Geoffrey Taucer

Here's a vid of some of my favorite exercises:

Yes, if I understand you correctly. They probably won't turn all the way out, but you want them angled outward, because that forces you to lock your arms straight. Nah, the bruising happens. Just gotta get used to it. As you get stronger, you'll probably find yourself holding the rings slightly wider on your supports, which takes some of the pressure off that spot, though. EDIT: here's a video of a few of my favorite exercises:

A good way to work a tucked front lever is to start from an inverted tuck and work your way down. In an inverted tuck, your hips are almost right above your shoulders; when you find the balance point, it takes very little strength at all to hold it there. You can then start lowering your hips towards a tucked front lever. As you get stronger, you can hold the position with your hips lower and lower until they reach the same height as your shoulders -- a true tucked front lever.

Holy fuck. THAT'S AWESOME!

If you're finding them to be this easy, then you already have fairly strong stabilizer muscles To get the most possible out of a ring workout, make sure that whenever you hit a support (ie at the top of every dip), you have your arms locked straight and the rings turned out. I start off all my workouts with 10 muscle ups. I tend to start piking them a bit around number 5, and kipping them a bit around number seven or eight. The idea of a false grip is to have your wrists on top of the rings rather than under them. The best way I can describe it is that it's the grip you have if you put your hands through the rings so your wrists are wresting on them, then pull just your thumb back through to grip the ring. I'll see if I can post a video explanation sometime next week. Just do the planche progressions. I usually do planche push-ups tucked; I can do maybe two or three in a straddle planche, perhaps five on a good day. One thing to keep in mind when looking at the GymnasticBodies website; while he is indeed a genius when it comes to strength and conditioning, he really downplays just how much strength work his kids do. His kids spend SEVERAL HOURS EACH DAY just on conditioning, according to a friend of mine who used to be coached by Sommers. So yes, he gives some great exercises, but don't feel bad if you can't do them as well as the kids in his videos; even most high-level gymnasts aren't as strong as some of those kids.

Paypal $20 to NOSPAMmidgetboysk8@hotmail.com everytime you submit a mix, and it will get posted faster.* *not actually true, but feel free to send me money anyway

Holy shit. Sounds like you're not exactly in the best shape right now, but it also sounds like it could have been a hell of a lot worse. Here's wishing you a speedy recovery.

So far today: I did a brief (half an hour or so) upper-body workout. Did muscle-ups, pull-ups, bulgarian dips, planches (straddled), front levers (straddled), planche push-ups (tucked), front lever pull-ups (tucked), hanging toe-touches, and arch-ups. Sprinted back and forth for 60 seconds. Took a break, got lunch (footlong meatball sub from subway w/lettuce and onions), then came back to the gym and spent 45 minutes working flexibility. I'm getting closer on that left leg split. I may spend some more time working splits later tonight. Haven't done any ring work yet today; I'll most likely save that for tomorrow.

Oh man, I really want to, but I just can't risk getting injured right now. I gotta go real conservative on stuff like that. Maybe once I've retired (again) from gymnastics competition, I'll take up free running.

Went into the gym today, did a bit of tumbling and some cross work on rings. My cross is getting pretty solid, but I still need to work on the maltese and the inverted cross. Did a bunch of ab work as well (which I really haven't been doing enough lately).

In my opinion, 60 seconds is a bit excessive for planches. I'd start working the next difficulty level once you can hold a given position for 45 seconds, if that. Another great exercise for planches (and one not mentioned on Sommers' website) is pressing down from a handstand. Do a handstand, straddle, and try to press down towards a planche. See how close you can get without falling. Of course, this requires that you be able to hold a static handstand -- and I HIGHLY RECCOMEND that anybody wishing to incorporate gymnastics into their training work on handstands, since that is really the one skill that the entire sport is based on.

I know I sound like a conceited asshole saying this, but the main reason I'm hesitant to post a before picture is because I'm afraid it might scare off other potential participants. I'm a gymnast; modesty aside, my before pictures will probably look better than most people's after pictures. That's why I'm asking you whether I should post them. On a different subject, if we have anybody with expertise in building up anaerobic endurance, I'd love to hear from them.

GOAL I want to be able to consistently hit and hold an iron cross, a maltese, and an inverted cross by the end of the summer. Furthermore I'd like to be able to press from either front or back lever to a cross, and from cross to a maltese. I want to bring up my endurance enough to make it through a complete floor routine without watering down any of my passes. (That's about 70 seconds, so it's all anaerobic endurance.) I want to have my left-leg split all the way down. (All 3 would be great, but I think that's unlikely to happen, and the left leg is the one I'm closest on) In short, I want to be able to come out of retirement as a gymnast and compete on floor, vault, and rings again next year. THE PLAN Diet: I'm not going for a specific number of calories, but I really could afford to cut back on the junk food and eat more fruits and vegetables. For the last few months, I've been going through oreos at a rate of about a package every two days. There is no way in hell I'm going to completely give up oreos, but I'll at least try to cut that back to a package a month. I'll also cut down on the gingerbeer and 7-up, and try to stick with milk, orange juice, and good ol' water. I'll try to have fruit or vegetables with every meal. This is definitely something I need to work on. Exercise: For the rings strength: daily work on crosses and malteses, in addition to my normal strength workouts. For endurance, I will try to do windsprints for 70 seconds at least twice each workout. For flexibility, I'll be doing at least 2 minutes total in each split at the end of every workout. (I've been meaning to do this for awhile, and I've kept not doing it.) BTW, should we post pics? So we can have "before" and "after" pics to compare at the end of the summer? EDIT: also, how specific should I be with descriptions of my exercise plan? Should I post my entire strength list? EDIT 2: Same question for my rings goals. Should I post the routine I hope to compete?

I didn't get your PM. Try sending again. If you give me an original piece that I end up using as routine music, I'll see what I can do about getting you money for it. In all likelyhood, however, I won't need any more music than what I already have. This topic is two years old.

Got some videos today of me doing a couple of exercises. I'll see if I can post them tomorrow.

Specific needs have changed, and I probably have all the music I need already (and if we need anything we don't already have, I'll just record it myself; already did that for one of my girls -- she's doing a routine to a cover of Ken's Theme from SSF2) I guess I'm always happy to hear more ideas, though. If you have music you think would work, send it my way.

I'll see what I can do. Actually, once my new ring grips come in (hopefully within the next 2 weeks), I'm planning on doing a bunch of filming. I'll film a few other exercises when I do that.

All you need for planches is an open piece of floor. If you want to try planche push-ups, you'll need a set of parallets, but you can build those yourself with <$15 worth of PVC pipes. Here's a site with instructions on how to build them. For front and back levers, you just need a chinup bar. If there's a playground near where you live, odds are it's got something that will work fine. If you can get access to a set of rings, the first excercize I'd reccomend to work the stabilizers is a simple support. Arms locked straight, rings turned out. You'll be amazed at how hard this is at first, but you'll also be surprised how quickly you'll get the hang of it. From there you can start working dips, muscle ups, etc. One thing that is REALLY important when working gymnastics-type strength skills; MAKE SURE YOU WORK YOUR ROTATOR CUFFS. It's common for gymnasts (especially those working with a less experienced coach) to develop shoulder and back problems due to unbalanced strength. Crosses, planches, presses, and even just supports will tend to pull the shoulders forward, putting strain on the upper back. You have to make sure you work your upper back and rotator cuffs to avoid this. Bes excercise for this is to take a stretch band, tie it to something, stand to the side, and rotate your arm outwards with your elbow tucked in to your side, so you're pulling the band outward. I'll see if I can get pics to demonstrate this if necessary.

Sorry, GT, didn't see your posts until now. I don't know how you set those rings up: I don't own a pair, since I can just go to the gym and use the sets they have there. As far as where to start, it really depends on how strong you are right now and what equipment you have access to. The planche progression and the front lever progression (scroll down on this page) are probably as good a place as any to start; since there's a lot of latitude for adjusting the difficulty of these skills, it should be fairly easy to taylor a workout to your abilities. Planches are especially nice, because a straddle planche just looks so impressive, and it's relatively easy to train. A press handstand is another good one (or even just a handstand). I can't really call myself an expert on training these; I can press pretty well, but right now, none of my boys have strong presses (some of my girls do, but most of them could press before I ever started working with them). However, there's a great article on training presses here, and I plan to start using a lot of these drills with my guys over the summer. In fact, a handstand alone is probably a great place to start. It is a full-body workout, since you have to keep your entire body tight to do it properly -- it's not a particularly taxing full-body workout, once you get the hang of it, but if you work a lot of them you'll definitely feel it in your shoulders and upper-back. At some point this week, I'll post my entire strength and flexibility workouts. Some of the stuff I do requires equipment most of you may not have access to, some of the exercises may be too hard for somebody just starting, but the bulk of it should be doable, on some level, for most people. I'll also post the easier variations of these workouts that I use with my boys. (This is gonna be a challenge for me; I'm used to training in person. More to the point, I'm used to teaching these skills by demonstrating and by spotting)

Holy crap, this topic still exists?

The transition on a muscle up is the real killer. Gymnasticbodies has some good articles on the forums about how to train them. Best way to train the transition, in my opinion, is to try to go a little high on each pull-up (ie start the bottom half of the transition), and a little low on the bottom of each dip (ie start the top part of the transition). Eventually, you can get both to the halfway point, and in putting them together go all the way through the transition. Whenever I go into the gym for a strength workout, first thing I do is a set of 10 muscle-ups.

Hehe. I will definitely say this; for anybody who's already fairly strong and wants to get EXTREMELY strong, rings are an excellent tool. You can get a relatively cheap rings setup at www.ringtraining.com. This site also has a few good training articles. Another site with some great articles on flexibility and (especially) strength as well as some KILLER individual excercizes is www.gymnasticbodies.com. (though much of what's here is probably beyond the level of somebody just starting to work out)

I guess I could participate in this. While I already work out almost every day and am pretty healthy (being a gymnast), I'm trying to get into absolute top shape for next season, so I can come out of retirement and start competing again, and this will be my first season competing at the elite level. Among the events I'd like to compete is one I hadn't (until recently) trained in about six years -- and it's rings, which is pretty much pure strength. I could also benefit from improving my diet, methinks. So I guess I'll join if you guys want me to. I may also be able to provide help in designing a workout, if any of you need it. EDIT: If anybody cares, I'm about 5'6", and about 142 lb.

I think $150 is more than I paid for my my first guitar, which was a Squier Strat.

Beautiful. Definitely a keeper.