You’ve been working out for over a year now. Your consistency waxes and wanes between 4-5 times a week. You’re eating well and pushing yourself in the workouts.

So why haven’t you learned the gymnastic movements yet?

All you want is to be able to do pull-ups in a workout. 

Or flip up in a freestanding handstand for a few seconds.

Or climb the rope to the top.

Your Guide

You’re not alone. Gymnastics is difficult because you try to compare it to weightlifting, and you can’t. 

In weightlifting, you can modify a lift all the way down to a PVC pipe. You can practice the entire movement by reducing the load to less than 5-lbs, and then steadily increase the weight every day for the rest of your life. This approach helps you continue to practice the technique of each movement every time you lift, regardless of the weight on the bar.

In order to perform a movement in gymnastics, you must be able to lift your body weight. For you, that means you don’t really get to do pull-ups in a workout until you can pull 170-lbs for multiple reps. There’s really not a way for you to reduce the “load” unless you lose weight. Bands can help with that, but there are limitations to using them.

But I don’t tell this to you to say, “Too bad. There is no solution for you.”

Instead, I’ve put together an entire program to help you progress through levels of gymnastics so eventually you accomplish these gymnastic goals.

The Gymnastics Levels

Coach Jefferson is our director over gymnastics training and the coach over the RxFIT program (“Intrepid”). Together we have taken his twenty years of experience in artistic gymnastics and combined it with our experience in fitness gymnastics, to create a “level method” similar to what young competitive gymnasts do. Each level has skills that you must master before moving to the next one — the skills in level 1 are built on in level 2, which then are built on in level 3, etc.

We hold the same sentiment in our gymnastics program as does Coach Nick Sorrel of Brute Gymnastics:

The core of our philosophy is that a strong building is only built on a strong foundation. We hold the basics supreme. 

We preach being comfortable in headstands, maintaining awareness of what every joint is doing at all times and about never settling for mediocrity in even the most mundane of tasks. In our program, no one advances beyond one level for every three weeks. Since our core foundational levels are 1-10 it takes at least 30 weeks to get through foundations. That means in our foundations program you don’t “get to do a muscle up” in 8 months but you do work on them on skill days and in metcons. 

To be successful in fitness you have to adapt and innovate. But you have to be humble and not neglect the basics. Don’t get too cute and don’t take shortcuts. Just work hard and train and coach smart.

Takeaway

 Join RxFIT Intrepid. Start at Level 1. Each week, you’ll learn more skills and become stronger, so that eventually you’re doing far more than just 1 muscle-up or a 25-foot handstand walk.

We’re going to teach you the skills to make you capable of performing any feat with your own bodyweight.

Tyler