Tips to keeping your gymnasts healthy and happy

Hi All,

Today I thought I would share a few videos on things you may want to think about in the gym/practices you may want to add. We are coming up on summer and a lot of gyms have/are going to start increasing their hours. With this is often going to come some soreness, some possible overuse injuries if we’re not careful, and there definitely needs to be a concerted effort to keep our athletes healthy and feeling good.

This first video shows some great uses for a foam roller. For gymnasts this can make a huge difference in the way they are feeling at the beginning of practice. Spending 5 minutes on a foam roller may dramatically increase the quality of the workout. They are also relatively inexpensive, and definitely a worth while investment. You can also use it on the back, though there are some other good methods as well. One of them is putting a tennis ball under your shoulder/back and rolling on it.

This next one is a really good reminder to all of us about shoulder and hip flexibility. We tend to put a lot of strain on our gymnasts backs, and if we aren’t conscious of distributing the load we can end up with gymnasts that have severe back pain. Remember that if you have a little bit more time in the summer, at least some of it should be used to increase your gymnasts shoulder and hip flexibility in order to prevent injuries down the road.

Train hard!

Photo Credit: Heather Maynez