Category: sport medicine

safest Gymnastics LANDINGS

Dave Tilley presented to both WAG NCAA College coaches and judges before the 2022 season.

The goal is for judges to evaluate landings consistently — and promote the safest possible landings.

The biggest reason is due to the massive number of serious knee and ankle injuries that gymnasts deal with, particularly in the NCAA. When you look at research studies, leg injuries account for up to 54.1% – 70.2% of all injuries.

Based on a study looking at injuries in NCAA Women’s gymnastics from 2009-2014, leg injuries accounted for 50% of all injuries with the knee and ankle being the most common (19). In some studies, up to 52% of all gymnastics injuries occur during landings, with some researchers calling it the ‘riskiest exercise phase in gymnastics.” …

THE NEED TO CHANGE LANDING DEDUCTIONS IN NCAA GYMNASTICS FOR LESS KNEE AND ANKLE INJURIES

Click through for a deep dive into this very important topic.

Watch William Emard STICKING.

Good aerial awareness. Stong legs. Good technique. Fewer injuries on landings.

Click PLAY or watch it on Instagram.

correct position for L-sit

Bruce Craven is an owner of Craven Sports Services.

Currently Bruce assisted male gymnasts at Taiso Gymnastics Saskatoon. As always he’s focused on training the correct muscles for each element. And contracting those muscles in the best sequence.

Click PLAY or watch L-sit training on YouTube. (Flexibility and specific strength.)

Dave Tilley’s LANDING training

I’d concur that the very BEST drill for landing facing forward is jumping down from a height to punch forward salto. It’s also my favourite drill for take-offs facing forward.

For strong gymnasts I’d include 10 drops to punch front — OR 5 sticks, whichever comes first. 😀

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Changing Gymnastics Culture – a review

Dave Tilley’s excellent book, more than 450 pages.

Something for every coach: sports medicine, injury prevention, conditioning, ethics, …

Dave was partly inspired to put his ideas together by the Nassar crimes. He sensed “outdated training methods and a toxic culture can foster abusive practices” in Gym … making it possible for a pedophile to go undetected for decades.

Coaches spent inordinate amounts of time with young children and parents place complete trust in them. Young athletes are taught that their dreams may depend on the approval of a famous trainer or coach. They are also programmed to believe that obeying orders given, without question, is the only path to achieve their dreams.

Together, these truths about certain areas of our sport, while not necessarily inherently malicious in nature, certainly open to the door to abuse and mistreatment of young athletes. …

I certainly recommend you download and check it out for yourself.

Dave’s made his book free. Click through to download.

The book is 3 PDFs.

In addition are two resources: Myofascial Release Checklist and a Splits Complex.

monitoring height in Gymnastics

Dr. Dave Tilley on monitoring for peak height velocity.

Dave’s been tracking 3 numbers for each of the growing kids:

• height
• seated height (torso length)
• wing span

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

At MINIMUM your gymnasts age 10-17 should have a place in the Gym where they pencil in their standing height on some regular basis. They should know when they are growing. There are implications for training load.

If you want to research this topic, get Handbook of Sports Medicine and Science, Gymnastics. (2013).

Here’s the Google Books preview.

Japanese Gymnastics (2): Training Protocols

Part 2 of an analysis by zhoxxyy.

Read part 1 here.

The Japanese gymnastics training system emphasizes injury prevention through extensive warm-up routines, active mobility, and specific strength development. Techniques focus on enhancing flexibility and precision, optimizing performance in key events while strategically managing strength.

Table Of Contents

Training Protocols Training Protocols Training protocols

The Warm-Up & Body Care: The “Injury Prevention” Protocol

Conditioning: “Specific Strength” vs. “Big Strength”

Apparatus Deep Dive: The Technical Secrets

Summary of Technical Specialties

Read the article online ➙ Inside Japanese Gymnastics (2): Training Protocols


Achilles Tear to Perfect 10 | Kiya Johnson

An inspiring story of Kiya’s comeback from a devastating Achilles injury during her senior season.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

book – ADHD is Awesome

Every coach deals with kids who have some kind of attention deficit disorder.

In fact — when I coach 6-year-old Rec boys, I can’t tell the difference between the ADHD kids and the rest. They are all hyper. And not all that ordered. 😀

Check this out.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

what do you know about Olympic Champion Oka Shinnosuke?

I didn’t know that our reigning Olympic champion suffered an ACL tear during the 2022 All-Japan Championships.

In fact, I feel most of us don’t know much about Oka Shinnosuke compared with rivals Daiki Hashimoto and Zhang Boheng.

Oka Shinnosuke is a fascinating example of contrasts: a gymnast who fears heights, a quiet leader with a fiery gaming temper, and a “compact car” with a “Ferrari engine.”

His journey from the “Chin” of failure to the “Kin” of Olympic gold is a testament to the power of locked in focus and the pursuit of beautiful gymnastics. …

read more – Oka Shinnosuke: 12 Facts About the Small Giant of Gymnastics

East German coach Dieter Hofmann

When Hofmann died of COVID-19 in April 2020, the international gymnastics community remembered him as an innovator and mentor.

The tributes focused on his technical knowledge shared generously, on a coach “always willing and eager” to help programs worldwide.

None mentioned “The Rose.” None referenced the Stasi files or the pharmaceutical protocols. …

I attended a number of Hofmann’s coaching courses.

He was a coaches coach. Very good at planning. A proven winner. His team won no fewer than 52 medals at Olympic Games, World and European Championships.

I have no doubt that his main passion was beating the USSR.

BUT in that era of the DDR, you cooperated with the Stasi (secret police) or lost your job.

In that era of the DDR, if higher-ups told you to test new drugs on gymnasts, you did it.

I knew very little about all these new revelations — aside from the drugs he told us about at one coaching course. Some kind of steroids. They tried them on junior male gymnasts ultimately deciding that the benefits weren’t worth the risk.

Uncle Tim put together a career retrospective on Dieter Hoffman. So far as I can verify with contemporaries, it’s very accurate. Uncle Tim is a terrific researcher.

Read more …

Gymnastics-History.com – Code Name “Rose”: The Double Life of East Germany’s Head Coach