Let me start with the shift that reframes everything: the old idea that “gymnasts peak at 16” is gone. Athletes are now competing well into their twenties, and the moment you plan for a career that runs past 22, how you treat the 10-to-14-year-old in front of you completely changes. Those years are a crossroads […]
Core training might be the noisiest discussion in all of gymnastics. What exercises? How many reps and sets? Is this one dangerous? Will that one actually help skills? After a decade of digging through the research and testing it in the gym, here’s the good news: it gets simple once you stop collecting random drills […]
I want to start with something I don’t say often enough. The overwhelming majority of gyms I work with are full of people doing this beautifully. I have coaches who text me at 9pm on a Tuesday to ask whether a kid can start rope climbs yet. Gym owners who rearrange an entire rotation so […]
Here’s the thing most coaches miss about overhead flexibility: you can stretch the shoulder every single day and still watch a handstand line not improve. That’s because full overhead motion is a kinetic chain, with many possible issues, and the first link isn’t the shoulder joint. When we understand the anatomy and stop yanking on […]
Let me say the quiet part out loud: without culture, everything else falls apart. You can have the best drills, the best equipment, and the best skill progressions in the region — pair them with a bad culture and the result is still a loss. Culture is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, and gymnastics […]
Let me start with a mistake I made for years: long running workouts and panel-mat plyo lines as “off-season cardio.” It felt like hard work, so it felt productive. But there’s a principle underneath this — the SAID principle (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands). Adaptations are specific to the exact demand you train. A gymnast […]
Here’s the thing most coaches miss about the off-season: it isn’t a break from the real work. It is the real work. Once the competitive season starts, you are maintaining what you built — not building. That’s not a motivational line; it’s how adaptation works. Strength and structural changes require a progressive overload stimulus applied […]
Here’s the exciting part: bigger splits, better leaps, and higher scores next season are absolutely within reach — and they come from working smarter, not just stretching harder. The off-season is your window to give your gymnasts real, usable flexibility: range that’s safe, that holds up under pressure, and that actually shows up in their […]
Every spring I get a wave of DMs, emails, and consulting calls from coaches who had a frustrating season. Injuries they didn’t see coming. Floor cardio that wasn’t there in February when they needed it. Skills that stalled out right before nationals. And what I hear from almost all of them is some version of: […]
Hey all! You may have heard that we recently opened up enrollment for the next cohort of the Champion PT Mentorship with myself, Mike Reinold, and Dan Pope which you can see here https://mikereinold.com/champion-sports-physical-therapy-mentorship-online-course/ One of the most common topics we got questions on during the first cohort was how to deal with the super […]
