Don’t Feed The Fire: Modifying Strength To Increase Flexibility
This is something I have been thinking about as I continue to treat a lot more gymnasts who come to me with injury or performance issues. I'm always trying to break down the problem to help the athlete, but also find the "spark" that created…
How To Track Growth and Development In Youth Athletes
Tracking growth and development is something that I have written about before. I think that regularly tracking growth from a young age, as well as monitoring other aspects to athletes (resting heart rate / heart rate variability, perceived…
Why Gymnasts Must Change How They Land
The topic of how a gymnast should land continues to be controversial for many coaches, gymnasts, and judges. I'm not the first person to bring this up, as my good friend Dr. Josh Eldridge as well as Rick McCharles have written on this up before.…
Treat Strength Like Skill Training – A Change In The Gymnastics Strength and Conditioning Paradigm
Today I am happy to bring readers another fantastic guest post by Rupert Egan. Rupert wrote Part 1 of this article series a while back, and I'm excited he is back for Part 2. I think Rupert brings up some crucial points here that coaches and…
The Intern Perspective: The Life of a PT/Gymnastics Intern and My Views on “Bridging the Gap”
This story begins with a simple Google search, purely out of curiosity, with no specific expectations for the results. “Gymnastics physical therapy.” The top result – hybridprspective.com (now SHIFT). That’s how I found out about Dave…
Exciting News, I’m Joining The Team at Champion Physical Thearapy and Performance
I'm very excited to announce that I have accepted a new position at Champion Physical Therapy and Performance, located in Waltham Massachusetts. Starting February 16th, I will start seeing clients for Physical Therapy and performance based…
Rehab Tips For Clinicians To Treat Gymnasts with Extension Based LBP – Part 5: Return To Training
Over the last two months I've been outlining my thought process for the rehabilitation of gymnasts with extension based lower back pain. The acute phase, sub acute phase, intermediate phase, and advanced phase of rehabilitation were Parts 1…
Rehab Tips For Clinicians To Treat Gymnasts with Extension Based LBP – Part 4: Advanced Phase
Over a few different posts in the last month, I have been offering my thoughts behind the rehab progression of a gymnast with extension based low back pain. In Part 1 I first covered the acute phase, then in Part 2 the subacute phase, then in…
Gymnastics, Please Stop These Stretches (Part 3)
In the first part of this article series I covered pushing passive hyper extension for the back hip of splits, then in the second part I covered skin the cats / hyper flexion stretches.
Also, before you dig in more, remember you can download…
Gymnastics, Please Stop Doing These Stretches (Part 2)
In the first part of this article, I went over why pushing hip hyperextension and back leg split flexibility stretching makes me really concerned. In this article, I want to go over two types of commonly used passive shoulder stretches I fear…