Rare Book Review: Strength Training Without Weights by Don McDaniel

[mickey]

Greetings,

This book was published in 1980 to introduce athletes to training methods used by gymnasts. It recommended doing resistant exercises some with apparatus and others with body weight. The author recommended that the resistance be such that the trainee cannot do more than five repetitions of each exercise. He shows that exercises, the progressions and then, the exercise routine consisting of about 60 to 70 exercises. The apparatus used suggests that either the author was way ahead of the curve or that the science of gymnastic training was way ahead of the curve:

1- Gymnastic Rings

2- Coaster Wheels (now known as Akro Wheels)

3- Surgical Tubing (Did I just hear Frost scream?)

Additional include parallel bars (I guess paralletes would do for some of these exercises) and hanging ropes.

Quite a few of the exercises would require a spotter and a well padded gym.

This book assumes a more than decent level of strength to begin with. It is ambitious and challenging work; yet, the author appears to be simply letting you know what you have to do to get where his guys are.

I wish the author would revisit his work and detail the progressions more.


mickey

[Frost]

no screams from me, i have a set of heavy duty bands and use them several times a week, i just think there is a time and a place for them and they cant replicant what you can do with barbells

[Zenshiite]

mickey,

If you're into that then I recommend Building The Gymnastic Body: The Science of Gymnastics Strength Training by Coach Christopher Somner. He details progressions for some of the more basic holds.

[mickey]

Hi Zenshiite,

I am aware of that book. The book I reviewed popped into my hands while everyone was waiting for Somner's book to come out. I am very apathetic about buying the book because there were many people who were waiting years, myself included, for its arrival only to have it in truncated form. The book was to be comprehensive. According to reviews, it is not; and, there is "more" to come. I don't have the time for that kind of sh!t.

Still, thank you for taking the time to make the recommendation to me.


mickey

[wenshu]

There isn't really anything in the book that isn't already in the original articles Sommer did for Dragon Door or that can be found on the current GB forums.

The only thing in it that someone might need is if they are trying to follow the Workout of the Day programming on the GB site since it's not always easy to find descriptions of TOPS Pulls, etc on the site.

I tried the main programming for a while and found that I wasn't making any progress at all and now just do focused work on a few fundamental exercises with specific short term goals. Progress has been much faster, this group training fad is getting out of control.

Really for the first year or two L-sit, front lever, back lever and controlled muscle up are going to keep you plenty busy and trying to get into all that crazy three planes of movement dynamic exercise stuff is just going to waste your time.

[JamesC]

no screams from me, i have a set of heavy duty bands and use them several times a week, i just think there is a time and a place for them and they cant replicant what you can do with barbells

Been thinking of adding some light pulling work with bands for some shoulder problems i've been having lately.

Any quality bands you can recommend?

[SavvySavage]

Try the book, "Overcoming Gravity: A systemstic approach to gymnasics abd bodyweight exercises" by Steven Low. It's supposed to be very good unlike Sommer's book. That's kinda what ****ed me off about the Dragoj Door stuff. They'd charge an arm and a leg an you would only get the top half of the prostitute. I need the whole package!

[Frost]

Been thinking of adding some light pulling work with bands for some shoulder problems i've been having lately.

Any quality bands you can recommend?

thats the reason i added them lol use them for rows, facepulls, rotorcuf work as well as core work
jumpstretch and ironmind all do good bands, i actually use lifeline heavy duty TNT cables, easy to change, go from light to very heavy and last for years

[IronFist]

There is some good body weight stuff. I think especially like if you are traveling or something and don't have access to a gym.

But none of it really replaces weight lifting unless you are specifically training to be able to do body weight stuff.

KFM member Ford Prefect (I think it was him) did a bunch of gymnastics stuff in place of weight training for a while and kept a diary about it and then reported his results at the end. The results were as you would expect: he got better at doing the bodyweight stuff but lost strength from the lack of weight training.

edit - here is his thread:
http://kungfumagazine.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37001

[wenshu]

Yeah you need weights for legs. So why do gymnasts have such big legs? Oh wait, they lift weights

Nope.

Straddle planche is nothing to balk at but 3 weeks? Really? Primarily static holds and no rings? That's hardly conclusive of anything.

Honestly his "experiment" should be described as what happens when you replace lifting with static holds not the broader "gymnastic movements".

Aside from that, if you don't do something for a period of time you won't be as good at it as you were before you stopped?

You.
Don't.
Say.

[SavvySavage]

GSP stated in a video that he only lifts weights once or twice a week and look how good he is. The point is to measure your success by how your skills are progessibg(if you're a martial artist) and not how much you can lift.


Our own donjutsu posted this on his blog.

http://www.uncagedfighter.com/2012/0...to-be.html?m=1

He basically argues to get better at fighting and not to get better at exercising. It's a good article.

I believe body weight exercises are equal to weights in terms of your gains. Here's an example of a bad example of why body weight exercise abd weight lifting shpuld not be compared: A guy has only been doing 1 legged squats his whole life and you ask him to deadlift. He can't deadlift as much as a deadlifter so you deem body weight exercises to be inferior. How many one legged squats can dead lifters do? Apples and oranges.

I try to look at everything as functional or not. Instead of asking how much weight you can pull down on the universal why not ask how many pull ups he can do and how fast? How fast can he climb a rope just using his arms? This is more interesting to me.

[mickey]

Hi SavvySavage,

Thank you for the book recommendation. It looks like it would dovetail nicely with McDaniel's book.



mickey

[IronFist]

GSP stated in a video that he only lifts weights once or twice a week and look how good he is. The point is to measure your success by how your skills are progessibg(if you're a martial artist) and not how much you can lift.

What's wrong with only lifting one or two days a week?

Do people think you're supposed to lift every day or something?

[IronFist]

I believe body weight exercises are equal to weights in terms of your gains.

False. If this were true, elite level Olympic lifters and powerlifters (and strongmen) would train with body weight exercises. They don't. Why? Because bw exercises won't increase maximal strength output past a certain point.

Sure, when you're untrained they will. Take a guy who has never exercised before and see how much he can bench. Let's say 100. Now put him on a pushup program for a few weeks and then test his bench again. It will likely be higher.

Muscles get stronger (and your CNS gets more efficient) by training against progressively increasing loads. Bodyweight exercises will never achieve this. I mean you can do pushups with a weight vest and one legged squats and stuff, but there's no comparison when it comes to actually lifting weights.

Put another way, you will not get stronger (as defined by maximal muscle tension/output) if you never increase the weight against which the muscle contracts. Doing more reps of a bodyweight exercise won't do this (nor will doing more reps of a given weight). Yes, there is a slight carryover in the low reps (meaning if you increase your bench from 225x1 to 225x5, your 1RM has gone up a bit), however.

A reasonably trained athlete who increases his pushups from 30 to 100 won't see an increase on the amount of weight he can bench press.

Here's an example of a bad example of why body weight exercise abd weight lifting shpuld not be compared: A guy has only been doing 1 legged squats his whole life and you ask him to deadlift. He can't deadlift as much as a deadlifter so you deem body weight exercises to be inferior. How many one legged squats can dead lifters do? Apples and oranges.

Agreed.

I try to look at everything as functional or not. Instead of asking how much weight you can pull down on the universal why not ask how many pull ups he can do and how fast? How fast can he climb a rope just using his arms? This is more interesting to me.

Right, it's about training for your goals. Agreed 100%.

To increase your endurance for fighting you should spar more (not long distance run).

To increase "functional strength" you should do the things you need to be functional at.

To increase maximal strength you should lift heavy weights.

Due to various physiological factors however you can't excel at everything at once (marathoners are not champion sprinters), so pick what is currently most important to you and just work in a bit of the others for variation. Training for one thing for too long can mess up your strength curve, too. You can get really strong (high 1RM) but have a disproportionally low 10RM if you only do heavy low rep stuff. And vice versa, you can probably train to the point where you can bench 135 for 50 reps but not even get 1 with 225.

So like in that article you posted, if you want to be a better fighter, train fighting. Increasing your deadlift from 315 to 405 is awesome but is it really going to make you a better fighter? Not really (unless you end up needing to pick up a guy heavier than you could lift before). Although it could be argued that if you're fighting a guy who is the same weight and skill and endurance as you, but he can bench/DL/squat 800lbs and you can only bench/DL/squat 315, he has the advantage. But you get the point and I agree with the general idea of that article.

Anyway, this has all been covered a dozen times.

[IronFist]

Nope.

Straddle planche is nothing to balk at but 3 weeks? Really? Primarily static holds and no rings? That's hardly conclusive of anything.

Honestly his "experiment" should be described as what happens when you replace lifting with static holds not the broader "gymnastic movements".

Aside from that, if you don't do something for a period of time you won't be as good at it as you were before you stopped?

You.
Don't.
Say.

According to his hypothesis, he should not have lost (much) maximal strength (as measured by weight lifting) if gymnastics exercises alone were sufficient for strength training. You can allow for some loss due to decrease in CNS efficiency from not actually doing the movements for a while.

I PMed Ford a bit ago but I don't think he comes on this forum much anymore. Maybe he'll join this thread and share his thoughts. I don't want to put words in his mouth.