Online Access to the Gymnastics Physical Preparation Masterclass with Nick Ruddock is Now Available! -

Last month I had the huge honor of being invited to speak in the United Kingdom along side Nick Ruddock. Nick has over 12 years of experience coaching at the elite and Olympic level of gymnastics. He has consulted with 12 gymnastics federations, multiple private clients, and has helped education 1000’s of gymnastics coaches in his travels. Now, he spends his time traveling to offer his incredible body of knowledge to gymnastics coaches and club owners.

We teamed up last month to give a brand new, one-day event that combined our knowledge on Gymnastics Physical Preparation. The class had over 150 attendees from 8 different countries, and covered everything from plyometrics, to leg power development, to flexibility training, to strength programming for gymnasts, to injury prevention, and more.

The course sold out extremely fast, and we’re unfortunately limited in how many spots we could offer. The good news is, Nick hired a professional video company to film the entire course, and we are excited to announce that is now available for gymnastics coaches every where to get their hands on. Here was some great feedback from the course participants that attended last month

I have had hundreds of SHIFT readers emailing me asking for how to check out the content from our seminar. All you have to do is follow this link to learn how you can watch all the lectures and labs from last month.

I took my scientific approach to gymnastics screening, strength, flexibility, and injury prevention to a whole new level spending over an hour on both the upper and lower body. I broke down split flexibility and getting larger leaps, shoulder flexibility for perfect handstands, strength/power development techniques for the legs, injury prevention concepts, and more. I dove in deep to offer people exactly what complexes I recommend with my gymnastics patients. I wanted to make sure I drove home all of the concepts, on a lay and easily applied level, more so than I have ever done in previous lectures of mine.

Nick had an amazing lecture on plyometrics for elite level tumbling and power development. He broke down how to create stiffness in basic shapes for explosive tumbling and vaulting, and walked through 100’s of easy to use drills in the gym with athletes. Like I said, you can watch all of the lectures with life time access in the comfort of your own home, just click this link or below to learn more.

Here are some notes from Nick on why Physical Preparation is so crucial,

“I may be fortunate enough to work with over a dozen national teams from all over the world, but 95% of my work and the remedial coaching I inevitably perform roots back to physical preparation and the associated symptoms of gaps in preparation or ‘less than ideal’ movement competency.

Even at international level, all athletes have their own physical limitations and what I call ‘red flags;’ areas of potential risk or future concern to the athlete’s performance or general health. This could be hyper extended elbows, a lordotic lumbar spine or a valgus knee position on landing for example. They shouldn’t go unnoticed and physical preparation can help ‘cure’ some of the performance ‘symptoms’, or manage these positions.

Physical preparation underpins the entire skill acquisition process, you need solid foundations to build a great structure, and physical preparation is just that, the foundation in which all skills are built on.

It’s why I dedicate entire education days to physical preparation alone, and will continue to do so for as long as I continue delivering education days to the gymnastics community. It really is THAT important.

Great physical preparation is the best long term investment strategy for an athlete. Some may see the time spent as a sacrifice of ’technical time’, but the efforts really do pay dividends in the long term, particularly as an athletes’ performance career can be significantly extended this way.

Physical preparation is the ‘low hanging fruit.’ The easy-to-implement changes that can be made in a program and demonstrate some instant performance gains, with physical and technical skill level so closely intertwined in their relationship.

Again, the entire seminar is now available online for any gymnastics coach to access, and even better is being offered at a huge discounted rate to celebrate its release. I promise you will get tons of great drills, skill ideas, techniques, and easy to apply methods for the gym.