professional gymnasts heavily abuse PEDs. Taking enough test you can build more muscle sitting on your ass than someone lifting heavy weights naturally.
Has coach sommer or any of his athletes been linked to PED scandals? I haven't heard of any, but it's possible.
Also, couldn't you say the same thing about professional weightlifters?
The pissing contest between weightlifting and other types of strength training is pretty ridiculous. As I said in one of my original comments, both methods are completely viable. Whether you use weights or bodyweight exercise, a person who exercises is going to be far better off than someone who doesn't.
of course not, their entire existence revolves around not getting caught.
Edit: I looked up some of the claims about strength gains of Sommer's athletes. He's bragging about 400lb deadlifts, 75lb pullups after years and years of training. For reference I hit those numbers for reps in less than 18 months at a bodyweight of 145 with an actual lifting routine, and I consider my progress to be slightly slow compared to a lot of other lifting logs on fitness sites. I expect any other numbers I find to be similarly unimpressive. In general I find that the claims about bodyweight exercise follow this pattern, proponents simply do not understand what constitutes genuine impressive numbers once you are talking about a legitimate strength training program (one used by professional athletes across many sports).
Edit2 found some more claims:
Double bodyweight dead lift
Military press with 110% bodyweight
Chins with 50% of his bodyweight for reps
Dips + 60% of his bodyweight for reps
There's nothing here not reachable within 2 years by a young male following a decent program (and that's assuming a start from sedentary).
I wasn't trying to say that body weight exercise trumps weightlifting when the focus is on strength, I was simply saying that you can build strength in other ways too.
If I woke up one day and decided that the most important thing in my life was to one day bench-press 400 lbs, I would grab a copy of Starting Strength and hit the weights. There really isn't any debate about that.
The original argument against bodyweight exercise was that it's a complete waste of time. It clearly isn't. When I started basic training, about 20 percent of us could actually pass a PT test. Some people could only perform a couple of push-ups. After 8-9 weeks of doing nothing but running and body-weight exercise, nearly everyone passed.
If you took a cycle of recruits, tested them on the bench-press on day 1 of basic training, and then did so again on the last day, I'd be willing to bet that on average, their numbers would be significantly higher.
