Just Because A Gymnast Doesn’t Have Pain, Doesn’t Mean There Isn’t A Problem

This week I wanted to share an injury situation that recently came up with one of our gymnasts, and touch on some areas I’ve been thinking on the last few months. I really think people in gymnastics would benefit from hearing and thinking about her story. Don’t worry, both her mother and her said it was okay if I posted about it. After discussing it with them they agreed it was important information to share for other gymnasts and coaches out there. The situation is certainly a bummer as I will talk about, but I think there are some larger concepts behind the story that a lot of coaches/gymnasts/parents/medical professionals could learn from to help other gymnasts out there. I had another post lined up for this week but I thought this one was more important to get out. So, I did a little late night 2 am writing session (thank you Dunkin Donuts) and put this together for and early post this week.

Thoughts on Re-Thinking Core Training In Gymnastics

The concept of the core is something that pops up in almost every gymnastics discussion, due to its role in skill work. In every gym you step foot into you’re bound to hear someone talking about tight cores, squeezing the belly hollow, and “doing abs” for conditioning. Every current or former gymnast reading this can vividly relate to the amazing but awful feeling of the seal stretch after what felt like 2 hours of hollow rocks. Granted this type of strength is really important for gymnastics, there is so much more information to the core relating to injury prevention and skill performance. In the last 6 months I have read an incredible amount of literature and books discussing what the core does for our every day lives, sports, and ways to train for safe movement. I have spent a lot of time processing the information and brewing up ideas about these ideas may change the way some people think about core training in gymnastics. Last week’s article about how a gymnast’s core problem can look like hamstring tightness got the most attention out of anything I have ever published. I wanted to follow that up and write about where my brain has been the last few months for core training in gymnasts. I also wanted to share some of the ways I have put these ideas into our pre-hab/strength programming for coaches and gymnasts to try out.

Diagonal Reflexive Stability Drill With Dowel

How A Gymnast’s “Tight Hamstrings” Can Really Be a Core Control Problem

Something really interesting happened to me the other night at the gym during practice, and I wanted to share the story. One of my level 8’s told me that she has “really tight hamstrings” and that for some reason no matter how much she stretches her splits or pikes they never get better. I know this gymnast personally, and I know that she is one of the most flexible/hyper mobile girls on our team. So naturally I was thinking there had to be more to this. I decided to take a few minutes to break it down and figure out if it was really a hamstring mobility problem based on a lot of the PT information I’ve been reading/listening to lately. What ended up looking light tight hamstrings and a restricted pike stretch was really a core control /stability problem, and by doing some corrective work I was able to fix what looked like tight hamstrings in about 5 minutes. It all started out with her showing me a pike stretch, where she said she felt a lot of pulling in the back of her legs because of her hamstrings and she could not reach her hands to the floor.

Pre-Test Pike Stretch Suggesting Some “Tightness”

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.

Tackling Faulty Lower Spine and Hip Posture In Gymnasts (Pt II): How To Address The Possible Contributing Issues

Last week in Part I of this topic, I went over some contributing factors to gymnasts developing chronic archy back, or anterior pelvic tilting. I also outlined how this may link to possible progressive/traumatic injuries,  and decreased skill performance with gymnastics based skills.  If the issue gets to the point where it causes an injury or pain, it is often times very frustrating for the gymnast. The then have to deal with the pain during daily activities, and they usually need to stop gymnastics while using PT to address the underlying issues. Patients of mine that are gymnasts with this issue unfortunately have progressed to the point they are in this situation, and are being forced to deal with the recovery aspect while missing their season. It is much better to address the issue very early during training in the gym, and hopefully prevent it before it gets to be too serious.

Improper Half Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch – Note Anterior Pelvic Tilt and Compensatory Use of Lower Back Arch

There are definitely some ways that coaches and gymnasts can help to correct for this faulty lower body posture commonly seen. By far the biggest factor in this is being cognitively aware of it, and making sure athletes are actively trying to correct the problem during training. If the gymnast does not try to fix the problem when doing drills/skill, standing in line for turns, sitting in school, and through their daily activities, it will be very hard to fix the overall problem. All the stretches, myofascial work, and corrective exercises won’t get you anywhere if the athlete spends 12 hours a day hanging out in the arch back position.