Planning Gymnastics PreSeason: Routine Timing, Strength, & Cardio

How do you have the best preseason ? How do you best have the best in season to make sure kids are healthy and are peaking for the right meats in there , you're not burning out halfway through with either mental stress or injuries . So last week we talked about a lot of the concepts related to workloads .

What do I do differently now , based on the research that I know , how do I plan for this overall year and take a big step back to make sure we're not pushing too hard , too fast in the very beginning of the season and then burning out ?

And so this year or this week , pardon me is going to be more about the actual preseason prep , the nuts and the bolts . You know strength routines , cardio prep , all that kind of stuff . Preseason prehab all that kind of jazz . This is really the nuts and the bolts of how I approach the entire preseason .

What do I do when I teach either colleges or elite programs or club programs around the world how to change and kind of tweak their schedule to make sure they get the most out of the preseason .

But my hope is that last week's introductory concepts and this week's kind of nuts and bolts together will give you guys a really good dose of things to kind of think about and brew on as we work our way into the end of the preseason , which is actually going to lead into the next week's lecture on the actual in-season management .

So I typically don't like to time stamp the episodes , but in this situation many people like this kind of like . In the moment I'm doing preseason right now . Please help me along the way .

So I figured I would kind of add these lectures in because there were a lecture series I did that was very popular and then hopefully this will help lead into next week , which will be in season management , which will be closely upon us as this episode is coming out . So if you guys want more , the hero lab is our main kind of spot .

It's got 60 plus lectures on flexibility , strength , all sorts of resources , all sorts of PDFs and handouts that coaches and medical providers have found very , very helpful and there's a discussion community in there where you can talk with people and kind of get ideas and chat .

So check out below the link to the show notes If you'd like to join the hero lab , we'd love to have you inside there . But for now I hope you all enjoy this wonderful episode on preseason planning . All right , hey everyone , welcome back to part two of our lecture series here on kind of optimizing the competitive year for gymnastics .

And if you are just kind of hopping in and seeing this second part , I would definitely start with maybe the first piece of this lecture series which was really around .

You know the background concepts and some of the more fundamental things that you really have to understand in order for this to make sense , which is you know understanding , you know super compensation and just periodization in general , understanding kind of how the human body adapts to training , stress and how we recover and kind of the things that we need to be

thinking about like the different four parts of you know approaching the training process , and I think that a lot of those things are really really important to understand and to know and kind of have in your back pocket . I think sometimes , if you just dive into the actual .

You know how many drills do I do and what exercises should I do during strength and how do I plan my routines and stuff . You might can be a little short sighted . You might just get a lot of helpful information but it really won't make sense .

So , yeah , I would encourage people to maybe hop back over to the first lecture and check that out before you dive into this one . But for those that did check that first one out , I hope that was very helpful and it kind of laid a really good foundational groundwork for how we're going to approach the preseason .

So , like I mentioned in the last lecture , typically when I'm starting to , you know , plan a competitive year whether that's with athletes that I coach or whether that's with someone I'm consulting with or whether that's someone who's just curious I actually usually start with the biggest event of the year .

So say , you know , in a more casual recreational setting , that might just be like an end of the year show , right ? Or that might just be something like a showcase they want to do . That has nothing to do with judges or scoring or anything like that , but for them it's what's really exciting .

So we start from there and we work our way backwards into how much time we have . We break that up into blocks . Then we break that up into different components of those training blocks .

So that might be the situation there in the competitive side , whether it's states or regionals or championships , or so , say it's an elite qualifier or say it's some sort of world championship . If I'm working with an athlete who's trying to get to that meet again , we start from when that date is and we work our way backwards to make the plan there .

So , um , when we do that , I typically would start with working all the way backwards to the prior years off season and then starting with the preseason , then the in season .

But for the sake of trying to educate people and trying to really help them understand conceptually where we're going with this , we're going to start with the preseason , because I think the preseason makes more sense to people about going from preseason to in-season and then the last lecture . We'll wrap this all the way up .

We'll come back around to the off season and say how that bridges back to the start of where we are now , which is the preseason .

So a little bit different approach , but I think it'd be the most helpful for people and I also think that many people who are listening to this lecture are literally in the middle of preseason right now and I want to make sure that they feel as though they have some really helpful tools to get them ready for the meets coming up or things that are going on .

So , with that in mind , we're going to use this analogy that I think is really , really helpful .

So this idea of an hourglass and so I full credit to my buddy and my boss mentor , mike Ronald he's the one who taught me this working in professional baseball , thinking about how to manage pro baseball pitchers and outfielders and stuff through the competitive season , through their actual baseball games year to year or , sorry , week to week .

So the hourglass represents the athlete in their capacity . So what we have here is we have , obviously , with an hourglass , we have the hourglass itself and then on the top of the hourglass , as you can see here , there is sand on the top there . Okay , what the sand represents is kind of what we're doing in the preseason or the off season .

So if we can put more sand into the top of the hourglass , we're going to slowly have a better progression down through right . More sand to start with is going to obviously give the athlete more capacity at the end when sand is running through to the bottom .

So if we think about the hourglass as the overall athlete capacity through to the bottom , so if we think about the hourglass as the overall athlete capacity , how much sand we have in the top , it's inevitable that that sand is going to go through the hourglass as meat season goes on .

Okay , so what that essentially , you know , compares to is we are going to have only so much energy , only so much stamina . You can't fire on all cylinders year round constantly , because that's just not the best way to approach things .

Right , meat season and meats themselves , getting ready for meats , competing , traveling , is very demanding on the body , whether we're talking about physically demanding or emotionally and mentally demanding .

Right , it's inevitable that that sand is going to pull through the hourglass and we have to kind of accept that and embrace that reality that we can't just have year round competing nonstop .

Right , if we did that , there'd be no time to get skills , there'd be no time to get stronger , there'd be no time to recover , there'd be no time to actually think about what's the next step or moving up in level or practice . It would just be a non-stop kind of assault on their body and on their mind and it's really too much for them .

So we're going to think about that cyclical process of as we go through the competitive year , right , that sand is inevitably going to go through the hourglass . We're going to eventually kind of run out of steam and kind of get to the end point where we need to take a break . So what we can do with the hourglass is in off season or in pre season .

That's really our primary time to kind of get more sand back into the top of the hourglass and we'll talk about the ways that we do that . But mainly that's going to be through drills and skill development and strength and conditioning and energy systems development right , cardio .

We're going to do the things that we need to do , along with the athlete wellness components , to try to build as much possible sand in the top of the hourglass .

Okay , versus , we'll talk about maybe in season is that trying to actually get that sand to go slower through that bottleneck is actually what we do during the in-season or competitive period , right , a lot of things we'll talk about in the next lecture for optimizing the competitive year and trying to make sure you are preparing yourself as well as possible and

managing the week to week of you know , the ebbs and flows of when you have meets or when you don't , and how you prepare for those things and what you do in training to kind of get the athletes ready for that . That's really going to control the rate of sand going through .

So let's just focus on the top right now , which is how can we get more sand in the top of the hourglass during preseason to be better prepared for competitive meets , right , or competitive season ?

And I think , if we go back to last lecture , we talk about , you know , the work from Tim Gabbitt , the work from many other good stress researchers , the work of many other strength conditioning coaches with periodization is well , that's what we're trying to do is we're trying to intelligently and very creatively train hard to build adaptations through those stress and

recovery cycles we talked about , but not push the gas pedal too hard that we burn people out . Vice versa , we don't want to not do anything and just hope that season goes well . We actually have to work hard , we actually have to have really intelligent training programs if we want to get athletes to adapt and get stronger and be ready for the competitive

year . So the entire preseason is really aimed on building off what we did in the off season for getting drills or skills or strength and things like that , and kind of turning somebody into an operational approach to getting ready for the meets that are coming up , but not killing them too much , right ?

So we want to slowly build up our potential and getting ready for those meats , but we don't want to go so hard , so fast that we may cause injuries or spike someone's mental wellness to come down the tubes . So with that analogy in mind , we got to think about what's the big picture here , like , what are we trying to do , and take a big step back .

What is the goal of the preseason ? Okay , well , number one is we're trying to get all of the foundational strength gains that we've made from the offseason and really develop our body to work for power right , gymnastics in any discipline , and every single thing we do is an explosive body weight sport , right .

So that's really what we're trying to focus on is how do we get all of the strength gains and all of the athletes ready to go as hard as they can , as fast as they can , do big , explosive tumbling or vault or jumping on trampoline or whatever else they want to do .

We really have to focus on creating that foundational power aspect if we hope to have really good meat season routines and we hope to have really powerful tumbling .

Number two for more of the energy systems or cardio point of view is we want to try to make sure we're going from that maybe global base of aerobic fitness or maybe just that general fitness that we have at hand , and really teaching their bodies how to work in bursted intervals , right .

So floor routines are , you know , 70 , 90 seconds , um , but we have beam routines that are in the same kind of area of 60 , and bar routines , right . Trampoline routines uh , any sort of aerobic or rhythmic floor routine right , they're not these five , 10 , 15 , 20 , 25 minute , uh . Endeavors right , they're .

They're up to , you know , very , very short intervals of a minute and a half in some cases . So that's kind of what we need to focus on is really getting the energy systems ready to handle that right .

Because if you take those things together , if you take together the skill work and the actual routine progressions and you add really , really good explosive power and shaping and some really good foundational strength and basics , but then you also train the athlete to handle that 90 seconds of high , high intensity .

That is how you have the best foundational success to do well in a meet . Obviously , training your routines and practicing routines , and the meat prep , prep in the competition , the mental , you know performance aspects of managing your , your stress levels and your anxiety and hitting a routine under pressure , those are obviously very , very important , right ?

But without foundational power and the foundational energy systems to do those things , you're going to constantly be frustrated when you try to put routines together .

Okay , number three is we're really trying to get all of our skills , all of our combinations and eventually get to the end goal of competing right , we want to be able to do a full routine on all events and compete really , really well and hit our requirements , hit our different execution goals that we have for really clean form .

Try to make sure we hit under pressure , have the mental capacity to do that and also the physiological capacity .

So we're trying to really push the athletes over the course of these 12 weeks , of this three-month block , into going from okay , here are the skills I want to do for my level or this is the compulsory routine I'm doing and actually get through an entire routine from a mental and a physical point of view .

So when you take a big step back there and you think about okay , those are my three main goals , the rest of what we do is really going to be built around . Okay , well , how do we chop up the three months we have into smaller segments ?

And then what are we doing in those smaller segments to get explosive power , to get that anaerobic burst or that kind of interval-based cardio preparation and also get our routines ready ? And that's where we're gonna kind of move to here . Okay , I always approach the preseason in a 12 week or so block .

I think if I was in a magical world where I had all the time in the world , I would want longer for this right .

But I think the reality of working with athletes that are in school and have other things going on with you know , family demands and other life demands is that obviously the preseason being longer would be ideal , and I think I don't want to get into the conversation about it , but particularly in the NCAA , it's challenging sometimes to get the athletes ready when

you only have eight to 12 weeks to work with and sometimes I think that lack of a preseason length and the amount of density and how much they compete in a short period of time , either on the JL side and the club side or on the college side . I think unfortunately , that does us a disservice and it's really hard to get the athletes ready .

But at this point in time it is what it is . It's really hard to chop up the year and kind of push things around as much as we have now .

But in the future it would be ideal if we had a longer off season and a longer preseason with a little bit shorter of a in season , because the length of some gymnastics seasons go like up to five , six months and I think it's really really challenging on their body .

I'd like to maybe see that condensed a little bit more to have more time to have an off season and kind of get their bodies ready but then also have more time in the preseason to be ready for what's coming up during the year . So a little bit of a soapbox there , but I think that's really really important to mention here .

But given as we are in front of us , this is how I've always approached the preseason , with people who have that three month window .

It seems to be the most common , obviously , if you're working in an elite cycle , this might be a different period of the year or it might be a little bit more of , like you know , two kind of mini preseasons where you kind of get yourself ready for your first meet and then you know NCAA gymnastics . This is kind of the best way to approach it .

So I personally , in all the programs I've worked with and I've been , like I said , fortunate to consult with a lot of programs I've seen a lot of strength programs , I've seen a lot of yearly calendars from the club level to the college level to the elite level , and I've seen a lot of gymnast plans .

And personally , with my own coaching philosophy , I think that this is what also seems to work the best , kind of uh congruency wise . But I like this approach of a four week block and then a longer eight week block .

Okay , so the reason I think the four week block needs to happen is I think sometimes we jump the gun from going from general off season training and kind of diving right into some of the more intense gymnastics work , and I think that our bodies are typically not ready for that .

So what that means practically is we come back from the summer where I am in the States here and we're like , okay , meat season's coming up . We got to start a lot of plyometrics . We got to start a lot of tumbling on the hard floor , start getting on hard surfaces .

We got to start going really , really hard with gymnastics , specific skill training and event training , and I think that it's well-intentioned .

But I think that the ramp up is so aggressive that it's a huge spike in workload , particularly with the number of impacts that gymnasts may take or the number of backbending skills that it might require , or the number of shoulder intensive skills that men's gymnastics requires , or the number of high impact trampoline bounces that trampolinists will take .

And I think what you see is a lot of overuse . Injuries come from that right . You see a lot of stress fractures in the shins , you see a lot of low back pain , you see a lot of shoulder pain in male gymnasts or wrist pain , and I think a lot of this comes because , again , we don't really have this transitional block of four weeks to train .

What science says is the best way to get the power ready , the best way to get the general impact tolerance ready or just get their entire body ready to handle some of the higher force things .

There's many , many great tools and strength and conditioning that can help us smooth over from the off season getting ready for preseason , and every gymnast that we have that comes to champion physical therapy and performance and works with us for some of their off season and in season training for strength and conditioning and just lifting , not even for medical stuff .

We have like 30 or 40 athletes who do this with us . Every single one of them gets some sort of a transition block before they go back to really really hard stuff at their college or really really hard stuff at their gym , because we just know the reality of how hard it's going to be .

So I really want to drive that point home that if you are able to and you can have the flexibility to , you really should try to build in one of these transition blocks , okay .

And then after that four week cycle you can pretty much just put all your eggs in the basket of gymnastics specific preparation , which means you know everything you've thought about right under the sun that you've probably known on the last X years of your coaching career .

But getting routines ready , doing plyos , doing hard surfaces , really challenging sled push routines or dance throughs with extra tumbling passes , like all that fun stuff . That is really really great and really , really important to do .

I think if you have this good foundational base from the off season and you also have this four week transitional block , people tolerate the workload changes quite a bit more comfortably versus getting a lot of limited factors of growth plate injuries , like you know , severance disease , osgoods , slaughter , stuff like that , or back issues , like I said .

So if you can plan for it , I think it's really really important . So , that being said , let's kind of go back to our four categories that we had . So , gymnastics development , right , strength and physical preparation , energy systems development and then athlete wellness . Those are the four things that I said in the last lecture . We're kind of juggling .

We reviewed those pretty in depth about what those mean , but we're going to kind of think about those things Every single lecture moving forward . We do . We'll kind of go piece by piece and I'll share exactly what I think is important to do during these blocks of the preseason , during the weeks of training and during the days .

Okay . So gymnastics specific in this first four week block , we're mainly going to start with just doing combinations of skills , right . Okay , what's the routine construction going to be ? How are we going to order those ? What would the first half look like ? What would the second half look like ?

We're going to start to kind of build up those combinations and I think it's really good to do this either with a spot or with some spotting blocks or have somebody slide a Madden for something , just to kind of get used to the feeling of doing multiple skills in a row and staying on the equipment for longer .

So I like doing two weeks of these kind of combinations and these just like skeleton half sets . And then I like doing two weeks of pretty much full sets , but not with the hardest dismount or with the last tumbling pass possibly .

So I think that that sometimes gets a little bit dicey when you have someone just go from a full end set with a new dismount or with something that they might be tired for and not really mentally or physically ready for . Again , physiologically we probably haven't developed the kind of energy system that needs to support a full 60 to 90 second max effort .

You know intensity thing , like a floor routine or some sort of bar routine . So if we can start with a bunch of skill combinations , then move to maybe a back half with no dismount . Or you know , they do their skills on high bar and they run over to the pit bar and do their dismount there , or they do their tumbling passes up into the last one .

Then you pause the routine , they run over to a softer surfaces and they dismount into the pit , they dismount into a rod strip . I think that's really really a smart thing to do and I think this goes as well with different situations where you're putting in new skills . So say , you're doing a new hard skill .

Maybe you can get a spot , a light spot , on that skill in the routine and then you can kind of do the last pass as a watered down pass .

So I like doing this in these four week blocks because it doesn't throw so much at the athletes so fast that they might be over their head and they might have a silly injury or something happen , but also it gives you more time to kind of build up , like I said in that four week block , for their energy systems of getting their cardio ready , getting their

strength and power ready , which we'll talk about in the next section . Okay , so after the four week block , in the eight week block , I think it's pretty much just getting routines together . Right , you're just doing the very classic gymnastics preseason , which is all right . We did half sets .

Let's maybe now start to doing a full set , without the dismount Like I just mentioned . Let's try to do . You know , two weeks later let's do a pressure set , let's do a mock meet situation .

Right , it's just getting everything ready for the actual first meet of the season and I think that you'd want to use six weeks there and then two weeks you'd want to kind of slowly taper into what that first meet is going to be .

So some people that's an inner squad , some people that's actually a first home meet , that's a travel there , but you're really working on pressure sets .

So it's literally like , out of a 45 minute workout for an event , you might just do a complete meat warmup and then kind of you know , ice the kicker , as they say , which is actually put a lineup order in and say , yes , you're going to have to wait two or three people after you warm up .

You know , not just hop right up and do your routine like you've been used to the last six weeks . So I think simulating those mock meets are really , really important , but you have to intentionally build those into your plan .

You can't just be like the day before me , like , all right , let's try a mock me , right , because you got to make sure that people feel they can get into a routine and they understand what they want to do .

So , as an overview of the 12 week block , as we break things down even more , I like these kind of no-transcript connecting that to their round off back handspring , right . Maybe it's just learning how to go combinations . To start it might just be front up rise , swing , handstand , pirouette , stutz , peach , kip , press , handstand , right .

It might be just a very little combination there . So not everything is so daunting with their skills . Obviously , as you get into super high level , they have to learn how to string together really challenging combinations .

So it might be , you know , stutz to handstand , deom and then front up rise one and a quarter , dismount right into a pit or something like that for guys on P bars . You have to obviously know the athletes what they're doing , but I'm just saying these combinations of skills are super , super helpful to get things going .

And then they would pop off and do some side drills that are strength or conditioning or a correction for one skill they saw in a video and something like that . That's a really good basic way to approach some of these drills .

Obviously , if you only have 30 minutes , maybe it's a basic warmup and then three of those skill combinations and then a couple of side drills . If you have an hour you might do more . Right , again , we talked about how I can't give you every single example , but I'm just kind of sharing some ideas of frameworks .

Okay , another really good combination thing to do here is a basic warmup , three of each half , and then take some corrections and then do side drills . So three of your first half , three of your second half , on whatever event . It should be right . And most most obviously , artistic routines can be broken up into five and five skills .

Trampling is the same way , you know , rhythmic routines , same way .

Maybe you do the first half of your routine and then you kind of take a break , you watch the video , you see what you needed to work on , do a correction , do another first half , then take some corrections , then do another first half and then you do the same thing through your second half of your routines . Okay , another option here basics , warm up .

I really enjoyed this one particularly . So , warm up , do two of each half , do your corrections and then whichever was the weaker half that you struggled on , let's repeat another one or two of those .

So maybe your bar routine , you crush the first , you know , half all the time and it feels really really good , but you always seem to be struggling with your last possible skill . Your dismount gets a little funky . So you would just work on drills and corrections for that weak half .

That's another really really good way to kind of help someone develop their weaknesses . And then lastly , maybe on vault you just warm up .

You do five to seven vaults to a kind of a semi firm surface with a nice little drill circuit in between to work on blocking or visual points of cue or your round off snap down entry or your front handspring entry , whatever else . It should be right . I'm obviously thinking in a group setting here versus someone who's just working on their own .

But I'm trying to get a group of 12 athletes through seven vaults is definitely challenging in 45 minutes . So that's a that's already enough in itself .

But setting up side stations , setting up video feedback , setting up drills , setting up side strength and conditioning , setting up side active flexibility , all those things can be built directly into your uh , your warmups and can be built directly into some of your actual event routines .

So I really like this as , like I said , a way to get those skill combinations and half sets going . Okay , for the eight week example , here are some examples of things that I've found really , really helpful to try to mimic some of the things leading up to a meet . Okay , so , basic warmup , right . So just doing some basic skills .

Just do two routines on your own time , right , so whether a coach is watching or whether you have somebody else that can kind of video you and do that , but two routines and then you would do two of each half after that , right , this is a pretty aggressive amount of volume , depending on the event that you're working on .

Right , for uneven bars or doing you know , something with beam , it might not be that challenging , but two floor routines is absolutely tough , right . Two floor routines and two halves . It'd be really hard to get that all in , so it might just be one and one half on each .

So for other events , for like men's gymnastics , for example , pommel horse , two routines is a joke , right . You could probably get through two routines in your warmup , so it might be four or five routines , right ? Every event is very , very different . Two full trampoline routines . It's pretty tough depending on the level that you're working on .

So you have to kind of have your coach's on here about what's realistic and then what's not right . Doing five bar routines is really aggressive sometimes . Maybe two and three is where you want to be . But I don't think that we should . We should only be tailoring based on you know the athlete .

We should be based on the event itself and what's going to be challenging . So basic warm up , two routines , two of each half and then maybe some drills on the side . Another one is great is just doing a basic warm up , two routines and then doing those week half corrections . I really think those are super valuable as well .

So you do those routines , you get you kind of got through it , even if it's not the best routine in your life . Then you go back and you do those week corrections again with drills on the side . Another one is you get closer towards the end .

Like I said , those those end of the six weeks and two week tapers is you do a timed warmup , you just pick an arbitrary order , you do a pressure set where everybody's watching , everyone's cheering .

It's literally just one athlete going at a time and then you break up and with the next you know 15 minutes you can do another routine or a third routine or take some corrections or something like that .

But that simulated pressure set sometimes like literally the whole gym stopping to watch someone set can be really , really valuable to work on some of those anxiety pieces , some of those nerves , right .

And then , lastly , warming up as a competition would be you compete your two vaults and then maybe after everyone does their competition , two vaults again with the order , with athletes sitting in between waiting for their turn , getting saluted by a mock judge , the whole nine .

Then they go back and maybe open the vaults up and do four more with some drills and stuff like that . So again , just different ways to kind of slowly build up the , the progression of getting ready for their actual meets and stringing together these routines . These are all workouts that I've done that are very , very helpful .

And then I find the athletes respond to really really well .

Like I said , obviously lower level athletes that have not a lot of time you might just be doing one of these things to get through floor routines , or maybe they can do more of the routines on beam because they're a lot less intense than some of the older athletes have , but you have to make that decision as a coach or someone who's involved .

Okay , so now let's move on to strength and physical preparation . So what are we really focusing on here ? So we should have a really good strength base from the summer . Right , if we did things right , if we really worked on a good strength program , as we'll talk about in the last lecture you should have a nice strong athlete .

But because you've been really focusing on maximal strength , you're probably not going to have the fastest athlete or the most quick twitch , right , it's not going to be someone who's really highly tuned for explosive power . You have to specifically train that , okay .

So we'll use strength as our foundational block towards power and then we're going to try to wean our way into developing . Okay , how do we move fast ? How do we go explosive ? How do we go max effort and translate that I really really want to emphasize here . This is for power training and this is also for cardio or energy system training .

We must train these things in low risk settings first , okay , and I'll explain exactly what that means . I'll give you examples

. I really think one of the biggest mistakes I made as a younger coach was asking athletes to be explosive in their power tumbling or in some of their skill work before they felt as though they developed that safely .

And what I mean by that is having athletes , for example , do round-up back handspring , high tuck with a spot up to stacked mats for a couple weeks before they ever are asked to do a layout or a full or a double back or a double double , whatever else it is to max effort right , just saying like go as hard as you can and try to do this double back or

do this back tuck . For some athletes that are younger , if you don't teach them how to control that power with technical development and you also don't kind of develop their , their power in a safer setting , it might get really really dicey really really fast .

You have to train the body to tolerate these , these really high intensity efforts , and develop their safety right with some of their , their landing techniques or with some of their explosive power control before we ever ask them to do a tumbling pass . That's really high risk or a vault that's really high risk .

So obviously coaches develop phenomenal you know expertise and technical development and drills and progressions to learn how to be powerful and control that . But we can do a lot more in the strength conditioning world .

There's so much great scientific support and evidence of how we do this smart and intelligent ways from other sports that I still think gymnastics has yet to kind of develop and I'll share kind of what I mean by that in a second .

But just really really try to focus on developing power in low risk settings first , like against med balls and sled sprints and explosive sprint work . Don't just go right to the hardest tumbling passes , don't just go to their routines . Try to really get it to show up in some of the side drills and also some of these things we'll talk about , okay .

So remember here , as we look at how we're going to program for power , power is very much a product of force over time , right ? The scientific definition , okay . So what we need to do is we want to increase power , we're going to have to increase force , right , if we want to actually get that .

And what we do that with is the summer , right , we do that with the increase in strength and the body weight and lifting weights that we've talked about and we'll talk about in the next lecture as well . We also do that by improving and optimizing techniques .

So when you teach an athlete to be stiff , or you teach them you know where to put their limbs in space , or you teach them where to look , or you teach them how to hit the equipment , well , you are increasing the force because you're actually preventing the leakage of energy , right ?

So someone who is very , very stiff and has really , really good body shape and has really really good technique they're not leaking energy , they're not losing force to the equipment versus someone who , objectively , gets a lot stronger over the summer and the preseason and say can you know squat more or can jump higher or can do more leg lifts or do more rope

climbs , they will be able to increase the amount of force they can put through the equipment and through you know the apparatus . So that will then also increase their power development , right ? But the other way we do this is by reducing the time interval .

If you can express that same force over less period of time say you're snapping down to the ground and you have really good stiff ridges and your calves and your quads are very , very strong , your hips and your hamstrings are very , very strong Well , you're not going to leak that energy , but you can impulse off the floor much , much faster and save some of that

energy translated into a higher tumbling pass , right , if you can tap more efficiently and harder on your shape-changing technique , you might have a higher dismount or a higher takacha for something like that . If you can be much more smooth with your technique . But you can also increase the amount of time you can deliver that force by .

So , you're sorry , reduce the time you're delivering that force by so I can move faster , the same amount of force over less time , you can have the potential to be more powerful . So a little bit geeky here , but essentially what we need to do is we need to train for this .

We need to train for them to work faster right , we need to train sprints and explosive jumps and bounding work and med ball slams and throws , like . We need to actually have the skill work and the actual opportunity to say , hey , move as fast as you possibly can .

Which again is why I like things like med ball throws or med ball slams , because there's no inherent danger to throwing a med ball really , really hard at the ground or overhead .

There is a little bit of danger for having someone just tumble as hard as they can and set as high as they can and hope that it goes well right , so we can train these things in safer settings , like I mentioned . And again , you will obviously improve your , you know your ground reaction times If you have really great technique , like I just talked about .

If you're stiffer , you know where to look , you can snap down faster , you can snap into the floor faster , you're going to have more potential energy coming back to get a higher tumbling pass . But essentially , increasing force and reducing the time is how we're going to get somebody more powerful .

So what we're going to do in the four week block again focusing on this max power and low risk ways we're going to do a mixture of gymnastics , specific and general stuff , and we'll talk about what that means but essentially doing side drills , doing some event basic warm ups , doing some different things in a general warm up to try to get them to be more

explosive and get them to work kind of faster , shape changes and much more aggressive snap down technique or running technique . But also we can use things , like I said , like med balls and sleds and other options of jumping and bounding to get that general development of fast twitch to kind of come along for the ride . During the eight-week block .

We're going to pretty much take all of it and try to make it go into routines , like I just talked , talked about with some of the combinations of skill work . We're going to essentially say , okay you're , we have this nice new power development to work with . I need this to show up in skills .

I need this to show up in your technique for what you're doing on your actual snap down technique on vault or your actual swing handstands on rings or something like that . So I need this to actually show up . The eight week block is really focused on okay , what can we ?

We do to try to get that power to show up in gymnastics specific ways , much of which will come through just our routine training and come through some of our side drills during those corrections . But we can also work on specific strength conditioning to help out with that .

And then here in the four week block , let's just give some examples here , right , so we might do some trampoline or some rod strip whips in power tumbling . So maybe we'll just do like round off back handspring , high layout layout right on a trampoline or on a rod strip floor .

We're kind of slowly going from a softer surface to a harder surface to kind of get their shins and their body ready . We might do some high intensity but moderate volume plyometrics right .

So we might do tuck jumps over mats , we might do tuck jumps in place , we might do rod strip jumps , we might do some depth jumps off of a block , some high , explosive bounding sprint work . All that stuff comes into some of the gymnastics specific event work .

We also might do some jumps and some leaps , some sprints , some floor jump , cast hands and it's just really trying to have nice sharp , aggressive snapping motions , Not that kind of more slow and controlled , but really really sprint as fast as you can , really really jump as high as you

can . Another really great place to work this is like on side stations or on like strap bar , for example . I really love putting people in strap bar in the preseason . Just hang just nice aggressive arch hollow kick as hard as you can with great shapes and try to get that giant to go over with a nice snap , a snap shape change .

So younger athletes who are , even if they're doing like they're super advanced elite athletes , just doing really aggressive sequences of strap bar tapping is a really great way to develop this kind of rate of force development in this power stuff Okay . And then a lot of times in basics I like doing these as well for warmup .

So whether it's on bars and you would do like power swings or cast handstands or giants , whether it's just doing basic warmup , tumbling of , like I said , high , tumbling up to mats or doing some things on the side stations , of just snap down , rebound for men's parallel bar gymnastics , we'll talk about like just doing really aggressive front upright swing handstands

or really aggressive dip swings or really aggressive power circles front loop , back loop , side loop just warming up with some of these really explosive intention based things . And I think intention is really important . There you have to train intention . You have to train as hard as you possibly can .

But , like I said , doing these things , doing power swing , cast handstands are very , very low risk versus asking someone to do a one and a quarter .

Doing rod strip high tucks up to mats with a spot is very , very low risk compared to having someone go on the actual floor and say , okay , I want you to do your full as hard as you can or your double back as hard as you can . So finding ways drills , side stations , warmups to specifically train power , but in a safer way , okay .

So here's some examples here , some videos in the top left . Just doing some arch hollow snap shape changes is a really great side station on bars . It's also a very great way to do in a warm up or someone who's working on it . Another way to do this is the top right hand corner is just doing a little bit of arch hollow snapping between foam rollers .

I love this drill . It's very , very basic . It's very , very easy to scale between athletes . So having them go on their stomach and just work on that kind of aggressive shape change , so they're pulling into a hollow , you can flip them over on their back between two foam rollers and do the explosive arch as well .

Over here in the bottom left , in and out panel mat jumps are really great too , this kind of just general quick twitch shaping off the floor . So again , to make this harder , you'd make the panel mats higher . To make this easier , you make the panel mats lower .

But it's really great for someone to work on some of that nice stiffness technique we talked about , but also just trying to jump as high as they possibly can and then kind of more classic gymnastics conditioning but just tuck jumps over panel mats and series , getting someone to just learn how to be nice and tight and stiff off the ground trying to get themselves

to have nice explosive power up and over the mat . So you know , tuck jumps over mats or high jumps . I think it's important to work these in the preseason , this general block . But again , I think high intensity with low or moderate volume is what we're looking for .

I really , really caution against doing 20 minutes of just extended panel mat , plyo jumps , as we'll talk about , but high intensity is what we're looking for to get their body ready for that explosive kind of quick twitch fiber . Okay , so some more four block examples for the general side of things .

So we could do some seated dumbbell jumps , we could do some broad jumps , roll to single leg jumps , med ball slams , med ball throws , sled pushes and pulls , plyometric pushups , dumbbell push presses , jump rope V-ups or tuck slider throughs .

These are all just progressions of some of the exercises that we would talk about in an off-season training block and they really help just develop all athletics qualities right . So can you jump , can you sprint , can you slam , can you sprint , can you slam , can you run . All those things again are general training aspects to just explosive power .

But all these things , if you coach and doing the proper dosage , are super duper safe . They're hard , they're really challenging but they're super duper safe . Right Seated dumbbell jumps are a fantastic way to get explosive leg power right , and med ball slams and throws slamming between your feet or opening and throwing behind you .

They're really really great ways to work on , like the triple extension for setting off a floor or the squatting landing pattern that you're going to need to be safe when you land a dismount . But they're really really low risk .

You're not going to hurt somebody by doing a four pound med ball , but it really gives them an opportunity to go as hard as they possibly can . Like you say , like I want you to put a hole in the ground with how hard you throw this thing . So we're using a lot of these things in our programming throughout the preseason this four week block .

So just some examples here right Roll to a single leg jump just a really good way to kind of develop a single leg power . So they'd roll back on a panel mat , jump as high as they can . Another option of this is a seated hands on hips jump .

So by putting their hands on their hips they're not allowed to use their arms and you can just jump as high as you can . So pushing up , squeezing as far as you can that way .

Okay , jump rope V ups are really great to kind of get that rapid compression aspect that we're working on for bars or for cast handstands Very simple to do with a jump rope and unfortunately athletes with longer legs struggle a little bit more . But speed V ups are kind of this option here .

And then last , in the bottom right hand corner , just doing some aggressive tuck throughs trying to get their body to compress , reach out , come back through and again , these are all just examples of things that I think we're talking about the principles of power development , the principles of jumping and speed work .

I'm not saying that these are the only four exercises you can do . There's a bajillion great exercises out there . Okay , a couple more examples here . Here's some med ball work , some med ball slams . So Heather's just trying to slam as hard as she can between her feet .

But this really helps to develop the closing shoulder angle , which a lot of people need for kips , which a lot of people need for some tap swings , but also it obviously helps you in a landing pattern of squatting . This is a reverse overhead med ball throw . So by sitting her down she can't use her legs and we're just working on the core and the arms .

Again , think about getting back to her table for your Chankos , setting off the floor , beam series , jumping higher on trampoline , getting off the board for springboard , work on vault , like all those things are very , very applicable .

But with a four pound med ball she can just work on really aggressive arm throwing behind her and develop the power generally in her shoulders and core to then transfer over to drills , right Sled pushes and sled pulls are down here .

So just working on explosive kind of like low , low weight on the sled but just trying to run as fast as you possibly can down the floor and run backwards as fast as you can down the floor , again , always to develop this general athleticism quality of power . But you know , not do it in a way that might be risky .

Okay , so here's an example of a programming . This is like literally taken from one of our binders . So we might do this . So one A and one B just means a superset . So you would bop back and forth between these two things no-transcript with really high power things . You don't want to be giving 10 , 12 , 15 reps because the power is going to fall apart .

Right , so five explosive uh single leg jumps as high as you can , eight speed leg lifts . We might do a lap of connected uh single leg bounding jumps down the floor . Connect that with a super set of plyometric push-ups and again 2a .

2b means they would do the first 1a , 1b , then go down to two and go one lap with the connected deer jumps and then eight , eight plyometric push ups and bop back and forth four times there .

Then , lastly , they would go on a low bar with a spot and do five power cast handstands is connected and then do some med ball slams like you saw in the last video . Okay , so that would just be an example . That would be a workout on one day per week that we would do .

That would probably take about a half hour to 45 minutes to set it all up and explain and have people do it with high quality . But that would be a really classic . You know , in season sorry , preseason strength program or power program that I would develop for that four week block like I was talking about .

Okay , so here's another couple examples of the eight week blocks for gymnastics specific , just to give you more ideas . So just some ideas around the eight block stuff . Right ? So power tumbling up to stack mats , uphill vaulting onto stack mats is really great .

Just stacking mats behind a resi pit or stacking behind a vault table and just going like front handspring or round off entry as high as you possibly can , try to get up and over some stacks , floor dance throughs , but using sprints in between .

So they pause the music and you would sprint three times when you do your instead of your tumbling pass in the really , really early season , and then maybe you replace that with

sleds . After that , to make it harder , you put a sled push out there with some lightweight on it . You do three sled pushes which will gas your legs out . And then , lastly , once they feel maybe after a couple of weeks they're prepared , is you start adding in basic tumbling passes .

So instead of your hardest tumbling pass , you would do your , your first pass as a basic pass , your third all the way down , your third , the very , very end .

You know , maybe four weeks into this eight week block you start doing , okay , do your first pass , but then do basic passes for your second and third pass or fourth pass , and then you eventually just get to a full routine like we talked about . Okay , so same thing with the other pieces .

So maybe skeleton routines where you just do basics , so giants to dismount into the pit , so you just do all your basic routine elements , not actually your hardest skills , but then you would run over to the pit and you do giant , giant to whatever dismount is , so you feel safe . And then skeleton P bar routines as well .

Maybe you would do your entire basic routine without all your hardest skills , but then you would just do a couple extra sets of basics at the end so you would hop back up after your dismount . You do front upright swing , handstand five times just to build the endurance up , just to kind of get them ready for what's coming down the road .

Okay , and here's some examples , examples more of just some drills for side stations . So you know , a little suit entry drill here , just working on blocking power , setting up the mats where they're coming off this T-trainer and they're just working on explosive blocking power . We would do this .

You can actually kind of see it over here in the top right hand corner . We have the stack mat set up and we have this resi with a mat on top of it . So these athletes are coming down , they're doing round off entry to their back . So again working on that explosive blocking power .

The thought is that if we're doing really good physical preparation and we're getting the upper body stronger with those plyometric pushups and cast handstands , that we can make this show up in some of these side drills here .

Another one for vault , just kind of an explosive arm thrill , arm throw drill that was hard to say uh g just doing some uh , your chanko work type here down here on rod strip this was also for your chankos , but in the same circuit was just like a round off very aggressive snap up to a resi .

So just working on snapping hard down into the mat , looking at the hand mat behind you shout out nick erotic for those drills , and then trying to get really fast back to the table again . You can see how the arm swing component is what we're working on right .

We're working on the arm swing over here in the top right and we're working on the arm swing component over here in the bottom left . And then this is just an example of you know , when we want some front twisting so say someone's doing a fuller or Rudy , we try to give them nice high layout halves to bound off the floor .

So Linnea here is just working on trying to get up and over the top before she a nice high rebound on the other side . So just some ideas for side stations that I think also kind of translate to this power development piece . And then , moving on from here , so the general side as well for the eight week block .

So we might start doing connected double or single leg vertical jumps . We might be doing connected broad jumps . We might do some max effort sled sprints around the floor for like 30 seconds . We might do some more speed rope climbs or some shuttle sprint repeats . So we'd have someone do kind of do you know there's our line ?

Floor has every you know what 10 feet it is or six feet . So run down , tap the line , sprint back . Run down , tap the line , sprint back three times while your partner goes .

So just working on some explosive bouts , right , instead of by connecting our jumps , by connecting our bounding stuff together , we're teaching the body to work much , much quicker in a fast twitch stuff and it's much more challenging . So instead of just doing one or two of those broad jumps , we might do multiple things together . And just some examples here .

So here's some single leg rebounders . So Jen , just in the top left hand corner here just kind of you can see how she's now connecting those single leg jumps together . She's kind of pulling her heel up towards her buttock , but we're kind of working on some of the faster , quick twitch rebounding stuff .

And then over here on the right you can see a depth jump to react , a broad jump right , so she drops off the mat and instead of just sticking her landing or just doing a squat jump , she's now working on reacting very , very fast and this also helps to kind of get in that quick twitch fiber that we're trying to get some of that . What then ?

Another example here is just in a warmup we might have an athlete just do three power cast and stands . So Kip cast and stand , just trying to be as aggressive as humanly possible and obviously hold her shape at the end .

But this is more like an event specific warmup , but just a couple of examples that kind of go there of different options you can play with . I like event warmups , I like side stations and I also like doing it in their actual event work . Okay , so then , moving on here , here's some programming examples for the events .

You might have someone do five front and back power tumbling passes to stacked mats as your warm up on your floor , right .

So maybe you do a basic warm up and then say , okay , two lanes here , everyone's going to do five power roundup back handspring or roundup back handspring or , sorry , roundup back tucks up to these mats and trying to work on high stick there . If they're not comfortable doing it , just do high candlesticks right , jump the candlestick .

Um , they might do five vaults over a high resi after their competitive warmup and then their compete competition . You might have them compete a little bit and then slide the mats back over and say , okay , everyone's now going to work on five high resi timers , like we just showed in that video .

We might do the same thing with the basic skeletons , the giants of the pit , or we might have some do a dance through , like I said , with sprints on each path . So just some options here to play with things that I think are really really important to develop again general power and that general capacity to work really really fast .

Another example here of some programming for the strength circuit side so we might start with a rolling start to a 20 yard sprint . So essentially the vault runway .

So we would say , okay , for the first 10 feet I want you to just kind of slowly get up to speed and then , for the last vault runway , I want you to go max effort and have them run into a distance or a spot where they can , you know , obviously safely slow down the kip , cast power handstands , like I said , with a spot we might do three sets of five

with 2a , 2b between drop down max depth vertical jump and then go over to a speed rope climb . After so five of the depth jumps go over to a speed rope climb . After so five of the depth jumps , go over to the speed rope climb as high as you can , right Speed lap connected broad jumps down the rod strip and then arch hollow snaps in between .

Again , notice that this is not crazy volume , right . This is not like five to six to seven sets , like you might see in the off season , where you're really trying to get stronger . This is about intention . This is about explosive power . I want all these reps to be absolutely max effort and you got to train that .

But it's different than just saying , hey , here's a giant list of exercises , go do it . You're intentionally planning here for power and rate of force development . So you need to have that nice component to it . We would also do some maintenance strength and stuff like that .

But just in the sake of trying to emphasize , the goal of this preseason training is , you would want to be doing a lot of this kind of more very fast , very explosive type work is the bulk of your training . Okay , so let's move on to cardio and energy systems training .

Before we kind of wrap up an athlete wellness , but for cardio and energy training we really want that good base from the summer , like we said , we like we'll talk about in the lectures prior coming down the road of like circuits and doing some just general training .

But what we're trying to do right now is make sure that it's okay to have that general base to work with , because we're going to use that to get that into a more explosive power setting . So that kind of 90 second interval , in the same way that strength is the foundation of power .

Aerobic systems are really how you recover from some of those really high intensity efforts . So you know , when you do a floor routine and you're huffing and puffing and you're dying on the side , that is your aerobic system . That's kind of recovering

you . So I think that it's not , uh , it's , it's not commonly thought about in the gymnastics culture to do an aerobic base work , I think , only do sprints , only do sprints . But the same way that we have general and gymnastics specific training , we can have aerobic training and mixed anaerobic training together .

So the longer based work , but then also the bursted based work as well . So you have to make sure that you know you recover from these turns . Those turns are three to seven seconds , but the practices last up to four hours . So what do you think get somebody through an entire long power power workout ?

It's definitely the aerobic system helping out as well , right . But also , even though the routines are 90 seconds or lower , all the meets are three to four hours too . So what do you think get someone through the energy to have multiple events to warm up , compete , travel the next event , warm up , compete , go to the next event , warm up , compete , right .

That is the aerobic system at work there . So we need to have some of this as a base . And then the recovery between turns or routines or training and things like that , the actual practice sessions themselves . You recover between those things . A lot of that comes down to aerobic fitness as being one part of that . I don't want to say it's the only thing .

You should train gymnastics , obviously , but I think people underappreciate how important it is to have a mixture of these bases for gymnasts . Okay , so during the four week block we're going to start with just general anaerobic work and low settings first , again , low risk settings , and I'll talk about what that means .

We want to do movements that are really easy for most people to do , right . So , like I said , the squat jumps , the sled pushes , the med ball stuff . You're not going to hurt somebody . It's really easy to learn how to do those movements and , to be frank , it just sucks . You know , just pushing a sled just kind of sucks .

So it's not going to be this really complicated technical drill for strength . They have to do our cardio . They have to do that . Like , by the time you actually get a couple of reps and you have to switch or do something else . You want just very , very easy stuff to do . Okay , the , okay , the eight week block we're going to be a lot smarter .

We're going to funnel those things into routine shape . We're going to be very , very smart about how we train these cardio systems . We're not going to just going to add junk mileage like just 20 minute run or 20 minute panel map , because again , that's not going to be the most effective way but also it might not be the most optimal to keep them safe .

We're really , really smart about how we plan these intervals no-transcript , short period of time and then you recover by doing some nice slow movements and I'm going to spare everybody that the really geeky reason for that . We have a lot of lectures on that if you're interested .

But essentially you create a lot of fatigue in your body by dumping , you know , lactate or hydrogen ions into your blood system and then you teach your body to clear that , which essentially is what a flow routine is , which is doing a tumbling pass really , really hard and then having to do dance or something in between to recover .

That's kind of what that entire aspect is . Same thing with different tempos of routines or different , harder skills and easier skills alternating in routines .

So going back and forth between these hard and kind of easier recovery periods helps teach your body how to deal with that discomfort of being , you know , really really crappy feeling of hydrogen in your body and you're out of breath and you're breathing really , really heavy and all that kind of stuff , your heart rates through the roof .

So these two types of things , I think , are really low risk . They're not going to hurt anybody , but they're really , really challenging . Like I said , I'm a fan of smart but intelligent hard training . So this is the way we do it . So let's just give you a couple examples here . Really good of that four-week preseason interval .

So we might do four rounds in groups of three . So you would do 10 jumping lunges . You would do a sled pull to a sled push twice and then do 10 med ball slams and then do a bear crawl on the way back . So it takes about a minute or so and I'll show you a video here .

But essentially you're working as hard as you can for that minute to get this work done and then while you recover standing in line , your two partners go okay . So you will see a video here of Olivia showing off right . So she does her jumping lunges here . She's trying to jump as high as she can and then you can see the ropes are on the floor there .

Those are tied to some sleds . People are already feeling it bent over , tired . But she would sled pull as far as she can down and then she's going to sled , push this back . And again , this is not gymnastic specific , this is general , intentionally , on purpose .

This is just made to be low risk , but work the type of energy system that's going to be used later when she does do her routine or her floor routine , right , she's working in the same kind of thing of working her whole body , not just her legs , by running , but she's using her upper back , she's using her lower back , she's using her core , right .

So , pulling down the sled again all the way , you can see Heather going , going nuts next to her . So she pulls down this way for the second round . She's starting to get a little tired . Here we're about like 30 to 40 seconds in .

So she would sled , push the weight back down and then you can see at the end , here there are med balls set up , so she would do her 10 med ball slams and then , when she is done with her med ball slams , she would turn around and do a bear crawl on the way back .

And I can tell you from experience I have done all of these workouts , I do them with my athletes , I test them , I try them .

They suck , they are hard , they're very , very hard , right , they're challenging , but in an intelligent way , to be very in line with what the scientific evidence says for that type of energy systems we want to train and then also to be in line with kind of what's coming up down the road which is going to be a high intensity , minute long bout using your whole

body , okay . So that's one really good example of a program I really really like . I do a lot of those type of workouts , those long intervals , and they're great , kind of alternating between the upper body , the lower body and the core , because again , we want to train the whole body , not just the legs .

With running like a 20 minute panel , that line is a lot of legs , but that workout you just saw is very much holistic and it trains the upper body and lower body and core together . Okay , a lactate clearance workout . Here are two examples . So I might do 10 seconds of work , max effort , 10 seconds of an isometric hold and 40 seconds of a recovery .

So say you do 10 , you know as many pushups as you can do in 10 seconds , or many you know squats you can do in 10 seconds . You hold the halfway point for 10 seconds and you do a flip on your back and do a very slow air push up , up and down on your back .

And again , not going to go into the really geeky research of why that's effective , but Chris Henshaw has taught me so much about that kind of stuff that really , really helps . But it's essentially called lactate shuttling , if you're curious about where we're going there , so we would do that .

Another option is to do 60 seconds of work and then a 60 second recovery and you alternate with your partner , right ? So here's an example I'll show you . So 20 seconds of plate hops , 20 seconds of squat jumps and then 20 seconds of arm plate hops , so kind of hopping your hands up and off a panel mat . I'll show you that .

And then in between you would do a very slow air squat to an overhead press , again to teach your body how to clear out some of that fatigue . This teach your body how to clear out some of that fatigue . This one is better shown than talked about . So 20 seconds of plate hops here you can see them just hopping back and forth .

This helps the calves work really , really quick . And then they're going to run over to the squat mats . Here they would do , hands on hips , as many squat jumps as they can in a 20 second window . I'm encouraging them to go as fast as they absolutely possibly can with high quality .

And then they would run over to do 20 seconds of plate hops here with their upper body nice soft elbows , so nobody's wrists or elbows get too sore . And then they would run over and do a knee pushups right . So you push up all the way at this one's in a minute and 20 seconds , obviously .

So again , the thought process is we're working the legs and the arms very , very intensely . For about a minute they would switch partners . While the other partner goes , the person , the people in the back , will do very slow lunges to overhead presses to try to teach their arms and legs to clear some of that fatigue . We would go six rounds .

So it takes about 15 , 20 minutes in total . But it's a pretty good workout , right , pretty good , pretty effective . And again , it's not just throwing a bunch of exercises at someone and hoping they get really tired . That's not really what we're going for here .

During the eight week block we would do some tumbling and floor specific buildups , so I'll talk about what those mean . So same thing with bars is doing some very specific uh , bar combinations of routines or of skills together to try to work on these these uh same energy systems . So , um , we would do the routine progressions we talked about .

That's kind of like pretty easier at going half to full to full plus basics or like combinations all the way through . But the tumbling and the bar specific ones I want to show because I intentionally try now to build up their tolerance to some of these workouts , but in a safe setting .

So by doing some tumbling into the pit and then crawling out and then doing a bunch of stuff around the floor and then going back in line and doing another tumbling pass into the pit , we're teaching them how to get really , really tired and do their harder tumbling passes in a safer setting . Same thing with bars .

This is teaching them how to stay in the bar for longer in safe ways with basics . And I think it's really really important to do these as you're doing some of the routine progressions , because you're building up the mental confidence to stay on the equipment longer , but also the physiological ability to do that .

So here's an example that I use pretty much every year during the preseason so 20 minutes as a team , there's two lanes with tumbling into softer surfaces , so whether it's resis or foam pits and we spot them sometimes too but do two of your hardest tumbling passes that you can do safely so into the pit and then you'll crawl out of the pit .

So you would run down , do a pass , run back , run down , do another pass . You would then go onto the floor when everybody else is on the side . You're on the outside of the floor , out of the way .

You would do walking lunges one lap down the floor right and then you do a handstand lap , walking down another aspect of the floor and you would do broad jumps to get back in line until you're close to the line itself . So you kind of tumble down the floor into the pit and then you kind of go around .

Obviously , if everyone's gym is set up differently , you might need to run a little bit , but essentially you're doing two tumbling passes and then some leg work , some handstand work and then some explosive bodyweight work or you can just toss some core work into . But you build up a lot of fatigue after you do your tumbling passes .

The next time you get back in line you're huffing and puffing a little bit and now you have to go again and do some more tumbling . So we say , do the two tumbling passes you can safely do as they get deeper and deeper into the interval . Um , it might be really challenging for them .

So they might just do layouts or back tucks or stuff like that , which is fine . We also put all the athletes together in a scalable ability . So we have our level four is doing this with our level nines , right ? So the range of tumbling passes is really not what we're worried about . It's about high quality tumbling and we'll show this here .

So you can see Julia here she's a second pass . She runs down , she does a full . She's clearly very tired right now , so I'll give her a break . But she crawls out of the pit and you can see some athletes broad jumps down and then when she gets down to the other side of the floor she will do handstand walks on the way back .

So she kicks up and she walks down . This way does her handstand walk all the way down and then when she gets all the way down to I didn't see the camera pan away but she gets handstand walk down and then she would do walking lunges back .

So essentially just trying to again do some sort of tumbling pass twice and then broad jumps down , handstand walks back walking , lunges or different versions of what you think the athletes need just to make them tired , to make their legs and arms tired and core tired . So hop back in line and they would do that right .

This is a really great thing to do about a month or so into that preseason when you're trying to also develop skill combinations and half sets or full routines and stuff like that . Okay , the other option here we have is for bars . I really really feel like all athletes should be doing either uneven bars or rings or high bar or uneven bars .

They should be doing some sort of what we call bar cardio to build their endurance up in a safer setting , before we ever ask them to do routines and stuff that have dismounts . So same kind of idea 20 minutes . We have two sets of bars , one coach spotting each low bar . They would do three kip cast handstands . Obviously this is scalable .

Younger athletes would just do kips and tap swings . Higher athletes can do kip cast instant in bar to handstand , toe on , hop to high bar and do giants , but five tap swings . So they do three kip cast handstands on low bar or in bars with a spot they would do five tap swings or giants on high bar .

They would hop down , run over , grab a med ball 10 max effort slams and then run and do three sprinting laps back and forth . So we put the med ball slams in there to fatigue out their lats and their shoulders more .

We put the sprinting laps in there to mimic having to do things that are challenging on your legs after doing your upper body work , because we want to safely land a dismount and then you would quickly rest , catch your breath and chalk up while your teammates go . These are very , very hard , okay , depending on what you program . So here's an example , right .

So Kipka sandstand I'm standing there spotting , so I spot the three Kipka sandstands and then you'll probably follow Julia in the in the purple here she goes around but after she does her three she'll run over to the bar . You can see kind of over there on the floor she runs over and I think in this instance she might've been doing pushups .

I think it might've been pushups they were doing on a panel mat .

Yeah , so they would do run over and do I think it's five or 10 pushups I'm not quite sure they would run off screen and do the med ball work , slam from the med ball stuff , and then she would run over to the rod strip , which we have kind of back behind the floor , and do her three sprints all the way .

So you can see as athletes kind of go a Congo line fashion , but they would do this for 15 or 20 minutes , right . So kick , cast , handstand , run over , do all your pushups , run over into your med ball slams , run to the floor , sprint , sprint , sprint , come back in line and then get ready to chalk up .

Okay , so there are going to be cardio routines in themselves or cardio training . So the weeks one and two you might just do back-to-back , uh , half sets , like we talked about . The week three and four you might do a full routine and then do an endurance sled or sprint set , like we talked about on floor .

Five and six you might do your full routine and then do a basic passes set after your routine or do a dance through and then , after you get all your full pressure sets done in week five , six and seven you could probably do a taper and just kind of pull back and only worry about doing two more weeks of high intensity pressure sets .

Okay , so that would be the eight week progression that you would do after or that I think is really really helpful . Okay , for athlete wellness , education , like we had talked about in the first lecture , is going to be the most important thing we're doing here .

So , during this whole preseason thing we're trying to talk about , how do we optimize our sleep , how do we build the time schedule that makes it sure that we're not staying up till two in the morning doing homework , trying to schedule in some of that time off to make sure that they are getting some recovery and getting , like I said , that parasympathetic shift .

Get the body to calm down a little bit , get that rest and recovery , get the athlete's mind off of gymnastics or school . Very , very important . We're trying to make sure we optimize our feeling for performance . So what snacks can we bring ? How can we help mom and dad cook ?

How can we plan things in advance to make sure we have the food and nutrition , the hydration , that we need for practice or after practice or around school throughout the day ? Right , then , throwing in some of those extra fun stuff we talked about , you know massage , heat , sauna , dynamic compression .

If the top four are really going well and you want some extra icing on the cake there . That's a great way to do it , and then nextly we'd also be doing some practical implementation of this in the gym . So we firmly believe and we try to always encourage teams to do some weekly kind of work on here .

There's a lot of different ways you can do this and there's things that I've just found successful here . So number one is doing a whiteboard lesson each Monday , start the week off with a nice like quote of the week and then talk about all right , we're going to talk about five tips you can do for sleep .

We're going to talk about , you know , five minute meditation we can do of just following our breath . We're going to talk about how to make a calendar or a schedule using this you know type of method that we do . I don't know , there's a lot of options there , but essentially talking about something that would help the athletes with athlete wellness .

If you build this into your weekly lesson and you can say all right , this week the challenge is to try to get 30 more minutes of high quality sleep . The challenge this week is to try to fit in five minutes to do some mindfulness or some meditation .

The challenge here is to make all your week's worth of snacks tonight when you go home for lunch , just try to patch , try to pack all your week's snacks up until Saturday . Right , just do these little challenges that are really , really fun . Educational packets are amazing , too .

So we use a binder system at the gym and we just take some uh , all this stuff we get from friends of mine or people that we see online , or books that we've read or some ideas , and we might just take a little infographic and put it in their binder about , like you know how do you sleep better , or you know what can you do for stress management ?

We might put talk , some of those things in their binders and have them take them home and to kind of get the most out of their , their wellness and recovery . It's really , really cool . Guest speakers and lectures I'm a huge , huge fan of this .

I'm really lucky that I have friends that I've had come in for talks , that I've done remote talks , that we've had people do workshops the more there's so many great , amazing people out there in the gymnastics community that could do a small half hour lecture or hour lecture sometime that the more people you can bring in , the more people you can work with .

Just get that connection work going .

It's really , really great because all of us know that sometimes as parents or as coaches or as medical providers , it maybe falls on deaf ears when you say it , but then if somebody else says that they follow on Instagram and that they're a fan of that , a guest speaker might just hit the nail on the head really really well and give you some awesome things .

Particularly with things like nutrition and mental health , you have to have people that are licensed experts to deliver the right message , so I think it's crucial to do that . We do weekly podcast reviews and book reviews .

We pass a lot of podcasts around our team , our colleagues , our coaches , our staff and just say like hey , you know , this is a really cool thing , I was listening to check it out .

Or we might give someone like no-transcript teammates are researchers I'm sorry , teammates researching something that they're really passionate about and sharing 10 minutes per week of that whiteboard lesson . So you know , we'll have one athlete say like hey , check out some stuff that you really enjoy and then share how you manage your schedule right .

Or , like an older athlete , particularly like a senior in high school or junior in high school can share what they went through in high school that was challenging for them .

Or you know , a senior in college can share some tips about practical ways to manage their schedule or what they did for resources on the career center and stuff like that they can share between people to kind of give some helpful tips .

I also really really like a sister brother program for mentorship . So at the beginning of the preseason , pairing up one of the older athletes with one of the younger athletes and just giving them 10 , 15 minutes to talk and chat and ask questions and get help , and they can , you know , be on a WhatsApp group message together , all that kind of stuff .

I really , really believe in that because I think sometimes it's challenging for them to speak up to their parents or coaches or anybody else about some challenging stuff . So having that kind of voice of reason to kind of get some some peer peer-based feedback is just someone to listen to , I think is really really cool .

So that's always been a program that we found really , really beneficial . All right , and from there we'll move on to the in-season now .