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Nongymnast
Joined: 03 Jun 2006
Posts: 48
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 Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 6:22 pm Post subject: Gymnasts and Bodyfat |
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Why do gymnasts have such low body fat percentage?
At my gym they never do any form of cardio, let alone ever break sweat. So whats the science behind it? |
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Coach Blair
Joined: 09 Jan 2003
Posts: 1492
Location: Bay area/Sacto
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| Posted: Sun Jan 14, 2007 7:24 pm Post subject: |
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Gymnastics is hypotrophic in nature. Imagine working out for 10-25 hours a week. Their metabolism is on all-go, generally with just general diets.
It doesn't have to be aerobic to be cardio. Take a look at anaerobic phases over at CrossFit and the metabolic pathways.
Break a sweat? You haven't been around the male gymnasts much. This also depends a lot on intensity and not all gymnastic protocol is high threshold intensity. Again, that's why it should be a fight against hypertrophism which is very prevalent in many conditioning programs. |
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TipGuy
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 2441
Location: Marin County, California, USA
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| Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 2:15 am Post subject: |
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It's mainly training volume and eating right. Gymnastics is a high power sport. A gymnasitcs routine is intensely metabolic. There's absolutely no requirement for long duration "cardio". It's good to do occasionally just to know you can do it, but training long slow aerobics is a muscle wasting activity. The training programs around gymnastics create folks with very fast metabolisms. This results in generally lean body types.
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TipGuy
Webmaster DrillsAndSkills.com |
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AussieGirl
Joined: 06 Sep 2005
Posts: 207
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| Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2007 6:18 am Post subject: |
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| Higher levels of mucsle in the body also causes a fast metabolism. |
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KENSAI01
Joined: 28 Oct 2006
Posts: 32
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| Posted: Wed Jan 17, 2007 6:19 am Post subject: |
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You also have to look outside of the box. And if you'r not a full time gymnast you might want to take what these people are saying and apply it in a sensible manner.
ie. since you want to avoid muscle catabolization at any cost, but loose body fat at the same time, make sure to do cardio in a very explosive and anarobic fashion.
Sprinting comes to mind as one of the "best" ways... |
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TwistinD
Joined: 21 Oct 2006
Posts: 20
Location: Houston, TX
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| Posted: Sun Feb 04, 2007 1:40 am Post subject: |
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it may not seem too aerobic or like we are breaking sweat.. but ask us that question again after you we do a floor routine.... and we wont be able to tell you from the exhaustion. plus the fact that most gymnastics work out 20+ hours a week (elites probably 35) working out seems neverending....
and trust me, we may try to hide it, but we sure do break a sweat!  |
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