The recent RIO Olympics has been an inspiring series of events on many friends. We saw athletes come together during moments of pain, spectators support sportsmanship, world records broken, and sports we maybe unfamiliar with. I got into gymnastics at the start of the year so it was exciting to see US gymnasts Simone Biles and Sam Mikulak as well as China’s Wang Yan perform incredibly well on stage.
The strength aspect of gymnastics is admirable and something more people should incorporate into their daily fitness program. If we did more bodyweight training, and with good form, people would be healthier and strong.
Here are five great bodyweight exercises you can start with. They will not have you flipping around a horizontal bar, but the moves are fundamental to bodyweight strength. If you get good and enjoy it, then they will lead to more advanced progressions or maybe joining a gym to train them. One day, you may be performing on the parallel bars.
1. Push Up
Source: https://flic.kr/p/4GdmQ4
The standard push-up is where your hands are in beneath your chest, body in a hollow position with core engaged, and toes on the ground. Your elbows stick close to your body rather than flaring out. If you can’t do that, you can get on your knees rather than toes. Once you can do the push up, elevate your feet. There is typewriter push ups where you slide side-to-side and many other fun moves. Eventually you can work towards what you may have seen a gymnast do where only hands touch the ground!
2. Ab Wheel
What I love about the ab wheel is it’s an old piece of strength equipment that has stuck around. It is simple, small, versatile, and it works. Get one because it’s great for a lot of the movements you see in bodyweight and gymnastics. Beginners can start from a knee roll out where you get down on your knees then roll out with the wheel in front until your chest is just above the ground. Ultimately you can get a full standing roll out with one arm! The move is great for planche and nearly anything in gymnastics because it requires ridiculous levels of core strength.
3. Squats
Relative to the rest of the body, gymnasts do not require strong legs. You bet their strength is solid though to perform artistic movements on the floor but it is not focus of the training. I recommend you incorporate squats because it can strengthen your whole posterior chain that leads to better upper body work. If you find the standard air squat simple, move into single-leg squats also known as pistols or the tricky Hawaiian squat where one foot is on your knee as you squat one-legged.
4. Pull-ups
The pull-up is another fundamental move for gymnastics. You may have seen the men’s gymnastic rings performance at Rio. It takes phenomenal strength to get positions like the iron cross where the arms are straight out. You will never get to that stage unless you train on rings for 8 plus years, but the pull up is key to a lot of gymnastic movements. If you struggle with a pull-up, do negatives where you jump up or get someone to boost you, then lower yourself down as slow as possible. When you train for the pull-up, get your chest as high above the bar or rings as you can to help hit the full muscle up position.
5. Handstands
Source: https://flic.kr/p/e2BDjU
Handstands are commonly misconceived as a skill. A lot of skill-work is involved, which you can learn from a good handstand training guide. Yet you will never do a handstand without good shoulder, back, and core strength. The handstand is loved by gymnasts on the parallel bars and women incorporate it to in their high-low bar routine. A good starting point for handstand training is to get the proper shoulder and wrist mobility first then move into holds against the wall. Aim to hold there with good form for 60 seconds before progressing to free standing handstands.
I hope these five bodyweight exercises help you in your sports training and inspire you to get into gymnastic strength training.