‘Building the Gymnastic Body’ by Christopher Sommer – a review

‘Building the Gymnastic Body’ by Christopher Sommer – a review

http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/catalog/

Well after several years (and I do mean years!) of waiting for this book, it has finally arrived. Was it worth the wait, well, yes and no…

For those of you who don’t know Coach Sommer, he is a well respected US gymnastic coach. His students have won numerous State, Regional and National championships and he has been writing bodyweight training articles for Dragondoor (http://www.dragondoor.com/) for several years. He recently launched his own website (http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/) and this book has been promised for a good few years now. The book is along the same lines as the Dragondoor articles; in that it covers the basic progressions needed to build up a gymnastics based strength routine. The book is one of a proposed five part series covering a variety of gymnastic training concepts.

The 5 volumes in the series will be:
‘Building the Gymnastic Body’ – beginner to intermediate basic strength.
‘All Muscle, No Iron’ – advanced ring strength.
‘Liquid Steel’ – joint preparation/active flexibility.
‘The Handstand Chronicles’ – handstand work.
‘The Dynamic Physique’ – dynamic strength.

‘Building the Gymnastic Body’ covers static strength (inc. l-sit, planche, front and back levers), upper body pressing (inc. pushups, dips, handstand pushups and multi-plane pressing exercises), upper body pulling (inc. rows, pullups, ring curls and multi-plane pulling exercises), combined pull and press (inc. muscle-ups), core work (inc. v-ups, hanging leg raises, lower back and obliques) and legs (inc. deck squats, single leg squats and hamstring exercises). Each exercise has a progression from an easy variation, e.g. push-ups, to an advanced variation, that may take years to perfect - planche pushups. Also included in the book are sections on basic equipment and program design. The latter is split into program creation for static strength, basic strength and integrated programs.

The exercise descriptions and progression are excellent, allowing everybody who buys the book a place to start, regardless of current strength levels. I found the program design chapter a little confusing at first glance, however with further reading it became clearer. I would have liked it to have included a sample workout, but it is easy enough to create your own with the information available. Coach Sommer’s website will (hopefully) be listing ‘Workouts of the Day’ in the near future.

The exercises listed do require you to have access to some gymnastic equipment or be able to improvise things. At the very least, you will need a set of gymnastics rings. Other useful items would include a pullup bar, a set of parallettes (or pushup bars) and a dip station (can be improvised with 2 chairs). If you’re really lucky, a set of parallel bars, a pommel horse (or some kind of high bench – for doing the back exercises) and a set of wall bars would solve all your equipment needs.

It should be noted that this book is purely a strength training book and does not cover conditioning or stretching. There will be a volume on joint preparation, ‘Liquid Steel’, but I have no idea when this will be coming out. What this book is not however, is a structured analysis of the scientific principles of gymnastics training There is very little theory in the book, so if you’re expecting something along the lines of Thomas Kurz’s ‘Stretching Scientifically’, or even Ross Enamait’s work, you will be disappointed. However, if you want a comprehensive list of gymnastic techniques for building basic strength and a brief description of how to implement this training this is the book for you.

I would advise anybody thinking of buying ‘Building the Gymnastic Body’ to invest in the accompanying 5 DVDs. These are split into the same categories as the book chapters (legs, upper body pressing and pulling, core and static strength) and provide an invaluable visual reference to the exercises listed. The DVDs are well produced, but suffer due a lack of ease of accessibility of the exercises. It is not possible to ‘play all’ on them and therefore each exercise must be selected and played separately, which makes watching the progressions all the way through a pain in the neck. I have heard some complaints from people who would like to leave the DVDs running in their gyms and, because of this feature, can’t. However, for a home user I feel this lack of ‘play all’ will become less of an issue after the first viewing, as the DVDs will probably be used as reference point when tackling a new exercise progression and so only that exercise will need to be accessed. The DVDs do not contain any descriptions or theory, only short clips of each exercise in the book.

There is another issue that any prospective buyer should be aware of and that is on some of the DVDs, although certain exercises can be accessed and watched, there is no visual text on the menu to let you know they are present. However if the on screen curser disappears between the last named exercise and the ‘back’ arrow, then there is another exercise on the menu and the viewer only has to select ‘play’ and it will come up.

My main criticism of the book is that the author makes constant references to the unpublished volumes in the series, which makes it very frustrating. Hence my noncommittal ‘Was it worth the wait, well, yes and no…’ at the start of this article. Hopefully, once the other volumes are released, it will have been!

I would recommend this book (and DVDs) without hesitation to anybody interested in bodyweight training. I believe that all martial artists can benefit from the exercises covered, but it is particularly relevant to the more acrobatic styles, such as Capoeira, Wu Shu and XMA.

 

Tell me about it. I can't believe how long it took for them to release this book! That's why I find the constant references to the other books in the series really frustrating. In particular, the fact that Coach Sommer states something along the lines that 'joint preparation work should begin from day 1', but the book 'Liquid Steel' has no release date yet. :bang:

I don't know whether the book will be on general release to Amazon. I think it was a special order/limited print run. I had to buy my copy from his website.

It is a really good book though - despite a few faults.

 

For anyone who is interested, the 'Workouts of the Day' are now being posted on Coach Sommer's forum.

http://gymnasticbodies.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=12

 

From what he says on his website, I think that he is still doing the photography for 'Liquid Steel'. I'm really hoping it doesn't take as long to come out as 'Building the Gymnastic Body'!

I thought I had sussed out the program design but looking at the workouts that are being published, I'm confused again!

 

I find Coach Sommer and his information really frustrating at times. :bang: He gives one set of instructions in his books and then different workouts on his website. :bang:

The WODs seem to be aimed at slightly more advanced athletes with access to more equipment than is listed in the books. I have figured out most of what I need to create my own program. The only thing I'm still a little confused over is how to include the static sets in the workout.

I'm not going to bother with the WODs at the moment!

 

The thing that confuses me about the static exercises is how many sets to do. I've placed them in my workout before the FBEs but I'm wondering if I just do 1 set of holds (totalling 60secs) and then do 3x5 of the FBE or, if I'm doing 3x5 of the FBE, do I do 3 sets of static holds as well and if so, do I do 3 sets of 60 secs or split them into say 3 sets of up to 20 secs? :bang:

From the book I worked out that each day you do a different push, pull, leg and core exercise

So for example, if doing a 3 day cycle for leg exercises you would do one day each of deck squats, 1 leg squats and glute ham raises but you would stick with these variations for 8-12 weeks then change exercises to the next progression. The same with pushing, each day do 1 of pushups, dips or ring rows.

I'll dig my plan out when I get home and post it up for you to take a look. I'm going to be doing a 3 day a week gymnastics session and 1 day conventional lifting.

 

I figured that much out from the book. My main query is whether to do 1 set of static holds (60 secs in total) before the FBEs or whether to split the statics into 3 sets and do one before each set of FBEs. So far, I'm planning to do 1 set of 60 secs total, then rest, then do the relevant FBE exercise at 3 x 5.

I'm planning on doing a 3 day gymnastic/1 day conventional lifting program because I enjoy deadlifting etc and want to keep progressing with the lifts. I decided to drop the gymnastic multiplane day from my routine and replace it with conventional lifts because the multiplane exercises are too advanced for me at the moment. I haven't yet figured out the order in which I'm going to do the 4 day cycle. It will depend on what other training (MA) I'm going to be doing.

 

OK, this is the workout plan I have come up with:

Day 1:

Press: Planche variation (Frog Stand), Pushup variation (ring push up)
Pull: Back lever (lower to tuck back lever), Ring Row (feet on ground)
Legs: Front Lever variation (tuck front lever), Deck Squat
Core: L-sit variation (tuck L-sit), v-ups, russian twist, good mornings

Day 2:

Press: Planche variation (Frog Stand), Dip variation (dips)
Pull: Back lever (lower to tuck back lever), Curl variation (inverted ring curl)
Legs: Front Lever variation (tuck front lever), Glute Ham raise
Core: L-sit variation (tuck L-sit), hanging leg lifts, Windshield wipers, arch ups

Day 3:

Press: Planche variation (Frog Stand), Handstand Pushup variation (Box HSPU)
Pull: Back lever (lower to tuck back lever), Pullup variation (jumping)
Legs: Front Lever variation (tuck front lever), 1 leg squat negatives
Core: L-sit variation (tuck L-sit), side to side arch ups, v-ups

Plus 1 day of conventional lifting: deadlifts, squats, benching, overhead pressing, rowing.

Coach Sommer also suggests combining pushing and pulling sets and core and leg sets. So you'd do the press set and go straight to the pull set and repeat for the total number of sets required, then do the leg set and go straight to the core set and repeat for the number of sets required.

I may end up doing 4 days a week or, possibly, 2 days a week and using a 2 week cycle. I'll see how things go and what else I'm doing.

Hope this helps!

 

Nope my static holds total 60secs, but that 60secs is made up of several shorter sets.

I didn't read it that way, but I'll go back and check.

 

I checked on the Gymnastic bodies website, and folk there don't seem to have a problem doing 3 or 4 static holds per session. I guess it depends on what you want to accomplish and what else you're doing. I'll be starting my routine at the end of January and once I've done it for a couple of weeks I'll make a decision on whether to keep it as above or modify it.

 

Will do!

Oh, and it's 'woman' not 'man'!