If any readers had a similar up bringing in gymnastics to me, strength and conditioning was of course a staple in training. Come strength time you were given an assignment that was the same level of difficulty say 3 sets of 10 pull ups, dips, handstand push ups, 2 sets of 20 leg lifts or whatever your coach had […]
I’ve been brewing on this topic for over a year now, originally sparked one of Eric Cressey’s articles on the possible dangers of using dips with baseball players. Reading that article and some other literature made me start to scratch my head as to why many female gymnasts do a ton of dip work for strength and also aggressively stretch into “skin the […]
The concept of screening is something huge I think the gymnastics world need to regularly partake in due to the high physical demands and injury rates. Screening refers to the idea of performing tests or movement assessments on gymnasts regularly to detect possible risk factors for problems. I have mentioned a few screening tests in […]
Last month I started writing about how I apply the Joint by Joint Theory proposed by Gray Cook/Mike Boyle into a basic gymnastics movement, the handstand. In Part I of this article series I went over some background info, and talked about the key role of hand/wrist interactions as it applies to handstand work in gymnasts. […]
The response to Part 1 of this post was incredible and ended up being one of the most viewed pieces of content on the site. I got some great feedback and it was awesome to see people enjoyed it. I think it’s a topic many people involved in gymnastics think about. So what’s a coach to […]
Bet that title caught your eye as you were browsing. Well it’s true, safe to say I haven’t really pushed anyone down during splits or much of any flexibility for quite some time now. I had plenty of memories as a gymnast standing up after being pushed down in”flexibility circuits”, only to feel like a baby deer […]
As many people who follow my blog may know, I have written about my concerns with doing high volume dynamic arch up type conditioning with gymnasts. This includes lots of arch ups/superman’s, uppers, lowers, weighted arching, and so on. Although it is engrained in our gymnastics culture to work on this arching type of strength, in my […]
One of the common trends I see in a lot of gymnasts I work with are issues in their middle spine (thoracic spine) and shoulder blade. Many times the gymnast gets “wide back” and rounded forward chest, with the shoulder joints sitting forward/rotated in, and commonly the shoulder blade pops up or “wings” off of their back. […]
I wanted to blog quick about a scenario where it might be a good idea NOT to stretch a gymnasts ankles for a toe point. Ankles are one of the most frequently injured body parts in gymnastics with a variety of injuries from getting crunched on short landings, chronic impingement, sprains, stress fractures, and more. A “rolled ankle” or inversion sprain is definitely among […]
It’s widely known that lower back pain is a huge problem in both male and female gymnastics. Despite more education coming out and progress being made, I unfortunately still treat a ton of gymnasts weekly at Champion for lower back pain. I feel by far one of the biggest contributors for things snowballing to big injuries […]
