Gymnastic strength and grappling

Man, its been a while since i updated this blog.  Sorry for that.  I started a new job recently, have been busy with things, and i guess i have not had alot of thoughts on fitness that i felt were good enough to write about.

Not to long ago i got Building the Gymnastic Body, by Christopher Sommer.  Its a book of basic gymnastic exercise progressions for the fitness enthusiast.  Its not designed to get you to the olympics, but rather to give you some new strength training tools for your toolbox.

I, like most folks i think, have always been amazed by gymnasts.  Their ability to display strength, coordination, flexibility through the multitude movements they must execute is pretty amazing.  The few former gymnasts i have grappled at BJJ class have always been amazingly strong, with insane upper body strength and a good base.  I think the body awareness and strength developed through gymnastics really carries over to grappling.

So a few weeks ago i decided to implement some gymnastics strength movements for my upper body and core strength work.  In a nutshell i am training progressions on the three main static holds in Building the Gymnastic Body.  They are planche, front lever, and back lever.  With each of those you pair one strength movement, like a chin up variation, muscle up, handstand, push up, etc.  So you do a submaximal static hold, then walk over and do your strength movement, rest a minute or so, and repeat the desired amount of sets.  I’d highly recommend getting the book and checking out www.gymnasticbodies.com for more information.  There is alot of variation possible with this type of programming, and its easy to work in core and lower body movements such as squatting, deadlifting, etc.  Perhaps when i get a back lever i will post a picture.

So i am doing that twice a week, training juijitsu at least three times a week, and fitting in a Crossfit Metcon when i can.  I am kind of experimenting how it goes trying to get my conditioning solely from grappling.

Trying to cut a bit of fat, so today is the first day of logging my food.  Its going ok, 2200 calories total, 210 gr of protein, and 36 gr carbs.  140 gr of Fat.  We’ll see how it goes.

Anton