Gymnastics Before Weightlifting...

Have you ever hit a wall with your strength development for weightlifting? Wondered why you just can’t receive a certain weight in the front rack or overhead in the snatch?

Well, maybe you've been focusing too much on weightlifting and neglecting bodyweight strength, aka gymnastics.

Gymnastics requires full ranges of motion and a very high level of strength to create control and tension in all movements. Nothing a gymnast does displays a lack of control; if it does, points are deducted. While much of the flexibility and years of perfecting movement come at a young age, it’s shortsighted to use this as an excuse for not putting in the effort toward mastery in CrossFit.

I started CrossFit at the age of 28. I'm now 43, and like many, I struggled with ranges of motion. My squat was terrible, and years of bodybuilding with little attention to stretching or mobility had me suffering when it came to olympic weightlifting and anything requiring full active range of motion. I had plenty of strength—could do a strict ring muscle-up on the first attempt after being shown what a muscle was. I could pull a heavy weight from the floor and push press with the best of them. However, it took me years to build my mobility to a point where I could snatch and clean and jerk well.

For a number of years, I worked hard on my lifting, putting in extra hours in the gym daily along with my normal CrossFit workouts. I was a full-time firefighter and am currently an affiliate owner and coach of 14 years. I built some respectable numbers: a 106kg snatch and a 132kg clean & jerk at a bodyweight of 75kg. Not elite by any means but above average in the world of CrossFit, and to be honest, it was hard work getting there.

In recent years, I have stepped back from competing in CrossFit. I now use it much like it was designed, one workout a day. However, there has been one small change to my focus and approach: gymnastics.

I have been working for The Gymnastics Course for a few years, originally assisting and demoing on the L1 to now leading both the L1 and L2 Gymnastics Courses. If you have ever been to a CrossFit Gymnastics or The Gymnastics Course seminar, you will have noticed the virtuosity in which the coaches move, my gymnastics skills within the current confines of CrossFit were good, 30 Ring Muscle ups in 2:34 good. I thought I moved okay when I joined the Gymnastics Seminar Staff, but RX’ing the movements and performing them with mastery are two entirely different things. To deliver a better experience to attendees, I needed to develop my movement quality even further.

My training then consisted of adding in gymnastics development, both in movement quality and range of motion. I needed to increase my flexibility and mobility to get into positions to do the movements I wanted to do. Strength was no longer enough; I had to be strong and flexible.

With all this focus on gymnastics, my extra time in the gym, maybe 30 minutes before or after class, was consumed, and time on the barbell decreased significantly. I would do barbell movements in class and maybe a little extra squatting once a week, but that was pretty much it. Satisfied with my advancements in gymnastics, I was okay to let my olympic lifting numbers slide back. For about six months, I didn’t even snatch due to a shoulder niggle from trying to snatch heavy one training session.

My gymnastics developed, and I was happy with my progress—L-sit to press to handstand, glide kips, hip circles, bucket kips, uprises on P-bars, levers, forwards and backwards rolls on the rings, etc. Coupled with increased ranges of motion through thoracic mobility work, including bridges, hamstring flexibility via straddle and pancake stretching, hip mobility, and so on, I was feeling pretty good. I thought it was about time to bring back some lifting. "This might be a tough road back," I thought, as it took so much effort to get my numbers up originally.

I started Olympic lifting again twice a week, snatching one day and clean and jerking another. Weirdly, it felt good and relatively light. Within two weeks, I was snatching 90% of my 1RM and cleaning roughly the same. I couldn’t figure it out. How could this be when I had been doing next to nothing?

Now, I am a CrossFit Level 3 Certified Trainer and have been for about seven years. I was a PT before being a CrossFit Coach and have owned an affiliate for 14 years, I am credited to a national coaching level for weightlifting in Australia. I understand strength and conditioning and the transference of different training methods, but I am also aware of specificity and what's needed to produce heavy lifts in weightlifting. I was certainly not applying specificity.

Within four weeks of training snatch once a week (4 or 5 actual snatch sessions), I snatched 100kg, which for me is heavy. Don’t forget I am a 43-year-old who weighs 75kg and hadn’t lifted for six months prior to getting back into one session a week. Last night, I power cleaned 130kg (it was borderline squat), which is a 2.5kg PR. This was done as part of a 3-2-1-1-1 in a class with about 15 minutes on the clock. I have not hit a power clean PR for at least four years.

So what am I saying? Well, even given my knowledge as a coach and my experience in the field of both weightlifting and gymnastics, I was shocked. The only thing I can chalk it up to is training strength in both static and dynamic positions through increased ranges.

We have three movements in weightlifting: snatch, clean, and jerk. Gymnastics has hundreds. You have one piece of equipment on the platform (the barbell) and eight different apparatus in gymnastics. Yes, we can consider different accessory movements in weightlifting, but if we also do that in gymnastics, we are looking at maybe 200 for weightlifting and 2,500 for gymnastics. Yet I love weightlifting; this is not a condemnation of weightlifting.

There is a reason gymnastics comes before weightlifting in CrossFit’s theoretical hierarchy of development, and I may have also stumbled across some anecdotal proof supporting further gymnastics development beyond the normal competence of Rx movements as we know them.

Training gymnastics forces you to work through limitations in mobility and flexibility, or you simply cannot complete the movement. Lack overhead range? Good luck handstand walking. Lack shoulder extension? Let me guess you struggle with chest-to-bar. No hamstring flexibility? I see that big push-away bent-leg toe-to-bar you have.

These seemingly small limitations can be ground through in lifting, and you can still be somewhat successful. I could still snatch and overhead squat. I could clean and jerk and do it well enough to hang with the best on the leaderboard. I could also do the basic gymnastics movements well enough to keep most competitors at bay. Yet, I was missing a big part of development I had neglected: virtuosity. It was only when I looked to perfect my movement that I found holes and limitations. I couldn’t make my movements look like I wanted to without increasing range. When I increased range, I had to develop strength in those ranges. I had to revisit the fundamentals, static holds in positions, and eccentrics.

The benefit of doing this has been unparalleled in all my CrossFit training to date. Yes, I had put in the time in lifting over years, and that movement stays with you. However, to PR lifts without training them at the age of 43, well, that's something else.

Tips for You:

1. Go Back to the Fundamentals: Static holds like L-sits, Hang in Hollow and eccentrics.

2. Train Position and Perfection: Not just more volume and intensity. Sometimes morepractice is needed rather than more training.

3. Treat Mobility and Flexibility as Training: Practice daily, not just 10 minutes on aThursday for your recovery session.

4. Attend a Gymnastics Course: by CrossFit Approved Provider “The Gymnastics Course”This course has the power to transform your coaching and athletic development.

Mistakes to Avoid:

1. Training to Train and Do More Volume: The best program is a waste of time if themovements are not executed with mastery.

2. Avoiding the Difficult Movements: These are the ones you need to practice the most.

3. RX is not the goal: While RX is useful for competition and assessing progress, it means things can be measurable and repeatable, it says nothing about movement quality or virtuosity.

4. Looking at CrossFit Games Athletes as Pinnacles of Good Movement: While they are incredible athletes, no Games athlete will compete at the Olympics for gymnastics.

5. Over use or reliance on the barbell: Gymnastics training has the power to transform your lifting but the inverse is not true.

As I sit back and write this, I realise how seemingly obvious this is. "No shit, Rob, increase your range of motion and get stronger with bodyweight movements, and you get better." Yet, ask yourself how many times you had your hands on a barbell this last week versus the rings for anything but a muscle-up, or when you last did a bridge or an L-sit or traversed a set of P-bars?

Then possibly take a risk of lifting less and doing more gymnastics. You never know; it could bejust what’s needed to progress your weightlifting.

Rob Noy CF - L3
The Gymnastics Course Lead Educator, L1 & L2
Birdbox Coaching Development Lead Educator
Owner - CrossFit CrossAxed
@robnoy_coach