I could use some advice on how much time you spend with your Optional or High school gymnastics team on Pre-hab, conditioning, etc.
I have coached for some 15 years now in clubs (girls aged 6-16 JO levels 1-9) with only ankle sprain and 1 physical therapy referral. I recently was asked to coach a highschool team. It has been 1.5 months since we’ve started and we've had 1 sprained ankle, a very minor shoulder injury and now an ACL injury. Can you believe our season started just three weeks after our 1st practice. We only get a total of 10 hours of practice every week (Mon/Fri 3 hours and Tue/Thur 2 hours) I can’t change that.
Here’s the story with all three injuries:
Sprained Ankle (rolled out in Round off landing)
Minor Shoulder Injury (happened doing a backward extension roll)
ACL Injury (at a meet, landed on an extended leg from on vault landing- this was after almost an almost perfect score on her first vault)
It is not the girls skill level, it is certainly the fact that almost all of them didn't participate in any gymnastics since last season (that’s close to 8 months of down time!!!), if it were up to me I would make them condition with very few skills for at least 3-4 months, but....the season would be over by the time they were able to work routines and skills again.
I need advice about my current strategy, here it is:
Warm-up 10 min
Pre-hab 20 min
Breaking Down Skills, Shaping Drills, Landing Drills etc 50 min
20 minutes routine work (only if needed)
Conditioning (20 minutes)
We are working on shoulder wrist, ankle, knee, hip flexors, groin, glutes, all major muscle groups of lower and upper legs, shoulder and back strength, and a lot of core for strength and mobility. I use a watered down JO type program and incorporate a lot of broken down drills (which the girls hate).
Am I training the girls too hard, not hard enough?
I have coached for some 15 years now in clubs (girls aged 6-16 JO levels 1-9) with only ankle sprain and 1 physical therapy referral. I recently was asked to coach a highschool team. It has been 1.5 months since we’ve started and we've had 1 sprained ankle, a very minor shoulder injury and now an ACL injury. Can you believe our season started just three weeks after our 1st practice. We only get a total of 10 hours of practice every week (Mon/Fri 3 hours and Tue/Thur 2 hours) I can’t change that.
Here’s the story with all three injuries:
Sprained Ankle (rolled out in Round off landing)
Minor Shoulder Injury (happened doing a backward extension roll)
ACL Injury (at a meet, landed on an extended leg from on vault landing- this was after almost an almost perfect score on her first vault)
It is not the girls skill level, it is certainly the fact that almost all of them didn't participate in any gymnastics since last season (that’s close to 8 months of down time!!!), if it were up to me I would make them condition with very few skills for at least 3-4 months, but....the season would be over by the time they were able to work routines and skills again.
I need advice about my current strategy, here it is:
Warm-up 10 min
Pre-hab 20 min
Breaking Down Skills, Shaping Drills, Landing Drills etc 50 min
20 minutes routine work (only if needed)
Conditioning (20 minutes)
We are working on shoulder wrist, ankle, knee, hip flexors, groin, glutes, all major muscle groups of lower and upper legs, shoulder and back strength, and a lot of core for strength and mobility. I use a watered down JO type program and incorporate a lot of broken down drills (which the girls hate).
Am I training the girls too hard, not hard enough?
