Although I do spend more time in women’s gymnastics, I want to start offering more information to help take care of the male gymnasts out there. Growing up and training, I had my fair share of injuries and wished that I had some ways to proactively work on some of my movement issues. One of […]
For some reason my reading has taken me a lot into the concepts of movement variability, the role of coordinative and elemental variability, and how this all plays into in skill performance. I’ve always been curious about how athletes like gymnasts learn and perform such highly complex skills. Closely related to this, it’s also incredible to read pain neuroscience […]
Another set of the age old questions in gymnastics; “How much is too much?”, “How much is enough to get a skill?”, and “How much until we get nervous about injury?”A big concept that myself and other gymnastics healthcare providers talk about is that we need to be objectively monitoring the amount of volume put on […]
I recently put together a series of hip mobility drills for an Olympic Weightlifter friend of mine. I’m personally a big fan of making a warm up as active and dynamic as possible, rather than just simply resting passively in stretching positions. This is so we can help ramp up the nervous system to prepare for […]
This is an extremely controversial topic in gymnastics: should gymnasts use external weights and barbell work for strength. This “elephant in the room” concept is way too big of an issue to address in one blog post, but I still want to open the door with some thoughts. My opinion is that there are many myths and misunderstandings about […]
If you missed Part 1 of this series on basics and progressions, check it out here. The handstand is a straight up fundamental of gymnastics. The majority of gymnastics skills have some degree of a handstand basic built into it. If you’re a CrossFit athlete who wants to master complex handstand skills, and be super efficient with them […]
After coming back from my first week teaching at Power Monkey Camp, I finally took some time to put an article series together related to some thoughts on gymnastics in CrossFit. I really stand behind Dave Durante’s approach to gymnastics training in CrossFit, both for performance enhancement and injury prevention. You’ll see a lot of references […]
Today I’m super excited to start a guest post series from my friend Rupert Egan. I originally starting talking with Rupert last year regarding strength and conditioning concepts for gymnasts. I recently had the chance to spend a week with him talking shop at Power Monkey Camp. Rupert was a collegiate gymnast at William & Mary, has been coaching for […]
Two weeks ago I started this post, and people have really seemed to enjoy it. If you missed Part 1 (find it here) I covered some basics about breathing, some concepts related to core stability, and the influence of breathing on movement. In Part 2 (find it here) I talked about how breathing patterns can give a valuable look into […]
I’m always trying to wrap my head around ways to integrate current literature and science about injury prevention into gymnastics training. One of the areas I have spent a lot of time thinking on is growth and development tracking, and how it relates to injury risk in maturing young gymnasts. I think if we combine tracking growth […]
