Top Gymnastics/Bodyweight Training Mistake

Fitness:
Work capacity across broad time and modal domains

Health:
Work capacity across broad time and modal domains across a lifetime

Strength:
The ability of the body’s systems to gather, process, and deliver oxygen

Flexibility:
The ability to maximize the range of motion at a given joint

Power:
The ability of a muscular unit, or combination of muscular units, to apply maximum force in minimum time

Speed:
The ability to minimize the cycle time of a repeated movement

Coordination:
The ability to combine several distinct movement patterns into a singular distinct movement

Agility:
The ability to minimize transition time from one movement pattern to another

Balance:
The ability to control the placement of the body’s center of gravity in relation to its support base

Accuracy:
The ability to control movement in a given direction or at a given intensity

CrossFit:
Constantly varied, functional movements, performed at high intensity

Nutrition:
Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar.
Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

In order to improve our Fitness and Health over time, we have to be balanced in our capacities and abilities of our 10 General Physical Skills. How we can be more balanced, and improve our capacities and abilities of our 10 General Physical Skills, is by doing CrossFit.

Above the foundations of Nutrition and Metabolic Conditioning in the Theoretical Hierarchy of Development is Gymnastics.

In his CrossFit Journal article titled "Gymnastics and Tumbling,” Greg Glassman wrote in February 2005 highlighting a Naval Aviation Physical Training Manual from 1944 of the same title, that the U.S. Navy was turning to sports coaches instead of academics to train and physically prepare their naval aviators. The immediacy and demands of war required the practical approach of gymnastics and tumbling sports training for preparing for the rigors of combat. The article highlights the many benefits of gymnastics and tumbling training as detailed by the US Navy back then.

Interestingly, tying in our Freedoms of Movement and Thought, the reference that Glassman made in the article, sums up the need for us here to continue to pursue gymnastics and tumbling virtuosity:
”’Jahn, the father of German gymnastics… wanted to create “liberty loving, social and independent thinking…by strengthening the degenerated muscle groups of the body, thus liberating man from the shackles of an environment that made him feeble, that allowed his muscles, and consequently his mental vigor, to decay’ (5).”

With that, when we do CrossFit, we do Gymnastics and Tumbling to improve our Strength, Flexibility, Power, Speed, Coordination, Agility, Balance, and Accuracy: 8 of the 10 General Physical Skills.

When most people do Gymnastics and Tumbling, the most glaring mistake they make is that they do not properly connect their arms and trunk to their hips and legs in coordination when executing movements, resulting in inefficient, ineffective, and often unsafe performances. In other words, they do not maintain midline stability. This mistake does not result in the most optimal improvement in fitness and overall health.

In 3 simple examples of the pull-up, push-up, and air squat, this mistake and the correct execution of them are shown below.

What is missing is being able to assume the proper spinal and hip positions in their static starting body positions, maintaining the necessary and proper alignment(s) of their spines and hips in the dynamic transition, or middle of movements, and then again, maintaining the necessary and proper spinal and hip positions in their static finishing body positions.

These movement faults like in the pull-up, push-up, and air squat, and the correct performances of them are as follows:

1. Pull-up
Incorrect: Hyperextended Spine and Anterior Pelvic Tilt from Start to Finish, throughout the movement
Correct: Holding the Hollow Body position (Flexed Spine and Posterior Pelvic Tilt) from Start to Finish, throughout the movement

2. Push-up
Incorrect: Hyperextended Spine and Anterior Pelvic Tilt from Start to Finish, throughout the movement
Correct: Holding the Hollow Body position (Flexed Spine and Posterior Pelvic Tilt) from Start to Finish, throughout the movement

3. Air Squat
Incorrect: Hyperextended Spine and Anterior Pelvic Tilt at the Start, in the middle of the movement, and Flexed Spine and Posterior Pelvic Tilt at the Finish
Correct: Holding a Neutral Spine and Neutral Pelvis throughout the movement

What would be the proper protocol, or process, to follow for us to work on maintaining the necessary and proper spinal and hip positions in these examples of gymnastics movements?

First, it would be to learn and practice holding the right alignments in static positions, in both the starting and finishing body positions. A good sign that these alignments and body positions are properly assumed is that we can take “full/deep/belly” breaths.

Second, then we can train ourselves in being able to maintain the right spinal and hip positions dynamically, in transitioning between the starting and finishing body positions. Starting with moving very slowly and perceiving the points at which when the alignments and body positions are lost, correcting them quickly, and continuing on in the transitions. We can gradually speed up the transitions over time based on correct execution of them, resulting in more virtuous performances of these movements.

Third, to continually challenge and progress virtuosity of the execution of these movements’ technique, faster speed and more and different positions of weights added to the body can be used.

If we focus on using this system of progressively increasing our ability to maintain spinal and hip positions in the correct body positions in our gymnastics and tumbling movements, then we can more efficiently, effectively, and safely achieve the fitness and health goals we have. By using these skills in combination with proper nutrition and metabolic conditioning, then we start to become as fit and formidable as the naval aviators were in 1944 when training in accordance to the physical training manual that Glassman highlighted in 2005.