Combating Achilles Tears In Gymnastics (Pt I): Investigating Possible Contributing Factors

The high rate of Achilles tears in gymnastics is something that has always blown my mind. As a gymnast going through high school and college, it seemed that every few months I heard about someone else loosing their season because they ruptured their Achilles. With new research and lots of information coming from people in the sports medicine side of gymnastics, a lot of great progress has been made to educate people about information regarding this problem. Unfortunately, the issue still continues with recent reports of Bri Guy from Auburn tearing both her Achilles at the same time last week, an Achilles tear from Sam Peszek earlier this year, a hand full of college and international gymnasts, and I’m sure many more across the sport. It started to get the gears of my brain turning about what else maybe goes into the problem, and some ways that I may be able to offer some knowledge for coaches and gymnastics to use preventively in their training.

Then two months ago a gymnast I knew from a camp contacted me saying she tore her Achilles doing a full-in on floor, a skill she has done hundreds of times before. She was asking about the treatment and surgery, what her rehabilitation process would be for the year, and her hopes of continuing gymnastics for her last few college years. I took the opportunity to ask her a lot of questions about how her training was going before it happened, if she had other pains or injuries that were ongoing, the road leading up to her injury, and a lot of other stuff. I scribbled all of the things we talked about down on a napkin, got out all the research/books I had related to Achilles tears, and then took a few hours after to map out some of the ideas I had brewing. After this process I looked at all the pages I had out and started to notice that there may be a lot more to it than meets the eye. Along with this, I found that a lot of the contributing factors may have preventative steps that coaches and gymnasts could be using during their training.

Calf Muscle Anatomy – http://www.keyaspectscoaching.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/calf-muscle-stretches-to-improve-snowboarding.jpg

Overhead Stability In Gymnasts (Pt. II): Drills and Pre-Hab Techniques

Last week in Part I of this post I dove into a lot of background about gymnastics based overhead stability and how coaches/gymnasts can take advantage of it. In this weeks post, I wanted to quickly touch on why I feel these drills are great to add in during training, and offer some different techniques that can be used in the gym. They all center in around using proper overhead positioning/mobilty, as well as trying to build both static, dynamic, and reflexive stability for gymnastics specific movements. In a few posts over the last month I have used the backing of the joint by joint approach to discuss how  the shoulders are typically intended for mobility, so it is good to train stability in these joints for safety and performance. When the shoulders of gymnasts are very flexible and mobile, we want to make sure that the gymnast can stabilize the shoulder and handle forces that gymnastics creates.

Fitness Pain Free Podcast Interview with Dr. Dan Pope

Hey everyone, a few weeks ago I got asked by Dr. Dan Pope I would do a podcast for his website Fitness Pain Free. Dan is a Physical Therapist, Strength and Conditioning coach, a beast of an athlete from the Strong Man/Lifting/CrossFit area, and an all around good guy. We have been working a lot together in the last few months looking at gymnastics, physical therapy, CrossFit, and how we can put our heads together to break down common injuries/problems athletes from these areas run into. Here’s the link,

http://fitnesspainfree.com/fpf-podcast-episode-30-gymnastics-crossfit-and-safety-with-dr-dave-tilley/#more-3706

Fitness Pain Free Podcast Poster

 

Overhead Stability In Gymnastics (Pt. I): Background and Breaking Down Movements/Skills

Gymnastics is a sport that requires athletes to perform many types of drills, skills, and movements with the arms overhead. If you were to step back and look at how much time a gymnast spends during practice with their arms in some sort of overhead position, you might be amazed. The forces that gymnastics puts on some of these overhead movements is also pretty wild. Gymnasts and coaches have to remember that the shoulder joints aren’t designed to be weight-bearing joints like some of the lower body areas like the hips, knees, and ankles. Gymnastics is unique in the sense that it requires the upper extremity chain (thoracic spine, shoulder blades, shoulder, elbow, wrist, hand) to weight bear in a variety of different ways. When the forces of gymnastics training are greater than the upper extremity chain’s ability to control, stabilize, and handle these forces it starts to set the stage for some major head aches for both coaches and gymnasts. This scenario is often when dysfunctional movement, compensation, overuse injury, a lack of skill progress, and pain start to become issues.