hey guys my name is Steven Low and I am the author of the book overcoming gravity a systematic approach to gymnastics and body weight strength today we'll be going over the fundamental knowledge base so part one and then in this specific video chapter three which goes over the progression charts that you may have seen out there and the level system and how to classify beginners intermediates Advanced and so on and then also on setting and achieving goals and how to commit to achievement you know all right so the progression charts in overcoming gravity were mainly
based off of the Federation International of gymnastics in short fig men's artistic gymnastics in short mag and the code of points uh the cop for the 2008 to 2012 quadrennium they've had these uh specific difficulty charts in gymnastics uh since probably the 60s or 70s may have gone back further but they were only online specifically uh around the turn of the century around 2000s I think at least widely accessible and so when I was looking through them towards skills I wanted to learn in gymnastics I found that okay there's a lot of actual progressions you
can use from these to learn harder skills and then also in terms of the context of working towards harder strength moves there's actually a lot of intermediates between them you can use as well so I was probably one of the first to look at these in terms of a classification type system or rpg-like system where you could work down the list of progressions and level up your abilities quote unquote and uh the fact that there's like gaps in the progressions means you may need some intermediates to work on them and so I'll I'll provide the
link in the comments below link to the overcoming gravity charts online on the Google Docs below is the picture of an example of the pulling chart which will go through there's a couple of the progressions now so this is the zoomed in pulling chart and as you can see on the left side of the chart you have your green blue orange and your red for elite so beginner intermediate Advanced and Elite and the Fig level for these exercises is approximately your basic skills your a-level skills your B level skills and C so those of you
who are familiar with gymnastics you'll know that the difficulty rating system actually goes up past C to d e and then in the 2010s plus they've gone to even greater scaling so now they're up to from E F G and I think they're up to maybe I or J skills so there's a lot of difficulty increase Beyond just the basic skills to sea level skills but for most of us who are kind of working on getting stronger with the common bodyweight progressions I wanted to just make them make sure that it's more applicable to the
your common person rather than gymnastics who are training you know 10, 15, 20 years for the strength movements and also they probably have some genetics and other unquantifiable factors that get them towards Elite level strength compared to the rest of us so that's why things are classified mainly up to sea level I figure if you're working C level skills which are mainly like your very difficult things like planche on the Rings or even harder with like Maltese where you're in the kind of The Upside Down y position on rings holding yourself flat that is that's
a d move in the Fig mag code of points and so if you're working those type of skills they're probably beyond the level of which most of us are probably going to get to in our lifetimes but as you can see on the chart I have here on the screen we have your different columns and you can see one two three and the book page number on where the specific progressions for these are so on the 301 to look at were the back level or the front lever and the front lever Rose and as you
can see with the back lever there's a lot of basic skills the full back lover in terms of gymnastics difficulty is actually enable skill and probably closer to one of the easier ones so it's rated about around level six seven ish range and in particular for this part of the chart the gray ones are pretty because it's I've been for Iron Cross training just to make sure you're building up your shoulder and your elbow connective tissue to be prepared for that and so you don't get over risk use injuries like tendency but in general the
German hang is one of the first types of things you learn German hang being the top image up on the right side and then I the skin the cat is basically a pull out from German hang to being inverted on the Rings and then as you can see progressions as we covered the center of mass of the body gets further and further from the shoulders which means it gets harder and harder as more torque is required at the shoulder in order to do the skill so you have your tuck progression your Advanced tuck where the
legs are out and the hips are at 90 and the knees are about 90 degrees then the straddle and then the half layout or one leg out I only showed the half layout here and then full back lever there are some harder progressions for those like pull out so you go from back over and pull yourself up to inverted hang so as you're doing a concentric movement rather than an isometric it's harder than that and then you can even go from the German hang all the way pull straight body up to inverted hang so there
are harder variations of these as you get stronger as you can see generally most people acquire the strength to get front lever after back lever because back lever is a bit easier as long as you're practicing both at the same time so that's one thing to keep in mind with the charts is that if you're practicing each of them at the same time then some are going to be harder than others so a lot of people you see in getting into calisthenics they have a climbing background or like lifting background and they'll get front lover
first but that's because there's a lot of transference from some particular exercises to the front lever compared to back lever which is a more awkward position but if you had been training them from the beginning back lever is actually easier than forever because the lats and chests are a bit better leverage for the specific specific movement and so they're easier if you had the same amount of practice with both and as you can see with the front lever with the hands in front of you holding yourself out flat the row movement where you pull and
try to get the bar or rings to your chest or hips area is going to be harder than the actual hold as well concentric movement so that's the charts and then I'll explain a little bit more on the next page so on this slide basically as I explained before we have your beginner intermediate Advanced and Elite and so in general beginner range is a bit broader as you can see there's five squares as opposed to four for intermediate Advanced and then three for elite what I did there was I tried to make sure that since
most gains come quicker in the beginning as a beginner you're going to be able to compress a bit faster and so when you see that in terms of the charts generally speaking most people will be able to progress faster in the beginning so that's why there is a specific larger beginner's size and it doesn't correlate specifically with the basic a b and c skills Additionally the charts were made for your general average mail so about five nine maybe plus or minus an inch or two and maybe about 150 to 160 pounds plus or minus about
10 pounds so for metric you guys can convert that I think it's like 175 centimeters and maybe 70 kilograms or so plus or minus a few kilograms basically the charts are built for somebody who is relatively average and of course if somebody is shorter and lighter or taller and heavier then things are obviously going to be harder or easier in terms of doing those skills so so for so like gymnasts who are usually shorter and lighter in average your average male Elite Rings gymnast is probably going to be about in the five two to five
seven range and in the 110 pounds to maybe 130 140 pounds range Max and so obviously if you're smaller and shorter you're going to have a better strength of body weight ratio compared to somebody who is taller so if you are taller and heavier than the normal it's likely that you're going to be progressing slower and so that should not be a surprise a lot of people are confused about the charts in terms of like how fast they're progressing but if you are taller and heavier it you will progress slower and things may be harder
for you than somebody who is shorter and lighter additionally with women in general since women tend to have less muscle mass on average I think they've they've done studies on women and untrained women and untrained men and untrained women have about 67 of the lower body strength as men and about 50 of the upper body strength that's meant so a woman can learn a lot of the skills it's just going to be harder since they're starting from a lower average point and so there are women who have gotten to you know full front lover full
back rubber but it is going to be in general harder since it's harder for a woman to add muscle mass and strength both starting from a lower point and from things like testosterone as well additionally there are pushing and pulling and legs disparities so for example with a lot of climbers I've seen that they're pretty close to a one-arm Shayna which is about level eight or nine on the charts whereas some can't even do dips when they're put up to it which is about level three or four on the charts so in terms of like
doing your sport it's common that people may not necessarily be balanced in terms of their pushing and pulling exercises that's not a big deal imbalances don't cause injuries although they can be a risk factor for injuries for example baseball pitchers very imbalanced because they're throwing with one arm all the time and their body is set up to throw and not the other and so they have a lot of muscle imbalances quote unquote in their body but that does not necessarily mean they'll be injured and usually it's going to be like the overuse aspect or not
being prepared for the forces that you're putting on your body or getting back from rehab to doing professional sports too quick so those are the main factors imbalances generally don't cause any injuries but if you wanted to be relatively quote unquote balanced and get your pushing and pulling relatively similar that is always a good thing to strive for and may help to prevent injuries in some cases you really don't know who it is who is going to have injuries because of immune potential risk factor for imbalance so you can't claim somebody something cause injuries but
you can't understand it from the context of there could be a potential risk factor there but it's not always the case that somebody is going to have an entry all right so setting and achieving goals this is one of the common things where people kind of get stuck with the in the book because they don't know what kind of goals to make or what to do with them once they've got them so basically for most people in terms of setting goals you want to set your long-term goals so this is usually the things that people
must want to achieve when they get into body weight training and see different people do different skills so commonly they're the the front lever the handstand handstand push-ups being able to do one arm chin UPS and you can think of these as your long-term goals whereas the various progression intermediates so like for back lover you ever tuck your Advanced tuck your straddle your one leg out those are your shorter steps and your short-term goals that you should use so you want to refine your goals measurably and with those for example a 10 second front lever
or three handstand push-ups those are some of the common ones that you want to do and in general you want to refine those in a smart manner so specific measurable action oriented realistic and time-bound so for like front lever you could say specifically and measurably you want to get about a 10 second front lever and you're going to break it into the specific progressions to work on them and then realistic and time bound generally you can progress through some of the intermediates towards front lever usually within a cycle so six a few weeks to a
few months or several Cycles usually one to three Cycles you can use to progress through the intermediates to work towards that so you're gonna break them into the smuggles and progress them up over time until you get to your main goal and specifically there is a Harvard study I included in the book where those who had written down their goals versus those who had goals but didn't write them down versus those had no goals those who had no goals achieved let's say 100 of their ability to set goals so like they were successful 100 but
those who had goals but didn't write them down were successful up to 200 of the 100 so they were basically doubly as successful whereas those who had written them down and actively strive for them they had over 10 times as much success as those who had new rules so it is important to get these written down and measurably acted upon which is what this specific chapter is teaching you to do now there is some specific criticism of smart goals working towards goals in particular can be a bit nebulous for some people but it's best to
think in terms of smart goals as helping you build the habits that will make you successful so for example having your short-term goals is what is going to be able to help you to construct a routine and this routine is supposed to become a habit in your daily and weekly life such that your work doing workouts progressively and consistently to work towards those goals and so once you have those habits set up that is what is going to be able to get you to those goals it's the habits that you're establishing that is going to
build the consistent nature in order to get you there so you may have heard the phrase that the the best routine is the one you stick to and there is some truth in that there's no quote unquote optimal routine for a beginner there are routines that work fairly effectively for a lot of the populations and then there is some variation in there but you do want to get in the habit of being consistent with exercise which is what is going to get you towards your goals in the long term in general once you have your
goals generally you want to find them into specific body groups so the common ones I use are your upper body push your upper body pull your legs and your core and potentially others such as skills if you have a specific sport or you're working towards say handstand and it's not working like shoulder strength endurance you're working mostly the balance at some point so you can refine those in the goals and work on one to two at a time a routine will usually allow for you to work one to two different exercises As you move into
like intermediate Advanced you can generally work up to three-ish sometimes four but overall one to two is a good one to strive for so you can have one exercise fit your one goal and the other exercise fit another so for example usually with training most people are aiming towards say your planche and your handstand push-ups so one exercise can work towards planche such as pseudo planche push-ups and another Exercise Works towards handstand push-ups at that time I mean so you don't necessarily have to work towards two you can kind of double up on both but
usually in most cases with body exercises not specifically not specifically going towards one specific goal is better in the long run so what I mean by that is the last point which is to prioritize based on your goals that are important or based on expert experience on which confer the most benefits so for example one common thing a lot of people want to strive for is one-arm push-ups but training for one-arm push-ups is relatively inefficient quote unquote because some exercises like your pseudo planche push-ups as you progress towards more lean in them so usually with
the push-up your hands are located beneath your chest or your nipple area pseudo planche push-ups will move your hands down closer towards your hips over time so you're doing almost planche push-up so as you move your hands towards your hips The Leverage decreases in for your chest and your shoulders and that means and your triceps and that means you're getting more and more force on your chest your triceps and your shoulders as you're doing the pseudo planche push-up with your hands progressively moving towards your hips and so the pseudo-plant push-up in particular is very good
at gaining strength for planche but it's also very good at gaining strength for one arm push-ups as well so those who train the pseudo planche push up to where their hands are above their hips most of them can just try and one arm push up in a straddle or even straight body position and get it without practicing so that is one of the one of the I got one on push-up basically from training planche without having actually trained women push-ups so there are some overlap between skills like that where some have better transference from them
to other skills than others so some of the common ones that are very beneficial to other ones are the one on pinup progression benefits front lever and back lover a lot the front lever Rose or front lover pull-ups as they're called where you're in a front lever position like a tuck or straddle and you're doing a row where you're pulling the bar Rings towards your hips that is a good one that transfers over pretty well from front lever not just for front lever but also good for things like one arm rows and also can help
out your one arm chins and the pseudo planche push-ups are a common one that transfers over well to Winter push-ups and then depending on your goals dips and handstand push-ups are usually the one or two that you tend to go towards I tend to recommend starting off with dips for most beginners and then as you get to level four five six you can move into the handstand progression the reason for that is not because a handstand push-up progression is like super good to start at the beginning but most people they're also going to be training
handstands as a skill work or to gain balance for their handstands against the wall in the routine and so you already do have some enhancing work you don't necessarily need both the handstand work and the handstand push-up work at the same time and you can build some basic strength with the dips which is often considered one of the squats of the upper body so I'm generally speaking that's the main points for setting and achieving goals you want to break them down in to or you want to write down your goals first of all in terms
of what you want to be able to do in the future then kind of categorize them into the upper body push the upper body pull your legs your core and your skill and then use that framework in order to build your routine in future so we're going to end here and go into the next part of the series and the next video
