Gymnastics is a physically demanding discipline in which strength, power, endurance, and coordination are all required. Gymnasts compete on parallel bars, balance beam, vault, floor, on the rings, pommel horse, high bar… It’s safe to say that strength plays an important role in this physically demanding sport. Gymnasts may occasionally lift weights to gain strength.
Weightlifting has been avoided as part of the gymnastics training regimen for a long time, but this has begun to change in recent years. The myths regarding weightlifting in this sport will be discussed in the rest of the article, as well as how weightlifting may aid gymnasts with good training and performance.
Many professional gymnasts do lift weights as part of their training routine to build the strength in the muscles required for performance while minimizing hypertrophy to avoid throwing off the strength to weight ratio, which plays an important role in their skills.
Pro gymnasts are now weight training in a gym that is more familiar to us—one that is stocked with barbells, dumbbells, and kettlebells rather than parallel bars and balance beams. Gymnastics coaches are turning to a strength trainer outside of the sport for advice on workouts that aren’t necessarily gymnastics bodyweight exercises.
It’s still a fine balance between building enough muscle to help them in the places where it’s needed, but not too much that it limits their flexibility. It’s all about being as strong, flexible, and light as possible in this sport. They want to be light and flexible while simultaneously being strong.
Lifting Weights Helps Reduce Injuries
The physiological science of strength training indicates that the proper application of these techniques can help create huge improvements in sports performance, primarily by increasing strength, power, speed, and force transmission across the body. Lifting weights can also help gymnasts reduce the chance of injury by improving the human body’s ability to handle and spread the load.
The wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints do not have nearly the same force-absorbing architecture as the legs. Therefore this method is especially important in the upper body. Gymnastics is a unique sport in that it places a great demand on gymnasts’ elbows, wrists, and shoulders, frequently more than double times their body weight or more. Frequent gymnastics injuries are caused by a combination of poor preparation and excessive loading, as well as an inherent lack of weight-bearing anatomy.
Due to the prevalence of these injuries and the necessity for upper body strength to achieve high-level gymnastics routines, it may be essential to properly train the upper body of gymnasts over time. External weights may be able to establish the link between these joints’ low weight-bearing capacity and the extraordinarily high stresses imposed on them in gymnastics skills. Being flexible to this technique will likely lessen the chance of damage while also improving performance.
When you look at the lower body and core, it’s evident that there’s a serious problem with overuse injury from heavyweights. The spine is subjected to tremendous force during skills and tumbling, resulting in common spinal injuries.
External loading can aid in strengthening the core, allowing the high forces of skills to be absorbed. When it comes to tumbling and bar activities, this is especially true. Gymnastics’ high jumping and landing forces are widely known for posing a significant injury risk. There is substantial evidence that lower-body injury rates from excessive loading are a large worldwide problem in gymnastics at all levels.
We must recognize that force overload is a common risk factor in all of these accidents (among many others). The body is being loaded at a rate that is greater than its capability. The loading is so great that it produces tissue damage and injury, either over time (stress fracture) or in one occurrence (ACL Tear). More mixed-strength programs are one of the most effective evidence-based approaches for reducing the danger of these issues producing so many issues for gymnasts.
Weightlifting’s potential function in gymnastics is cloaked in misconceptions and misunderstandings. As a result, we could be skipping out on some fantastic opportunities.
Is lifting weights bad for gymnasts?
The most common misconception is that lifting weights will cause a gymnast to become bulky and lose their lean body physique, causing an athlete’s strength to weight ratio to be thrown off and resulting in a loss of gymnastics skills.
Although this holds some truth in theory, the reality is that this belief is simply wrong in terms of how maximal hypertrophy and body mass are gained by an athlete. The variables of hypertrophy in gymnastics and other sports, as many outstanding researchers have indicated, necessitate exact methodologies.
According to research and literature, specific programming approaches must be employed to inhibit huge bulk growth and instead favor lean body mass and power development. This worry of muscle mass affecting gymnastics skills may be swiftly overcome with the correct coaching, exercises, periodization methods, programming, nutritional assistance, and training routines. A strength program employing external weights can be tailored to increase maximal explosive power in an anaerobic situation, which is primarily what gymnastics demands if approached properly.
Learning about science and applying it correctly takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort. Seeking out knowledgeable strength and conditioning practitioners who can learn about gymnastics and join the interdisciplinary team take humility. This concept, like learning about gymnastic talents and teaching them to athletes, takes a lot of effort and time, but it is most definitely worthwhile.
We must train skills for performance, but we must also consider the significant cost of impact pressures on the bodies of gymnasts. In the modern era of gymnastics, a combination of properly developed technical competency in skills and a hybrid approach to strength and physical preparation could be one of the most powerful tools we have to prevent injury, burnout, and stalled competition performance.
Is lifting weights bad for the gymnast’s flexibility?
The third common misconception in gymnastics is that lifting weights causes athletes to lose flexibility.
This is also untrue when the correct strategy and programming are utilized. The range of motion may be severely restricted during a strength training session due to intentional muscle injury to encourage adaption. Even if correct recovery methods and rest time are used, delayed onset muscle pain might continue for a few days.
Taking motion from strength workouts and applying it to sports-specific gymnastics routines can help gymnasts preserve their mobility. Surprisingly, eccentric strength may also play a role in preventing common hamstring, groin. Achilles and other lower-body injuries are encountered in gymnastics.
This eccentric training can be done with a combination of barbell work, unilateral workouts with kettlebells/dumbbells, and body control drills.
When properly cared for, the equipment is reasonably inexpensive, may be used by several athletes for multiple activities, and lasts a long time.
Perhaps the perception that gymnasts lose flexibility is based on the incorrect assumption that tissue shortens permanently when we lift weights and lengthens back out when we stretch or undertake flexibility practice. There’s a lot more to obtaining and maintaining flexibility, not to mention the research that refutes the notion that stretching causes muscle lengthening or structural changes.
Yes, there may be temporary range reductions after lifting activities (as happens with any strength methods). Muscle injury can result in soreness, a reduction in force production, and discomfort. When the right exercises, continued soft tissue and mobility work, rehabilitation, nutrition knowledge, and proper programming are applied in the long run, this illusion of flexibility can be put aside once again.
Does Lifting Weights Lead To Injury?
Another misconception is that lifting weights is harmful and would result in injury. However, keep in mind that the forces in gymnastics are enormous, reaching up to 15 times bodyweight. It’s a bit inconsistent to suggest that external loading with weights isn’t appropriate because of safety concerns, but to disregard the fact that the same gymnast is subjected to 15 times her body weight in force hundreds of times each week during landings.
The truth is that if you lift weights incorrectly, without programming, and without understanding technique, you run the danger of damage. This can be prevented with the right coaching and programming, and the danger of damage is quite low.
Finally, should gymnasts lift weights?
A gymnast can build the stronger muscles needed to achieve intermediate-level and above gymnastics skills with weightlifting. Female gymnasts, for example, frequently struggle to learn the kip on the uneven bars due to a lack of shoulder and triceps power. Weightlifting can target these muscles, allowing a gymnast to overcome this common big obstacle. Coaches can only commit a limited amount of time to condition during practice, and they may not always be able to provide specialized treatment to a gymnast who is lacking strength. Outside of scheduled practice, weightlifting can aid in this case.
In both men’s and women’s gymnastics, body proportions are crucial. Many gymnastics coaches prohibit gymnasts from lifting weights because of the risk of hypertrophy or increased muscle growth that alters the gymnast’s physique and adds excess weight, making skills more challenging.
Gymnasts should focus on lifting heavier weights in small repetitions, with considerable rest periods in between sessions, to avoid hypertrophy. The weightlifting routine should be approved and guided by the coach, and the only target muscles that are required for performing should be targeted.
Weight training for gymnasts is probably misunderstood by coaching mythology. Gymnasts’ performance is likely to be improved by weight-training regimens that develop strength with minimum muscular growth. In essence, the current skill-repetition strategy to improve gymnast strength may generate more hypertrophy than a well-designed weight-training program.
