Training programs for gymnasts

Pull the knees to the chest for the tucked version. Week 2 Day 1 4X2 legless rope climb sets of: 10 strict pull ups 15 ring push ups Day 2 10 sets of grip complex Day 3 5X 15 seconds L-sit in tuck position sets of: 5 wall climbs 20 jumping lunges To achieve the tuck position, pull the knees tightly into the chest.

Week 7 Day 1 5X1 L-sit rope climb can sub legless 4 sets of 5 undergrip pull up 5 overgrip pull up 5 kipping pull up all done without letting go of the bar Day 2 3 sets of: left split right split middle.

Long Term Finally, you should vary the volume and intensity of your program from month to month. You can periodize volume and intensity as follows: Start with low volume and low intensity. Increase volume, building your baseline fitness while keeping the intensity low to moderate. Peak volume and start to reduce it while increasing intensity—you should rapidly improve in the intensely trained abilities.

Peak intensity and increase volume once more-this should stabilize your new abilities. Repeat steps 3 and 4 a few times, depending on the timing of your competition season.

Right before and during competition season, keep intensity low and volume moderate to maintain your abilities while staying recovered for your competitions. Exercise Specificity Throughout the year, you should vary how closely your workouts resemble competition. Ability Training You should select a few abilities to focus on each month and spend more time improving those while putting the others in maintenance mode. As discussed in the super-compensation section, perfectly aligning super-compensation curves is hard so you can use these rules of thumb as guides: Coordination and mobility training are minimally fatiguing and you can train them daily.

Speed and strength training should not be trained two days in a row as they negatively impact each other. Likewise, aerobic endurance and anaerobic endurance training days negatively impact each other. You may be able to get away with training similar abilities two days in a row if different muscle groups are taxed.

For example, upper body strength followed by lower body strength or sprints. Note, however, this can still lead to overtraining due to not giving the central nervous system sufficient recovery time between similar workouts. To do so, you will need to know: What order to train abilities in. How to select exercises. How many exercises to do. How to arrange individual exercises. How many sets and reps to do for each exercise. Ordering Abilities Fortunately, it is easy to order ability training in a workout.

Dynamic Mobility Arm, leg, and torso swings not ballistic. New Technique Learning new skills. Known Technique Drilling known skills. Speed Reaction time, rate of movement, frequency of movement. Strength Dynamic and static.

Endurance Anaerobic and aerobic. Static Passive Stretching Stretches with minimal muscular tension. In my case, I start each workout with joint rotations and dance to warm up. I then perform kicks, torso twists, and arm swings. After completing this 15 minute warm up, I move on to the main part of my workout which involves work on specific goals. Finally, I finish with 20 to 30 minutes of stretching to cool down.

Selecting Exercises There are a few points you will want to consider while selecting exercises for the main part of your workout. You should train movements, not muscles. You should start by training general skills and increase specificity as you plateau. You should train each movement with 5 to 10 sets per workout. Train Movements, not Muscles Many gymnasts make the mistake of training like bodybuilders, isolating muscles needlessly. There are three exceptions to these rules: Prehab exercises that isolate weak stabilizer muscles are important for improving joint stability.

Hamstrings, biceps, etc are important for recovery. Weights are necessary for loading compound leg exercises such as squats and deadlifts. Exercise Specificity Ability and skill development are highly specific. You have to be capable of a skill to train it directly. If you train a skill too early before you have developed a solid base from which to learn it , you may inadvertently cap how well you can perform the skill.

Number of Exercises The number of exercises you work on per target skill per workout depends on your baseline fitness, available time, and exercise intensity. Ordering Exercises On top of ordering your workout by ability discussed earlier , you should order individual exercises as follows: Train the skills you want to improve the fastest first.

Train the most difficult skills, requiring you to be rested, first. When these two rules conflict, just pick one and go with it. Supersets A superset is when you overlap exercises so that, instead of training all the sets for a single exercise in a row, you alternate exercises every set.

Sets You should train between 3 and 8 sets per exercise per workout, depending on both the total number of exercises in that workout and the intensity of the workout. Reps You should select the number of reps per exercise based on the goals of that exercise.

Time You can think of time as the static equivalent of reps. Rest You should select the amount of rest between sets based on the goals of your workout. In summary, let the goals of the workout dictate what to rest and how much to rest it. Tags: Exercise , Gymnastics , Optimization. Zoe 24 May Reply. Shmo 16 Jun Reply. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Comment. Enter your name or username to comment. Enter your email address to comment. Enter your website URL optional. Exercise Time. Up to 1 Hour. Trained Abilities.

Technique, Coordination, Mobility. Upper Strength, Mobility. Lower Strength, Mobility. Rest, Mobility. Target Skills. Hip Hinging. Planche, Levers, L-Support. General Warm-Up. Dynamic Mobility. Main Workout. Specific Warm-Up. New Technique. Learning new skills. Known Technique. Drilling known skills. Dynamic and static. Anaerobic and aerobic. Cool Down. Static Active Stretching. Isometric Stretching. Static Passive Stretching. Warm Up. Joint Rotations, Dancing, Dynamic Mobility.

Main Part Target Skills. One of the most important aspects of your training will be to maximize your strength while minimizing your size. The framework of a gymnast training program is the schedule established for working out.

Strength-training coach Rob Price recommends using a three-day strength-training regimen that focuses on sport-specific muscle groups through compound exercises. Separate your strength-training workouts with at least one day in between. Use those days to perform flexibility and endurance exercises, and give yourself one complete day of rest from exercise each week. Strength training is essential to your success as a gymnast. The strength-building portion needs to focus on carefully increasing strength while minimizing the amount of muscle mass you create.

You will perform multiple compound lifts using a set and repetition structure that goes both over and under the hypertrophic threshold of six to 12 reps per set.

The articles below cover various aspects of gymnastics training. Coaches across a range of sports are interested in gymnastics training for their own athletes, and while caution is needed in this area, many of the drills and technique are cross-transferable. Calculating Body Composition If you have your body fat percentage measured chances are one of these 6 methods will be used. Which are the best… and the worst? Flexibility training section Complete guide to flexibility training including the various types of stretching, sample exercises and the physiology behind how range of movement increases.

Static Stretching Exercises and Flexibility Training Program Static stretching exercises are best performed when your body is completely warmed up — often at the end of a training session to increase range of motion. Avoid static stretching immediately before gymnastics competition. Dynamic stretching has been shown to decrease muscle tightness, which may be associated to an increased risk of muscles and tendon tears…. Gymnasts train tirelessly to perfect their skill and technique.

But technique can only be applied within the limits of an athletes strength, making its development equally important.