The physique of the male gymnast
 

My little sister wants to be an olympic gymnast. She has a DVD of the 2012 Olympics that she watches all the time.
Yesterday I decided I had nothing better to do, so I watched it with her.
I'd never really taken much notice of the olympic gymnastics when they were on TV, this was the first time I watched it properly.
As I watched it I noticed 2 things.
1.) The incredible strength they had 2.)Their muscular development

They looked like bodybuilders, which I didn't quite understand.
Everything they do is the exact opposite of how a bodybuilder trains.
.They train for hours a day
.They mostly use only body weight exercises
.Im assuming they aren't maintaining a calorie surplus either

So how do they do it? Nearly all of them have a similar physique to the type I'd like to look, and they stay ripped all year round! I'd love to look like them.

Any thoughts?

What's not to understand?
The Olympic gymnasts are elite athletes
They are not random guys pulled in and made to do push-ups
They do a crap-load of volume
They lift from disadvantaged positions
They run, jump, push and pull - A LOT
They are small which helps them look bigger
I'm sure many of them lift weights, at some point
They have the best trainers, food, and drugs that money can buy

Gymnastics strength training is a fairly complex type of workout. I have done a little of that type of training and enhoyed it a lot.

Chris Sommer has a great sebsite, and forum. Lots of good reading, and training advice.

GymnasticBodies - Worldwide Fitness Community

This.

I think a lot of their muscle size and thickness comes from time under tension. Although I'm not much for worrying about TUT, studies show that if you keep heavy, continuous tension on a muscle for more than 60 seconds you can stimulate serious growth.

As far as bodyweight movements not being able to develop an awesome body, just go to youtube and search for "hannibal for king". He's not too big, but his strength to bodyweight ratio is freaking amazing, and he's shredded.

Another big thing is adaptation. Most new trainees can't train much more than an hour a day without wiping themselves out both physically and hormonally. But if you do it almost every day from the time you're very young, your body gets used to the volume and you can use it to train crazy hard.

I know, these are just a small part of what's going on, but I think it's still a part of it.

Interesting, thank you, ill check him out

Thanks for the link, seems like a good site, just had a look now

Yeah I understand that, what I dont get is why everyone stresses about rest time, over training, progressive overload, ect, and the gymnasts seem to defy that logic.

Because these gymnasts are small people ..... The people who stress over those things want to be (and usually are) LARGE people. Two separate paths.

The part you aren't understanding is:

These guys didn't start with this volume of training
They started when they were very, very young
They built their volume and complexity over many years

You can do the exact same thing, as long as you don't try to do it all at the beginning, you'll just burn out and regress. That's why so many full-body routines start out so basic and get more complex as you get stronger and build work capacity.