138 Long Term Gymnastics Development

Gymnastics in Fitness Sport

When you do gymnastics, you are exercising in what exercise physiologists call the extreme intensity domain, with very few exceptions.

The most notable exceptions are the burpee and box jump over, which I train with a conditioning perspective, rather than the approach I'll describe below.

For almost every other gymnastics movement, the time to exhaustion is less than two minutes.

Exercise that exhausts you this fast is very intense.

At these intensities, performance seems to be limited by:

1. Neuromuscular factors
2. Perception of effort
3. Metabolic fitness

In light of this, worthy training goals are to:

1. Increase top end neuromuscular ability (get stronger)
2. Move more efficiently (make the movement feel easier)
3. Improve fitness

Common practice vs. a complete approach to gymnastics development

Most athletes work hard on their fitness, and do way less work on getting gymnastically stronger and moving better.

In gymnastics-heavy workouts, fitness helps you recover faster when you break, but it isn't the reason you break in the first place.

You don't break because of your "breathing" or "heart rate" as much as you break because of neuromuscular factors.

Fitness is still important because you want to recover fast when you break. And the fitter you are, the faster you recover.

But, if you want to win gymnastics workouts, instead of working solely on how fast you recover when you break, it also makes sense to train to...well, not break.

To not break, you need to build gymnastic strength and learn to move more efficiently.

Long Term Gymnastics Development

In light of these performance limitations, here's how I train my athletes, both in the context of the season and the career:

1. Gymnastic Strength
2. Movement Efficiency
3. Volume
4. Density
5. Intensity

For athletes who want to join this long term approach, I'm designing the first in a series of programs: Offseason Level 1.

• Offseason training for beginner and intermediate fitness athletes
• Foundational strength training, conditioning and skill acquisition
• Training Priorities
  • Basic Strength and Functional Hypertrophy
  • Olympic Weightlifting Skill
  • Gymnastic Strength
  • Essential Mobility
  • Aerobic Endurance and Pacing

Tap here to join the waitlist: https://paul-b-weber.kit.com/105c01429d