Coaches Top Injury Prevention Practices in Gymnastics Training

[JBS]

What do you do to help keep your athletes healthy. For example...

• We vault onto soft surfaces (resi) 100% during training
• We use the JF vault table in our club because it has a more forgiving top
• We use the "sweet spot" (air floor) during all floor take offs
• We use tumble track for 50% of our tumbling training
• We use the an extra suede beam pad
• All of our optionals are required to vault with Tiger Paws
• Our optional gymnasts train very differently when they are between the ages of "A" and "B" as they are developing

The above are just a few of the things that I have heard from various clubs and coaches. What do you do?

 

[JBS]

I really thought we would get some more responses to this one...I'll start:

We vault all of our optionals onto a resi or loose foam pit 100% of the time (except for meets).

 

[JBS]

Rick has a great conversation going about this thread over on his site:

gymnastics injury prevention — Gymnastics Coaching.com

 

[Valentin]

I have all the kids do an elbows, wrists, shoulder pre-hab complex (a series of exercises in a specific order) as a warm-up.
We leg condition, but i have to say that we need more knee and ankle re-hab but we will include these at a different time of the year. However for guys upper body extremety is more important at this point (if and since i have to choose)

 

[Rick McCharles]

why Alicia will be on the team for Worlds and Olympics

She's lazy. Has many other interests.

The injury prevention strategy?

Fewer reps = fewer chances for injury.

More WAG coaches have to find ways to accomplish the goal taking fewer reps in training. Like MAG do.