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Building The Gymnastic Body: The Science of Gymnastics Strength Training

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Book

195 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

45 people are currently reading
932 people want to read

About the author

Christopher Sommer

10 books8 followers

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5 stars
84 (30%)
4 stars
104 (37%)
3 stars
69 (24%)
2 stars
15 (5%)
1 star
6 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
Profile Image for Joel.
52 reviews23 followers
July 2, 2014
Gymnasts are just about the perfect athletes. They have amazing self-dominance, control, power, poise, balance, coordination, flexibility, strength and general athleticism. For this reason if you go to the 'gym' and are thinking of adding this to your routine- don't. Throw the gym out and do something worthwhile. If you have never done body weight training get Mark Lauren's Bible of Bodyweight training and start there...

Excellent exercise progressions, good evidence based advice, the book gives multiple progressive strength and conditioning tasks to practice and perform but falls short in terms of programming. If it had more explicit information on this then I would rate it more highly. Will investigate the effectiveness of approaches at some point in time*.

*If serious about creating your own gymnastics or strength based routine with body weight movements see Overcoming Gravity.
Profile Image for Mark Melendez.
134 reviews3 followers
April 1, 2018
Great book, teaches the gymnastic strength exercises. Not any advanced moves except the static holds. It's a good book but it just covers the basics, which is why I think it's crazy how it's priced so high at $70+ right now. Not about being cheap but for the price and info provided, I really believe it's a rip-off.

The main thing I liked about this book is that it had photos of each exercise being performed in different ranges of the service's full range of motion.

There's no secret in this book, routine, or plans that justify the price. The author repeatedly tells us stories of how strong and how much his athletes can do. Justifying to us that his method works, which came across as gimmicky.
7 reviews
July 3, 2015
The best body weight training book I've read so far. I've heard good things about 'Overcoming Gravity', but haven't had the pleasure of reading it. My other bodyweight program experience was Convict Conditioning, which was a joke. This boom is written by a real live gymnastics/calisthenics coach, the techniques work.
Profile Image for Demeter77.
21 reviews
October 21, 2014
Awesome book, one of the premier bodyweight-style training programs around in my opinion. This book was far more effective for me than the heavily marketed Convict Conditioning.
The author is the real deal, has succesfully trained high level gymnasts, and his protocols work.
13 reviews
November 7, 2014
Superb bodyweight training as used by gymnasts. The author is a pro who's also successfully coached ranked gymnasts. If you want real life bodyweight training that'll get you results, read this book. For effective strength training in general check out Starting Strength and Tactical Barbell.
Profile Image for Marcus.
9 reviews
June 10, 2015
Okay, this book is the real deal for body weight strength enthusiasts. Skip the 'Convict' fables and get this. This book is for adults.
49 reviews
December 27, 2023
A messy read

I do love gymnastics and the associated god-like level of strength to do with it. However, even though this book had a number of very useful ideas and things I will definitely be incorporating into my own strength work as well as my teaching… The book was ruined by its formatting, and I can read most things… I read Acid House by Irvine Welsh, which was both distasteful and strangely organised, but I guess that was the point…

Essentially a lot of great ideas, ruined by its formatting.
Profile Image for Christoph.
4 reviews
February 18, 2013
Some nice gymnastic progressions, but the programming section was very disappointing and id not explain why some training methods should be used.
Profile Image for Tanvir Muntasim.
1,012 reviews23 followers
January 1, 2015
Full of uncommon insights into how one can train in a very particular way to cultivate strength and flexibility, the gymnastic way.
1 review
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May 29, 2015
just heard about this book and very amazed
Profile Image for Bojan Avramovic.
478 reviews2 followers
March 21, 2019
Sve sto napise jedan od najboljih gimnastickih trenera na svetu je u kategoriji OBAVEZNO PROCITATI
Profile Image for Chris Marks.
2 reviews
October 30, 2012
This makes me hurt. I have many lofty goals now, good thing I have a lot of time to work on it.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews

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