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GymABstics was created by gymnasts Jay and Andy Thornton, and some experts from Lone Godbersen, for the purpose of educating those not familiar with gymnastics based training on how easy it is to get an intense workout without the use of any equipment. The program takes you through 6 months of bodyweight only exercises focusing on gymnastics movements and starts at a beginner level and works up to advanced workouts. We received a lot of positive feedback from our GymABstics program and helped many people achieve some long awaited fitness goals.

After the release of our program, we also started creating some short video tips on YouTube on bodyweight strength elements on various pieces of gymnastics training equipment such as the rings and parallettes. Viewers seems very interested in this content and asked many questions on various techniques and also requested to see more.

I decided to take a it a little further and created a Ring Strength Fitness Guide that demonstrated beginner through advanced strength elements with a focus on proper technique. I also put the guide in video form which has gained almost 53,000 views. You can check out this video below:

So, the combination of a successful GymABstics program and the demand for more tutorials on the gymnastics movements on rings and parallettes inspired us to take the GymABstics program further.

As I mentioned before, the 6 months of the program focused completely on movements that were done without using any equipment. We thought it fitting to build on this and develop the second 6 months of GymABstics, incorporating the two basic pieces of equipment that are very popular with gymnastics home use training – the parallettes and rings.

I get approached all the time from athletes curious about gymnastics training who want to be able to do L sits or press handstands or an iron cross on rings. People are intrigued by the strength that gymnasts possess and want to know how they can get there too. The new GymABstics program will do just that. It will build on top of the strength that has been developed from the first program and start to incorporate skills and training on the parallettes and rings that will help to acquire some of those gymnastics elements you never thought you would be able to do. You can expect the workouts to be high intensity, creative and fun!

The second 6 months of GymABstics is in the works and we are very excited about it. Why are we telling you about it now. Well, since the second program builds on the first, it gives you an opportunity to get started on your training if you haven’t completed the first 6 months. Also, as I mentioned, the second 6 months will incorporate the parallettes and the rings, so you will have some time to get those and get acquainted with them. Both of them include an electronic training guide to help you understand some of the basics and get you started.

So, get ready! GymABstics Volume 2 is coming soon!

Brad Thornton

Strength & Fitness Team Lead

www.GymnasticsStrength.com

www.GymABstics.com

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Somehow, I manage to get it done.

When you go out on a four day trip with an airline job, you are typically paired with another pilot for the entire four days. You spend a lot of time in a confined space with a perfect stranger trying to muster up any form of interesting conversation you can. Nine times out of ten, at some point I will get asked the question, “what do you do to stay in shape?”

The question is common because of the difficulty to maintain a healthy lifestyle with my job as well as staying motivated enough to get in solid workouts. I’m not the only one with a challenging schedule so I know this is a tough for a lot of folks. Throw kids in to the mix and…yeah, it’s hard!

I wrote an article recently on working out and why so many people dread going to practice or the gym. It doesn’t matter much even if you ladies made it to the gym in ladies walking sandals. Just do not miss it. In the article, I also touched a little on how I like to train and what keeps me excited and motivated each day to go in to the gym.  Since I do often get asked the question about training, I thought it would be helpful to go in to a little more detail and actually show a full example of one of my workouts this week.

The best way I can describe my workout is one of the best testosterone boosters in the mornings and a high intensity combination of strength training and cardio that varies every single day. It involves a lot of core strength, gymnastics, body weight exercises, yoga and some weight use as well.

It’s sort of a blend of Insanity and Crossfit without the heavy Olympic lifting and more emphasis on gymnastics, for those who are also looking to loose some weight with this program we will like you to check this site and get the best fat burner in the market to help you. Any resting is typically done in some sort of strength hold like a plank or hollow hold. To give you an idea of what a typical workout may look like, I’ve provided an example below.

My workout starts with the Resurge ingredients and for this particular day ended up looking like 8 rounds of an intense short interval of cardio followed by several exercises of strength. I would catch my breath slightly as I transitioned from the cardio portion to the strength exercises. I didn’t plan any of this going in, I just started, added on, and this is how it ended up. Each round flows right to the next.

Round 1:

• One lap around the track (.25 miles) as fast as I could run it
• 20 pull-ups
• 30 dips
• 35 push-ups

Round 2:

• One lap around the track (.25 miles) as fast as I could run it
• 10 Burpees
• 10 hanging toes to the bar
• 15 pull-ups
• 25 dips

Round 3:

• One lap around the track (.25 miles) as fast as I could run it
• 20 inclined sit-ups
• 20 Handstand push ups
• 30 pushups

Round 4:

• Row machine going as hard as possible for 2 minutes
• 20 V-ups
• 12 up and ups (push-up and then at top of the push up you thrust your hips to the ceiling in to a pike position)
• 10 burpees
• 30 rapid mountain climbers

Round 5:

• 10 sprints on the basketball court
• 15 handstand pushups
• 30 pushups
• 30 second hollow hold

Round 6:

• 8 laps around the basketball court as fast as possible
• 20 squat jumps
• 10 burpees
• 10 up and ups

Round 7:

• Utilized flight of stairs in the gym and sprinted up 10 times
• 15 pull-ups
• 1 minute bridge hold, 30 second side plank hold, 30 second side plank hold
• 20 sit-ups

Round 8:

• 1.5 laps around the track as fast as I could
• 30 dips
• 20 lunge jumps
• 20 conditioning rope jumps with arm swing
• 30 pushups

Vomit…

As I mentioned in my previous article, I don’t think about what I’m going to do any given day. If I had looked at that workout on paper that morning, I think I would have stressed over the thought of having to go do it. The first thing I literally think about is putting on my gym clothes and I go from there. Every step after just gets me more in the workout mood and gets the blood flowing. I love the idea of creating on the fly and doing what feels right at the time. This was the whole idea of creating our Ring Strength Fitness Guide, Medicine Ball Training Guide and Parallette Training Guide. It was to provide you with unique exercises that you can use and arrange however you want to create an intense workout.

Remember, intensity is a relative term when working out. Anyone can do this type of training. It doesn’t matter if you can only do a fraction of the workout I did above, if you are pushing yourself to the point of being completely uncomfortable and sucking wind, you are doing things right. If you leave the gym still looking good, you didn’t go hard enough.

You should look like a train-wreck.

Keep things fresh and ever changing and keep your mind focused on one thing at a time and then add on whatever feels right. Motivation comes from within so your mindset plays a huge role.

Tip 1 to Help With Extra Motivation: In addition to the things mentioned above to get you started towards that workout, try this little strategy my wife and I use. We go to the gym together with the mindset I’ve written about. We start off separate from each other in the gym (or home, park etc), doing our own thing and get after it pretty hard. We agree that we will meet up sometime during the workout when we both are starting to feel fatigued and finish the workout together. That meet up point gives us some extra motivation mid workout and gives us a second wind because we really love pushing each other. At this point we basically play follow the leader until we are exhausted. This brings me to my second tip with your partner.

Tip 2: Once my wife and I meet up, we swap off picking the next exercise, getting as creative as possible. Sometimes it’s a combo of things or just one, but we never know what’s coming next. It’s all out craziness, with non stop (with a sip of water while running to the next thing) exercise after exercise. I love this and it really helps with keeping me going and making it fun. It also typically extends my workout far beyond what I would do alone.

Tip 3: If you don’t have a partner and you don’t think you have the will power to make yourself do all of this, have someone tell you what to do. Of course you could use a trainer to do this or there are less expensive alternatives. We created the GymABstics strength series specifically for people who want an extra push. It’s the same idea. They are intense workouts that we are taking you through so you don’t know what’s coming next. It keeps that element of surprise and excitement and that’s what is all about.

Train hard and have fun!

Email me at brad@american-gymnast.com you have any questions.

Brad Thornton

Strength & Fitness Team Lead

www.GymnasticsStrength.com

The post Tips to Reignite the Fire in Your Workouts appeared first on American Gymnast and Ninja.

If you think you are alone, don’t fret, you definitely aren’t. I’m here to tell you it’s perfectly normal to have negative feelings and possibly dread practice, training or going in for a workout. While this may not be the most desirable feelings to have towards something you are dedicating a lot of energy to, it doesn’t necessarily mean you dislike what you are doing. It just means your mindset going in might need some readjusting.

Let’s consider first where this dread may come from.

Stress/Overwhelming: You wake up in the morning, and your first thought is “oh man, I need to put in at least a 10 mile run today,” or “ugh!, coach said we are doing strength circuits for an hour at the end of practice today.”

Immediately your brain is trying to process everything you have to accomplish in your workout that day and that can be quite stressful or overwhelming. You are thinking already of the end result, which includes everything leading up to it. This is a lot for anyone to mentally handle.

Solution: Focus on the process as it comes to you instead of everything you think you need to accomplish. Literally put your head in the moment and do the first thing that leads up to that ending. Try not to go in to your day with some big, elaborate plan with your training. All you have to do is start the process with something and then build on top of it. This will help alleviate those overwhelming feelings of knowing you have a huge list of training items to knock out that day.

When I wake up, I don’t have a plan at all. I just know I’m going to train and I literally start the process by getting dressed for my workout. At this point, I’m still not thinking of what I have to do. I drive myself to the gym, stretch and then immediately just do something. I may go in to the basketball court area and just start running or jump up on a pull up bar. I’m not thinking, just doing. I still don’t know what’s coming next, but I just continue to build on what I did before. Before you know it, it’s been an hour, you are exhausted and you feel great. If I had looked at a list of everything on paper of what I did before my workout, I would have thought about it and stressed over it until it was complete.

Fear: Fearing anything you may be working on that day can certainly make anyone lose their excitement for training. Fear is one of the worst enemies to an athlete’s confidence and progress. I remember when I was training for my first triathlon, I developed a slight fear of the swim portion and really began to dread training for it. It got to where I would even start to think about my swim day the night before and would lose sleep over it.

Solution: Sit down and think and really get to the bottom of what specifically is causing your fear. Typically if there is something you are afraid of, you are probably not proficient at that particular thing or skill. More than likely, if you were to see improvement in that area, you would probably start to feel a little more comfortable. Once you have identified where your fear lies, break that skill or apparatus or whatever it may be down in to parts and try to find small “safe” ways to improve and train for it.

For Example: I had to figure out what was going on with my swim, so I did in fact take some time to try to figure out where this fear was coming from. I discovered that as I began to tire in my swim, I would begin to struggle with my breathing technique and would eventually almost panic. When this happened, I would immediately resort to a breaststroke to try to recover. Not exactly the best way to to swim if you are trying to be competitive in a race.

To fix the problem, I started working on some comfortable ways to work on my breathing technique. I used paddle boards, did some basic breathing techniques while stationary etc. I didn’t mind going to train for this because it seemed non-threatening to me. Eventually, I began to get more comfortable with it and slowly started to enjoy my swim training simply because I started to see improvements.

Repetition: This one may not apply to everyone. If you are involved in training where you are being coached, it is the coach’s responsibility to make each day interesting, different and challenging. However, if you are on your own and maybe just hitting the gym or training for a triathlon without a coach, sometimes you can get stuck in the proverbial rut. Things become dull and uninteresting simply because you are repeating a lot of the same things over and over.

Solution: Change! I know it sounds ridiculously simple and it is really, but sometimes people get comfortable or complacent and don’t see the need to go try something different. The thought process is that it has worked in the past so there is no reason to do things differently. Not true!

I remember my aunt and I were chatting one day about her recent dedication to going to the gym. She had been going for a few months and had already developed a sense of dread each day. She was not enjoying it at all. I asked her what she was doing in her workouts. She explained that each day she would go to the gym, hop on the treadmill, increase the incline and do a brisk walk for 45 minutes. It was the same thing every single day. Eventually, this would drive anyone mad.

I took her to the gym the next day and showed her many different ways to change up her routine and keep things fresh and I could tell she had a new found excitement immediately. The point is, each day should be completely different than the one before. Change the location if you need to. Instead of the treadmill at the gym one day, find a local mountain or walking trail. Go from the pool, to a lake nearby for a swim.

I even found myself back in college stuck in the cyclical weight training routine. Each week looked very similar with chest day, legs day, back and bicep day, repeat. Ahhhhh! I cringe when I think of my old ways. I got so sick of it! Finally, I discovered what works for me. I literally go in the gym without a clue of what I’m going to do and I just get after it with high intensity bodyweight and cardio training. It’s non stop madness and fun with sprints, handstand pushups, box jumps, pull-ups, frog jumps, rowing, cycling and more. Every single day is completely different and I love it.

So before you do something drastic like quitting your sport all together, pay attention to your mindset and how you are training each day and see if you are experiencing some of these common issues. That dread can turn back in to love and excitement and that will put you back on the road to success.

If you are struggling in the gym and need some fresh ideas, don’t hesitate to email me at brad@american-gymnast.com.

Brad Thornton

Strength & Fitness Team Lead

http://www.GymnasticsStrength.com

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