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It would be a huge error on my part if I did not address these factors. Not everyone reading this book is going to be solely bodyweight training as their main form of strength work. Many people have other goals and sports aside from bodyweight training and are mostly doing it for the pure enjoyment or desire 1o obtain some of the skills
That said, the context I am going to refer to the term "cross training" as participating seriously in other sports or activities that may interfere with workouts. It may be other sports specific skill work, or strength and conditioning work, or whatever else that people do for goals that may interfere with bodyweight training.
The main concept to keep in mind is that you cannot combine another sport's strength and conditioning program and a bodyweight program into one and expect to have good results. The mere fact that we split time between activities will cause us slower gains in each. Combing the two together may easily result in overtraining. Therefore, if you have significant aspirations in other sports, it may be a good idea to take a long look at bodyweight training with your coach to determine if it may negatively impact your performance in the other sport(s). Sometimes it will. Sometimes it will not. Occasionally, with sports such as wrestling or martial arts there are exceptions where bodyweight strength training may be the best way to train to improve ability.
That said, properly run strength and conditioning for other sports may start interfering with workouts. How do we work around this?
If you are serious about your sports, above all else specific sports training comes first. You need to be working on the skills that your sport requires to optimally improve within that sport or activity. If bodyweight specific skill training such as handstands interferes with training time for the other sports then it may need to be eliminated. If your desire is to be good at your sport then you need to be training the skills for that sport when you are fresh, and thus they will take priority of any type of bodyweight training.
Likewise, sports specific strength and conditioning takes precedence over that of bodyweight training. It depends on the sport and quality of the coach how often they will make you workout with weights or if they even use weights at all. It i likely that if you are in a high school or college level sport the coaches will be "their-way-or-the-highway" so there may be no possibilities to compromise at all.
Sometimes you can fit a bodyweight workout or two here and there and sometimes you cannot. I will try to provide some background information on potentially bodyweight workouts into other sports work.
If you are practicing another sport 5 times a week or more it would probably not be prudent to add in any extensive bodyweight strength and conditioning workouts. However, skill based training may still apply such as working on handstands if you desire to work on bodyweight skills
I there is no specific strength and conditioning work then it may be useful to add in bodyweight training. However, as stated before it may be a good idea to consult the coach if you are serious about Your sport to see if there is other potential strength and conditioning that he or she may recommend.
Basically, what I am saying is that when in doubt you should error on the side of eliminating extracurricular workouts. Remember, more is not always better. If you have the time to do such things and are not overtraining or burning out as you can see through the quality of your performances in your sport then maybe you can integrate some bodyweight training into your workout regime.
In some cases, bodyweight training can be extremely effective for different activities such as rock climbing or wrestling so it all depends on the sport and your coach.
Be smart. You cannot do too many things at once. You have to prioritize what you want to do in life otherwise you will become good at nothing.
Parkour is very near and dear to my heart. However, I have very little experience with martial arts, MMA, wrestling, or other sports / athletics in which bodyweight strength training would be used as a method to improve their abilities. Even so, given the nature of structured strength and conditioning, I can discuss how these concepts will apply to Parkour and make similar analogies about how various schedules can be used by practitioners of other sports and/or disciplines.
Parkour, like many other disciplines, consists of three distinet parts. There is a fear / mental component. There is a skill based component where the practitioner needs to lear all of the specific skills related such as vaults, precisions, wall run technique, etc Finally, there is a physical preparation part which typically includes strength and conditioning based on increasing the users abilities towards that discipline. There are many parallels between this and other athletic activities.
Now, bodyweight strength training distinctly falls underneath the umbrella of strength and conditioning to be used to safely and methodically to increase physical abilities. This is consistent with every other major level of organized athletics. Gymnastics do not just practice their skills they perform
large amounts of strength and conditioning. Track and field athletes do not just run they spend time in the weight room improving their strength or explosiveness. Swimmers do not only swim — they spend time in the weight room to improve their power.
This is the fallacy of the recreational athlete who wants to improve. They do not believe in structured strength and conditioning and just practice their given activity. Physical preparation via strength and conditioning is often a separate but integrated part of training. Most sports or disciplines use the weight room; however, bodyweight strength training can be used effectively as well. To be good at [your activity]
You cannot just practice [your activity] and expect to improve optimally.
Across various disciplines there is an interesting phenomena with novice and intermediate athletes. To get anywhere near "optimal" progress about 50% of the time must be spent practicing your sport specific skills and about 50% of the time should be spent on physical preparation via strength and conditioning, mobility work, injury proofing, etc. Thus, this is not just to improve physical ability, but also 1o help prevent against injuries whether catastrophic or overuse.
Therefore, for an emerging discipline such as Parkour, the amount of time split across weekly activities should be split approximately 50/50 for the novice and intermediate practitioner. For example, a sample weekly structure of a split between parkour based skill work and strength work may look like this:
For most beginner and intermediate athletes of any sport I typically like 2-3x a week full body routines depending on how much skill work there is to accomplish per each session. I also typically like 2 full rest days per week. So a modification for the above schedule may put the Wednesday skill work and put it on Saturday instead. This is often a better choice for those who are still in school.
For other sports such as gymnastics the strength and conditioning work will usually go before or at the end of entire practices. Practices may be 4-5x a week: for up to 4-5 hours each. 2-3 hours may be spent on just skill work for events while the rest of the time is spent on flexibility and mobility training addition to the strength and conditioning at the end.
I am not privy to other sports' typical methods of strength and conditioning. However, these are the two typical structures that can be used and modified depending on the volume of skill work and need for physical preparation and mobility.
Strength is the foundation of athletic development. Therefore, strength for these athletes is the most important attribute to develop at novice and intermediate levels because it allows other various attributes to develop optimally. For instance, strength translates very well into other physical attributes that we need to develop for sports: cardiovascular endurance, stamina, flexibility, power, speed, agility, coordination, balance, and accuracy.
This is true even in endurance related sports. Elite marathoners run 4:30 miles 26 times in a row. You cannot run that fast if you do not have a large amount of strength endurance. Even the mile and 1500m world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj had strength and power work in his workout regimen at least 3-4 times a weck even as he was running upwards of 8-9 times for each of those.
My main point is that if you want to get better in your sport you cannot ignore good physical preparation. Weight training is a way to gain physical preparation. However, now that bodyweight strength training has been more fleshed out I think it is a very good alternative to weight training especially in some select sports and/or disciplines.
Should you or should you not do extra cardio? Should or should you not include other exercises or sports that are like cardio such as pick up games of basketball, football, etc.?
Recently, there have been some discussions about cardiovascular work as it applies to clite level gymnasts. The Chinese, Bulgarian, and German gymnastics teams are consistently putting out high level strength gymnasts, especially on rings. We will talk about why cardiovaseular running is used for them, and whether or not the concept applies to us.
Let me use an analogy.
An "acrobic base" which can be derived from below anacrobic threshold running (similar but not as slow as LSD running — long slow distance) is similar to the gas tank in your car. The bigger your aerobic base the more possible "fuel" you have to use. Providing you continually fill it up with high quality gas which is akin to high quality food.
An aerobic base can be built any number of ways through running, cycling, swimming, etc. The somewhat non-specific — you have the bigger gas tank — but the method of training tailors the body structure (e.g. the car's tires, height of the chassis, etc.) to the specific sport, aerobic base
An Indy car would not work as well on an off road race just like an aerobic base built from cycling does not apply over to running as much. Lance Armstrong’s foray into marathon running should show you that there is little crossover. Thus, there is very little transfer from one sport to another even between those
which build aerobic bases. You cannot take someone who is suited for cycling and have them do extremely well in running or vice versa.
What exactly does an aerobic base do?
Clyde Hart, the coach for Baylor's track team and coach of the world record holder Michael Johnson in the 400m event uses a series of tempo runs for his 400m athletes. These tempo runs aim at building an aerobic base for the athlete earlier in the season and slowly progress to more intense intervals in race season. For example, a tempo interval program for a 400m runner may be something akin to §x200m with 1 min rest at a certain tempo such as 285 across which decreases the farther you go into a season.
Remember, a 400m sprint is very glycolytic in energy distribution, but it also has a large oxidative component. For those untrained and even the elite athletes will hit "the wall" where muscular glycogen in the muscles being used during the run. Muscular glycogen is almost depleted at around 300m into the run, A similar thing occurs in marathon running around mile 20-21 where total body glycogen runs out. A significantly greater aerobic base (¢.g. more gas in the gas tank) through the ability to burn more fatty acids helps to prevent the glycogen system from running out too fast.
That is to say that the greater your aerobic base, the faster you can run at your top speed without depleting significant amounts of glycogen. That extra glycogen can then be used nearer to the end of the race to significantly improve your speed down the stretch and subsequently your overall time. Elite endurance athletes can push their lactic acid threshold up near 85-95% of their top speed. For reference, lactic acid threshold is your ability to maintain activity at a percentage of your overall ability. On the other hand, untrained athletes tend to have a lactic acid threshold around 60%. Hence, why you typically see aerobic work pandered around 50-70% of maximal heart rate or maximal ability.
This is why fighters and multi-round event athletes do significantly better with their "wind" (c.g. aerobic base) when they run significantly.
The studies state that 400m sprint for men is about 60/40 anacrobic/aerobic and 50/50 anaerobic/aerobic for females. For males the 800m is 40/60 anacrobic/acrobic. The world record times for the 400m and 800m arc 43s and 1:41 respectively. This means that we can approximate a 50/50 anaerobic/acrobic split which is around 725 (43s + 101s /2) for males. Traditional energy pathway statements say that the glycolytic pathway is used as the predominant pathway for up to 5 minutes. This is clearly not the case at high intensity.
The main conclusion we can get from this is that aerobic base needs to be built for athletes whose sports have interval type activities or that go longer than about 30s which is where the glycolytic wall seems to be.
400m is a particularly interesting case because it requires a semi-hybrid of pure sprinting work and a semi-form of endurance work. Likewise, 800m runners require a lot of sprinting work too, but more of an emphasis on aerobic base. 1500m is a bit more biased towards endurance. Beyond that is pretty much all aerobic base and specialization as evidenced by Gebrselassie's dominance of 5000m all the way to marathon events.
So let us step back and apply this to gymnastics.
Gymnastic routines typically take between about 20-90 or so seconds each. The longest routine that a gymnast would perform is about 755 which is the maximum amount of time allowed for a floor exercise routine. This falls in the range where building a semi-acrobic base is effective (¢.g. > 30s of work which is the 300m mark in a 400m run). So already we know that building some sort of minimal aerobic base will benefit gymnastics training.
Most gymnasts will be in the gym about 5-6 days a week, and even in the compulsories they may be spending upwards of 4.5 hours or more in the gym. Elite athletes will likely be spending 7-8 hours or more. Hence, gymnastics is like a full time job. Thus, since gymnasts need a lot of energy to perform a lot of skill work and the volume of strength and conditioning, you can see how an aerobic base will be helpful especially for recovery from these factors.
Metabolically, most of the aerobic adaptations are occurring in the legs. However, the development of the endurance adaptations can be offset by the presence of lower body strength work and plyometrics in athletes to a certain extent. This is similar the structure of the strength and conditioning programs of 400m runners. I would say this is the reason why the Chinese require that their gymnasts squat at least 2x their bodyweight. This means that there is likely some slightly negative effect on their ability to exert maximal forces for tumbling passes, but it is made up in the fact that the additional aerobic bases now allow them to tumble for 5-6 passes well without dropping from fatigue.
There are less overall aerobic adaptations occurring in the upper body for obvious reasons. Though the increase in ability of the cardiovaseular and pulmonary systems to pump blood for recovery to the upper body does enhance both short term metabolic and overall recovery to the upper body in some fashion. This again allows additional help to allow both skill work volume to increase, strength and conditioning to occur without significant overreaching.
I think the Chinese with their state run program likely have continued some variation of the Russian periodized models for development of strength. Although it cannot be ignored that they have significant amounts of athletes to throw "into the meat grinder." Whatever the case, struetured strength and conditioning is very important to the development of elite ability in any sport. If the Chinese changed their methods 20 years ago smartly you are secing the emergence 10-15 years later with their super strength athletes on rings such as Chen Yibing and Yan Mingyong.
As Talluded to in the introduction of this book, gymnastics programs in the US do not have properly structured strength and conditioning programs. Rather the majority of gyms think you need specific exercise endurance and have their athletes do hundreds of pushups which does not work as effectively as real structured strength and conditioning protocol.
Therefore, my main conclusion is that you do not necessarily need running, but it may help. It helps the national gymnastics team because it enhances their recovery. That is to say it enhances their recovery from being full time athletes where they are doing skill work and strength work for 7-8 hours for 5-6 days aweek
For bodyweight trainees looking to obtain strength moves if you have a more advanced level of strength and regularly train lots of skill work it will probably be effective in enhancing your recovery. Some light cardiovascular work such as 10-20 minutes of steady state running work 2-3 times a week would likely be effective.
For those of us who just do this for fun to obtain cool skills it is up to you whether you do it or not. T do ot think there is going to be any significant benefit to doing it until your strength starts to get more advanced where the volume load of your skill work and strength work starts to become greater. This is where you may need the additional recovery factors.
Atanovice ability level you likely will not see much of an effect, but as long as you keep the intensity low it probably will not hurt
Along those lines I think the best way to quantify what is going to be more along the lines of active recovery work in which it would be beneficial to do is if it leaves you feeling better than when you started. So take that into account if you are going to plan on doing these types of activities on the side.
Basically, the type of work that is being proposed is where you run about 10-20 minutes at sub lactate level threshold which it is say you are comfortable talking while running.
If you have the time and enjoy running then go for it. It is another option which may benefit your workouts. But it is not significantly necessary that I would say you must do it.
For clite level gymnasts whose goal it is not to have strength and skills but to apply them in the context of a routine then extra recovery ability to facilitate practice is a good thing.
Clearly, I believe that if your ultimate goal is strength and aesthetics then most if not all of your training time should be focused on that. Doing any significant amount of aerobic work may ultimately detract from reaching your potential. However, you can argue that almost no one reaches their true potential which requires more than 10-15+ years of solid training. Therefore, a bit of extra recovery may not be 5o bad overall especially if your focus is on strength/aesthetics and longevity.
It is something to think about.
In this chapter we looked at how cross training and cardio apply to bodyweight strength training workouts
We determined that cross training is highly variable depending on the sport, coach, and level of strength and conditioning program that is implemented. If you are interested in learning bodyweight strength progressions and skills I would definitely discuss these types of things with your coach first Additionally, we should tend to error on the side of less rather than more.
We discussed the idea of strength and conditioning as a fundamental aspect of many various sports. Specifically, it is important for not only improving effectively but to also help to fireproof yourself against injuries.
As far as cardio applies it can be beneficial done ata low level of intensity for clite athletes. As it applics to us there may be some benefit, but I will leave that up to you to decide whether you want to do it because you enjoy it or want to extract every last bit out of your performance.
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