Investigating the “Cause” and Not The “Complaint” for Common Gymnastics Pain

In the last two months I have been reading a lot of research and literature from people in the Physical Therapy world that focus on a concept known as “regional interdependence”. This simply means looking at certain parts of the body away from the site of pain that may not seem related to the current injury or problem. So for example, someone complains of shoulder pain when they reach overhead. Yes their shoulder is what may be screaming as the problem, but in reality it may have been the way they stand/breathe, their spine, or shoulder blades that are the issue and causes the shoulder pain to pop up. This is the premise behind looking at the “cause” (standing/breathing/spine/shoulder blade) rather than simply having tunnel vision on the “complaint” (shoulder pain).  I think this concept has a huge carry over to gymnastics, and in a way it may be what many people are missing in regards to common patterns/injuries in gymnastics.

Shoulder Safety During Upper Body Gymnastics Conditioning (Part II) – The Importance of Full Shoulder Range of Motion

In Part I of this topic, I went over some background information and a few concepts related to shoulder safety within gymnastics based conditioning. I focused a lot on how important the quality of movement patterns/biomechanics is and how it will create a safer environment for the shoulder and the gymnast as a whole. Also, I dove into some points about fatigue, strength progressions, and  making sure the exercise someone is being asked to do is appropriate, and how it connects to possibly reducing progressive shoulder injuries. This week I wanted to keep going on this path and highlight a couple more really important concepts I find some coaches/gymnasts may overlook throughout their training and conditioning programs.  I’m gonna break down each point and explain, then offer some examples and pictures that are more specific to upper body conditioning movements. On to the fun stuff for this week .

Shoulder Safety During Upper Body Gymnastics Conditioning (Part I) – Background, Stressing Quality, and Utilizing Progression

Recently I got asked if I would be able to write a post related to shoulder safety during upper body gymnastics conditioning. I have gotten asked this a few times before, so I figured it would be great information to get out to people. I spent some time looking into the topic/research, and wanted to offer some recommendations for tips on possibly reducing shoulder problems with common gymnastics conditioning exercises. As a side note, as I developed this post more I started to mold it more into concepts that apply to all conditioning, so it’s kind of a two in one post. Keep in mind that many different schools of thought exist in the strength and conditioning/medical/rehabilitation world, if you ask 5 different professionals you might get 5 completely different answers.  This is simply my input from a coaching, gymnastics, and rehabilitation viewpoint. Also, people literally write dissertations in fields like strength and conditioning or biomechanics for these type of topics, so I am only going to scrape the surface. I will walk through some points that I feel are important to think about for gymnastics based shoulder exercises, rather than discussing each individual exercise (which might take a while).

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Building An Inexpensive Gymnastics Preventative Rehabilitation Toolbox For Your Gym

Over the last few months, I have highlighted a lot of ways that coaches and gymnasts can incorporate preventative rehabilitation (pre-hab) techniques into their every day gymnastics life. I always strive to take exercises, techniques, or set ups that gymnasts can use directly in the gym using equipment around them. I think this is the key to really integrating concepts for preventing injury and keeping gymnasts/coaches safe. Everything has to be functionally useful, have carry over to gymnastics, and easily be added to practices each day. With that being said, there are a lot of pieces of equipment not commonly seen in a gym that pop up in my blog posts for myofascial release techniques, spcific pre-hab drills, mobilization, corrective exercises, and so on. I figured for this week I would walk through this equipment piece by piece and talk about how to get them in your gym without breaking the bank. Just as any other gym, we work on a budget and try to make sure that the pieces of equipment get for our pre-hab program are simple, inexpensive, and effective. Each gym is different and has different needs, but I really believe that finding a way to get these types of tools into a gymnasts daily routines can make a huge impact on their skill performance and safety relating to possible injury prevention. Here is a list of the items we use daily, an example of their use, and how you can get your hands on them for cheap.

Some Pre-Hab Equipment