're not going to have any thoracic extension. They don't have shoulder extension. Their obliques are unbelievably tight and weak simultaneously, which is kind of sucks because at least hopefully if you're tight, you're strong, but they're not. They're just tight and weak. Their piriformis is jacked up and their calves from all the desk work and sitting on the chairs

Starting point is 01:02:31 are like piano wire. Yeah. I'm rolling out my foot on a golf ball as we speak, standing instead of sitting. So coming back to the muscle up though people miss the transition what would a what would the exercise progression then look like i know we we need the shoulder extension so that would most certainly be a piece of the puzzle but since it's a question that a number of people threw a technique well i actually i think you know and again we got to hammer this home with them is that they were taught that these gymnastics elements like this like a muscle up are skill training that they're technique training and i'm sorry but that's a load of horseshit it's it's not skilled training it's skill training is a triple backflip that's skill training this is a strength element and in order to do this strength element correctly, the body has to be able to get into the correct positions. This is why you saw, oh, we'll say, we'll say CrossFit, for example, where they were doing the kipping muscle up to avoid the transition, trying to bounce from the bottom to the top.

Starting point is 01:03:46 And there's, there's issues of when it's appropriate and when it's not, we won't beat that horse to death thing we did last podcast, but they lacked the ability to pull their elbows behind their body. So to my mind, if you can't get in the correct positions, why are you even trying to do the exercise? What would be some good tests for someone to know if they, uh, it, I guess these could double as goals in a way, but how could, how could Russian dips, Russian dips? Ah, yes. Okay. Could you describe Russian dips, please? Sure. Uh, Russian dip, you can need a little bit of a longer dip handle. So get up in a straight arm support, bend down like a regular dip and then lower back. Not we,

Starting point is 01:04:33 we see some people who will lower under their elbows. I don't know who came up with that stupid variation. Don't do it. It's worthless. It's a waste of your time. Lower down and then go on to the upper arm so that you're basically laying on the inside of your bicep. And then from there, pull back up again to the bottom of the dip position and press back up to straight arm. Got it. So this would be easiest to do on the equivalent of parallel bars. Parallel bars would be good. I've seen it on elevated weight benches. I've seen it done on stacked plyo boxes. Now, how would you do it on a bench? Because I have seen the variation, and I'm sure some people out there, if they search Russian dips, will see this on, say, elevated boxes, right? Where someone's lowering down basically onto the forearms. But what you're saying is you want to lower in such a way that

Starting point is 01:05:25 you end up kind of on the inside of your bicep. Is that correct? Well, think of it this way. If they're lowered, and this is actually a really good illustration of what we're talking about. The reason they want to stop on their forearms is because their elbows tucked right in at their side. There is no shoulder extension. So basically they've skipped the moneymaker. They've skipped the part of the exercise that gives them the benefit in the first place. Rather than going all the way down, getting shoulders back behind them, shoulders back behind their hand. And then as that shoulder starts coming forward, that elbow goes strongly backward behind the torso. Got it. that elbow goes strongly forward behind the torso or backward behind the torso got it and if they think they're a real stud they think they're a real stud instead of lowering to the bar right do it on the end of the bar so we our athletes who do some all by themselves some

Starting point is 01:06:17 of the light spot do it so that the hands are on the rail but they're lowering and doing the Russian dip lowering to the regular position of it but there's no bar under them to catch it. They're just doing it in the air. Because isn't that what a muscle-up is? Yeah, I've seen video of this. What's your take on foam rolling or other mobility tools or so-called mobility tools? I like it, especially for someone who is just getting started. Because what has happened over the years of them being inactive,

Starting point is 01:06:59 and I vaguely remember this back when I used to have hair, but like getting tangles in your hair, right? So if the muscles aren't stretched out on a regular basis, you know, stuff just starts getting knots in it. You know, just think of it as a tangle. And the foam rolling, you know, done well can be a really nice way to get in there and just break those lumps out, break those knots out. What separates doing it well from doing it poorly? What are the characteristics? Well, pain, actually. Because these knots, it's unpleasant to loosen them up. And so there's got to be some pressure on there in order to break that stuff out. And, you know, actually some, some, some people will present it that there's a difference between pursuing health and pursuing performance that somehow they're diametrically opposed. I disagreed with that vehemently because a healthy athlete is one that can perform better. If he's got athletes or injuries that are niggling in the back of his mind, he can't pay attention at business.

Starting point is 01:08:14 So the healthier we can keep them, the more pain-free we can keep them, the better results we're going to get. So, you know, especially, you know, Olympics right now. Are there going to be some little here and a little there? Yeah. But overall, you know, we want, we want healthy, healthy athletes with the foam rolling, right? If these knots and lumps aren't addressed, they're going to get pulled tighter. And if they stay too long, they're going to become adhesions. All right. And now that's, think of that as we're starting now to replace muscle tissue with collagen. And obviously that's, that's a horrible, bad thing. I was just recently in England doing some workshops over there.

Starting point is 01:09:00 And I saw a gentleman with probably the most severe kyphotic hunch forward. You know, like we saw a hunchback of Notre Dame. Yeah. This guy was bent 90 degrees forward. Wow. And he was walking down the street. And I looked at this gentleman. I was just like, and then I was like, oh, my God, that poor bastard.

Starting point is 01:09:24 And then I saw several other people like that. And I think what's important for people to realize, you know, is because everyone's getting older and we're not getting majority of them were not born with that issue. This happened from a lifetime of neglect. And by neglect, I mean, not necessarily, you know, they were trying to do it, but they just didn't exercise. They didn't stretch. And before you know it, boom, now I'm screwed. And if, when it gets to that point where that gentleman is, right, there's no coming back. I mean, we can go over crush fractures and how vertebrae change shape and distension in the neck and all this stuff. But the bottom line is, is if we went way back and started with just the foam rolling, even something as simple as the foam rolling and just broke lumps out, start getting some blood flow, start loosening things up, quality of life is going to be so much better later. Is there any difference?

Starting point is 01:10:29 This is a common comment that I saw. Tall people, let's just say over six feet tall. Any changes or to training in GST for those folks? No, no, no. I know they would like there to be, but, uh, you know, we, we have guys who are six and a half feet tall, six foot six, and they've got front levers and press handstands and rope climbs. Uh, cause what goes with being taller is also, uh, increased diameter of the muscle belly.

Starting point is 01:11:07 So, yeah, it's a bigger frame, but it's also a bigger engine. Now, in terms of acrobatics, because those levers are much longer, if we're actually doing hard tumbling in that, yeah, it's easier the smaller you are. But in terms of basics and stretching and just being a live human being, no, not so much. And on a related note, men or women, different training approaches, same approach? Once they get up to an upper level, we're not going to take the girls into the more advanced ring strength. I personally have it. I don't know if there's some who can. I haven't done it.

Starting point is 01:11:49 I will say that in our gym, when Alan was 10, he and Jeffrey, my standard. Who is Alan for people who don't know? Alan was my last senior elite athlete for the US national team. So yeah, I had him for from six to 18. So 12 years of training 16,000 hours plus that I spent with his preparation when he was 10 years old. He was capable of doing 15 muscle ups, you know, slow, no kipping, no bouncing. And it was a young lady who beat him. And there were reps in there. I didn't count Chelsea. One of our young ladies I was training at the time doing the physical prep for our elite

Starting point is 01:12:30 girls. She did 17 and they were beautiful. Yeah. She, she was pretty awesome. So for people who are coming in off the street, let's just for the sake of argument, say there are 35 former athletes, men and women are the training approaches the same. Yes. Got it. Okay. So no modifications needed one way or the other. I've been very impressed with some of the female trainees I've seen on your Facebook and Instagram who, and seen in person, quite frankly, at Awaken in Denver, who are able to do a slow, and when I say slow, I mean almost slow motion slow muscle-up from a dead hang on the rings L-sit up to perfect dip position maintaining L-sit and back down. It's really inspiring and impressive. Okay, here's one for you. And we only have a couple left and then we'll come to a close. But this is a question from Holly.

Starting point is 01:13:37 I'm feeling a little nervous here. All right. Coach Sommer, my boyfriend is also a gymnastics coach. What is the most effective way to handle gymnastics coaches when they get cocky and condescending? How do people, how do people best handle you? Thanks in advance. There, there, there are no solution for that. Go date a musician. Oh man. Uh, so here's, here's a question and this is, and this is a common question. And there's talking about some of the gymnastics training that he's doing. The problem I tend to have is that a lot of the focus, the drills focus on static holds, at least in the earlier stages. Is there a good way to get into gymnastics that is dynamic and fun, more like a CrossFit variation that is geared toward entertaining workouts? And he says,

Starting point is 01:14:43 I don't like CrossFit, but I can't deny their programs have a lot of variety and stay fresh. Doing planches for three minutes a day every day is really boring, gets demoralizing when progress is slow or even steady. Now, I just wanted to, then somebody gets into it. I was gonna say, he's not doing my program. Well, so the, no, no, no.

Starting point is 01:15:02 So even if he's not, yeah, this, this is, I want you to talk about what people can do to keep morale high. And so he's just talking about maintaining, not just from sort of an optimal training standpoint, but from an emotional perspective. Sure. Right. Well, they probably won't like my answer.

Starting point is 01:15:24 They probably won't like my answer. They probably won't like my answer. It depends on how committed they are to getting results. of athletes, two types of people who do fitness. There are those with an immature attitude, and there are those with a mature attitude. And it's not necessarily a chronological division. So an immature attitude is someone who wants to be entertained. They want that immediate gratification. I want what I want, and I want it right now. The mature attitude is I'm going aspiring to, the longer the delay there's going to be in that gratification. Now, a beginner struggles with it because they've not yet had a taste of success. So someone who's been successful has told them, if you keep nose to the grindstone, these great things will happen.

Starting point is 01:16:41 You're like, uh-huh. Yeah, sure. I know you're full of shit. I know you're full of shit. This sucks. This is so boring. Once someone gets that first taste of success though, they, they got a little stronger. They lost some weight. They built endurance. They've got more mobility. They get to move to a new exercise. Oh, wow. This, this worked. Cool. Cool. Okay. Awesome. Well, I'm now I'm going to do it again. And it just keeps compiling and you just learn over time. What I would like them to appreciate is that Olympics are getting ready to go on right now. Now, one person is there at the Olympic Games because they

Starting point is 01:17:22 spent all their training being entertained. Not one of them, not a single one, not just at this Olympics ever. So if you want moderate results or you just want to just kind of, you know, do a little bit and be here or there, then bounce programs all you want. Bounce programs all you want. But if you want to actually affect change on the body, you want to remodel tissue, you want to increase your range of motion, correct mobility deficits, you want to get stronger, you want to lose some fat, you want to get your core dialed in, right? So you don't have that big gut hanging over the belly. It took time to break it. It's going to take time to fix it. And we're

Starting point is 01:18:06 looking at a minimum of six, seven, eight months, you know, to make a nice solid start. Well, one thing I would also point out to folks is that there seems to be, and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this coach, because maybe it's just my experience and maybe it's some type of delusion that I'm having, but I made quite a bit of progress, like I mentioned with the J curl and some of these other weighted movements and unweighted movements, but there were some that just would not, they wouldn't, or didn't feel like they were progressing at all. And then about a month ago, when I was overseas, I did a stretching workout, and it seemed like almost overnight,

Starting point is 01:18:53 everything had leapt forward like 30%. And it was just nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then all of a sudden, it was enough. It was like I was stuck in between the gears, and I suddenly got into the next gear. And it was at about the six-month point for some of these movements. Is that common that people will just like one week, they who feels like, God, I'm not getting anywhere. I'm not getting anywhere. You're not getting anywhere. But it's just the body adjusting.

Starting point is 01:19:31 It's just the body retooling. Things are progressing, but they're progressing at such a subliminal level that they're not even aware of it. You know, something, think of it as there's just one, a lot of times it's just one little thing that's kind of throwing a kink in the wheel. It just needs one little muscle to get caught up and then everything else can go forward. And it's just being, being patient. I think sometimes it helps, it helps for people to understand that this training, working out, fitness, whether it's GST with me, whether it's CrossFit, whether it's tennis, whether it's just hiking in the mountains, it doesn't matter. This is a lifetime deal that biologically your body is either on or it's off. It's either healthy and thriving, growing, or it's dying.

Starting point is 01:20:35 It's decaying. There is no in between. There is no treading water. This isn't a painting that you made. You start it and you can leave it alone and walk away for six months and come back and pick up where you were. Your body is not that way. You've got a couple of days after a training and then if you aren't coming back and using your body, then as far as your body's concerned, that strength you've built, that mobility you've built, the athleticism you've had is

Starting point is 01:21:02 unnecessary to your survival and it's going to start breaking it down because it's expensive to maintain. You know, you have to feed all that muscle. You have to feed that metabolism and your body thinks it's not necessary. And that's where the decay comes in. So you've got to whatever flavor their fitness that they enjoy. This is a lifetime gig. They have to go out and do something. There is no escape. So there is no escape from Coach Summer, people. How many times do I have to tell you? And I wanted to wrap up, actually. I pulled this up. I saved this in Evernote because I wanted to have it at my fingertips. No, not at my fingertips is like blackmail material but rather that's what you said earlier

Starting point is 01:21:47 don't you cross me coach summer uh the i sent you an email because i don't want people to think that i'm just setting up the pins and uh knocking them all down every day just hitting home runs every time i get up to plate uh I sent an email to you a few months ago because I was very frustrated with something called, particularly frustrated, and I've had multiple points of frustration, but particularly frustrated with something called straddle L extensions, which in my workout journal, I nicknamed, I shortened to frog spaz because that's what videos of me looked like. And I'm not going to read the whole email because it's a decent length, but I'll just read a portion of it, which is the following. Dealing with the temporary

Starting point is 01:22:40 frustration of not making progress is an integral part of the path towards excellence. In fact, it is essential and something that every single elite athlete has had to learn to deal with. If the pursuit of excellent was easy, everyone would do it. In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. And I'm not starting this email where it started, but unreasonable expectations time-wise resulting in unnecessary frustration due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process. The secret is to show up, do the work, go home. A blue-collar work ethic married to an indomitable will, it is literally that simple.

Starting point is 01:23:14 Nothing interferes, nothing can sway you from your purpose. Once the decision is made, simply refuse to budge, refuse to compromise. I'm an eloquent bastard. Yeah, you are an eloquent bastard yeah you're an eloquent eloquent young man sir uh and so i think i think that's a good place to wrap up this round to uh coaches there any particular social profiles or sites that you'd like people to check out okay let. Let's see. Obviously we have a, uh, Tim Ferris landing page, domestic bodies.com slash Tim. Uh, Tim has asked that, uh, we're going to, we're going to update for you guys and, uh, put some more material on there, uh, that will in turn take you to,

Starting point is 01:24:01 uh, kind of a curriculum page, letting you know, you know, what are the stages of preparation? What support are available to you? You know, as you work your way through a GB course, check out our Facebook page, gymnasticbodies.com. A lot of great stuff on there. Check out my personal page on Facebook, Christopher Summer. Good gymnastic stuff. Occasional just kind of crazy stuff thrown in there as well. But you guys are used to that from Tim's page. And people can also check out your YouTube page, which is youtube.com forward slash gymnastic bodies for people who are curious about the Russian dips. There's a video of the Russian dips right there. Uh, Russian dips in L sit, you can find it. If you go to the videos

Starting point is 01:24:51 page, it's maybe four rows down how to use gymnastics rings, uh, standing straddle press. The weighted Pike stretch that we talked about is also on that page. Lots of good stuff and lots of exercises that I have also used already up to this point, like the lat flies, which are a really cool exercise. Excellent. Yeah, lat flies, just to throw the image out there, imagine doing a wide grip pull-up to the point that your head is just below the bar

Starting point is 01:25:24 and your arms at the elbow are bent at 90 degrees. And then you're moving your torso, your chest forward and backward. I mean, that's a very primitive description, but maybe, maybe, maybe a hanging peck deck. Yes, exactly. It's like a hanging, you're hanging from pull-up bar, but you look like you're sitting in a peck deck and then you're moving your torso back and forth. Uh, that's a, that's a killer exercise. Uh, coach, I really appreciate the time as usual. Thank you, Tim. And I'm going to get back to training this evening, uh, and continue my stretch series. And I'm going to go get a heat pack to work on this wrist that I have mangled in my own stupidity. Paris is dangerous.

Starting point is 01:26:12 You got to keep an eye. I was focusing too much on the croissants and not enough on proper training. But coach, as always, thank you very much. And to everybody listening for show notes, as always, you can find links to things that we've mentioned at 4hourbody.com. You can go to 4hourbodyalso.com if you want to see my second book, but you can go to 4hourworkweek.com forward slash podcast. And until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off.

Starting point is 01:26:47 Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do.

Starting point is 01:27:18 It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to 4hourworkweek.com. That's 4hourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #180: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training, Part Two — Home Equipment, Weighted Stretches, and Muscle-Ups

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Pet Camera - EBO Air 2

The Tim Ferriss Show - #180: The Secrets of Gymnastic Strength Training, Part Two — Home Equipment, Weighted Stretches, and Muscle-Ups

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.