How Gymnasts Get So Freaking Strong!

If you have ever asked yourself why are gymnasts so freaking strong, then you’ve come to the right place. In this video, I am going to show you just how gymnasts and calisthenics athletes are able to show off incredible feats of strength using nothing but their own bodyweight.

What’s up, guys, Jeff Cavaliere, athleanx. com. So today I’m putting myself in the corner, I guess we can call it the coach’s corner,  because I’m going to go over a question and I’m kind of going old school back to the brick wall to  answer it. And the question is, why are gymnasts so frickin strong? And I guess for that matter, we  can throw in there calisthenics, athletes, anybody who really can command their body weight in space.

I mean, look at this guy right here. That’s pretty damn strong. As a matter of fact, the guys in the  background who are lifting weights are in awe of what he’s doing here. And that’s what happens  oftentimes with these impressive calisthenics and bodyweight type exercises. They’re not  really capable of being done by everybody, even the strongest athletes.

So, it begs the  question, how do these guys get so strong? Well, I think you have to actually ask yourself first,  are they actually strong? Right? Are they, by definition of strength, actually strong? We’re talking about the ability to produce force against an external resistance.

And  we’re talking about, more importantly, absolute levels of strength. Look, Jesse’s strong,  he’s gotten way stronger, but he’s not as strong as Thor Bjornsson. And even though Thor outweighs  him by about 1,000 pounds, it’s actually not being used to his advantage when we’re just talking  about absolute strength, the fact is he can lift more than Jesse, he’s stronger than Jesse. But when we look at these movements again, we realize you have to be strong to do them, so is  there a secret? Well, I think the first thing we need to consider is the body weight of the people  doing the exercise.

And oftentimes, yeah, they are going to be lighter guys that do these exercises  but that’s where the concept of their relative strength comes in. They’re able to take that body  weight and command it in space and ways that a lot of us cannot. And certainly there’s other reasons  that cause that but it does demonstrate a level of relative strength that’s pretty damn impressive. Now, that doesn’t mean that at the same guy went and stepped over that trap bar in the  background there that he can actually lift that. I’m just saying, though, it’s an indicator that  their relative strength could be high, but the letter body weights are definitely something that  allows you to move your body in space easier.

Let’s face it, a guy who weighs 260 pounds might  struggle to do more than five or six pull ups. However, with everything, there are exceptions,  and this guy right here certainly dispels the myth that big guys can’t command their body  in space. Which brings us to the second point, and that is leverage. Leverage is one of the  key things that helps us to do what we do, whether it be with weights in the gym or  whether it be with our own body weight. Think about when you do a deadlift.

If you are  even over the bar by an inch further than you should be, your ability to break that bar off  the ground is going to be incredibly challenged. The same thing would be, let’s say, with a bench  press, if your elbows drift even an inch forward or an inch back, your forearms are no longer  centered directly underneath the bar and your ability to produce the force and leverage to get  the bar off your chest is going to be diminished. Now, when it applies to the calisthenics or  the gymnast, they basically have the ability to align and orient their center of mass in a  way that effectively lightens their body weight. Even at these already light body weights, they  can take what’s there and make it lighter and that’s key. If you think of an exercise like  the human flag, a lot of us can’t even get in position to do this.

But they have mastered  the ability to get the perfect amount of push and the perfect amount of pull on that bar behind  them that almost makes their body float up as if it’s effortless. The same thing can be said  about a planche being able to almost balance their body in space as opposed to making their  triceps work like hell to hold them there. And the same thing can be said about any  one arm variation of, let’s say, a pushup or even a pull up, both of these become so much  easier where you know how to manipulate your body in space as you do the exercise, to take advantage  of those leverages to work in your favor. But I always point to this other concept, and that  is the ability to get your stabilizers working for you as well. So not just leverage, but how to  recruit stabilizers to the exercises that you do throughout the exercise, and this is where  calisthenics athletes have mastered the concept.

Because we talk about this thing called  energy leaks. When you do a pull up, how you do the pull, it matters. I’ve gone through  this in great detail in previous videos, so much so that I say if you can just learn to keep your  core tight and your shoulders packed and even your quads contracted, you can remove the looseness  from your body that oftentimes dissipates the force that you’re generating into the bar and robs  you of the pull ups that you’re capable of doing. When you do this properly, the number of pullups  you can do instantly goes up like literally in the next set. And the same thing applies to the  pushup to when you can engage the right muscles and provide stability and rigidity through your  body, it moves more efficiently through space.

The front lever is another example of this  to being able to keep those glutes contracted and the core engaged is going to make your  body float up, particularly if you know how to engage the lats and utilize them as the  main driver of the movement. These are all things that you may not have naturally unless  you work at these exercises and these skills. Now, if you’re in the weight room, how does  this apply? Well, think about a bench press. When was the first time that you actually learned  how to utilize your legs and produce leg drive during the exercise?

When you did, you likely  increase the amount you could lift instantly. Casey Mitchell has been in this gym before, and  he has swarmed that even through just that one leg he can generate an additional 40 of force into his  bench press to increase his overall strength. It’s important so when you learn, though, that this is  actually not just driving the bar up on its own but getting your low back into an arch position  that stabilizes the entire back and assist with keeping your shoulders down and back, it increases  your ability through increased stability. So, the concept is the same, but we need to learn how  to do it through all of the exercises that we do. But I think you have to look into the specific  exercises that oftentimes are being done with gymnasts and body weight athletes.

And we talk about isometrics, there’s a lot of research backing the efficacy of isometrics  in terms of increasing your strength levels, although it’s within a defined range of motion. So, if you’re performing the isometric in let’s say the mid-range position of a curl, well  you’re increasing the strength within that range of the curl and maybe a little bit up and  a little bit down. Well, again, the benefit of bodyweight athletes is that they’re not usually  just performing isometrics in one portion of the range of motion of the exercise. Even just through  the attempts at getting better at the exercise, they’re performing isometric holds for that  temporary body control at different points along the range, which just increases that overall  strength. And most of these calisthenics exercises actually do require full range of motion.

So, the  time under tension that’s generated th