So says an article on the topic of the “cost” of high performance sport.
Big Expenses for Small Athletes
Shawn Johnson is on a six-day-aweek workout schedule. The 14- year-old gymnast from West Des Moines trains 25 hours a week at Chow’s Gymnastics & Dance with her coaches, Liang and Li Chow. She already competes on the national team, and now she is hoping to earn a spot on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team.
I would be very impressed if an Olympic medal contender like Shawn trained that few hours. It would be a brave and confident decision by her coaches who are aware the rest of the National team train well over 30hrs / week.
(Shawn said in a 2006 interview that she trains 4hrs / day after school. Leave a comment below if you know Shawn’s exact training hours over the past number of years.)
Courtesy of Jason Harris – Sports Illustrated
I’d expect Shawn to be the favourite at the upcoming Pan-Am Games.
More discussion on the Gym Chat forum: What it means to be elite
7 comments ↓
Apparently this is because she is Chow’s only elite girl. Why would you need to train 30 hours if you’d be spending 5 of them standing and waiting between turns?
I’ve seen some videos of Shawn working out and it looks like she at least does her conditioning with other girls.
I do wish that her coaches would pay more attention to her flexibilty. Her beam routine is phenomenal save for her switch split leap, rather sad that in the midst of so many hard skills a switch split leap that she can’t quite get to 180 degeres stands out.
If she’d work a lot more on extension (of the flexibility type), and ditch the sheep jump – it’s never going to look pretty – then I’d be happier.
whats the email of shawn?
whats the e-mail of shawn for contact?
[...] Shawn Johnson trains only 25hrs / week and attends regular school. What an accomplishment. [...]
[...] Everyone wants to know how Shawn became World Champion training only once a day, 25hrs / week, with very positive coaching. [...]
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