Have Your Best Gymnastics Season - Physical Prep, Cardio, and Mental Performance - The SHIFT Show

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:12):
Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode
of the Shift Show where mynumber one goal is to make you
the tools, ideas and the latestscience to help you change
gymnast lives.
My name is Dave Taylor.
Today in the podcast we'regoing to complete the kind of
three lecture series we've beenoffering people on kind of
season planning, preseason andin season together and kind of
my big picture thoughts on whatI do very differently now, ten
years, knowing you know whatI've read, the seasons I've been

(00:34):
through, the people I've workedwith, consult with, the things
that I've seen in other people'sprograms go well, how do I
approach teaching people how toget through meat season?
Well, now, knowing this.
So two lectures ago we did someof the introductory concepts
and then last week we did someof the preseason concepts.
So if you haven't listened tothose, I highly recommend you
start there.
And then this week, knowing thatseason is quickly approaching,

(00:54):
I wanted to include this thirdlecture in the series, which is
the in-season stuff, thein-season cardio, the
maintenance care for strengthand conditioning.
How do we get routines ready?
How are we prepping to makesure that we're pushing towards
the end of the season where thebigger meets are and not burning
out too early with injuries ormental health problems in the
beginning, with, you know,frustrations or skills or
anxiety and stuff like that.
So this actually was a verypopular lecture that I gave, and

(01:15):
so I wanted to make sure I gotthis involved too as well.
So all these lectures and theother things that I do are
probably home base for this isthe hero lab, which is just our
online mentorship group forcoaches, medical providers,
whoever.
So if you're looking for areally cheap option to get you
know, 60 plus lectures, lots ofmaterials for me, have a
discussion group, talk withpeople.
We try to make that accessible.
So head over to the hero labthere's a link to the show notes

(01:36):
below or just go to the herolabcom or head to shifts shifts
course section.
You can see all of the optionsthat we have out there for how
to get involved.
But hope you all enjoy this inseason management podcast.
Alrighty, welcome back everyoneto part three of our kind of
competitive year optimizing thecompetitive year lecture series
that we've been going through.
If you're just joining us andyou're kind of digging into the

(01:56):
in season part, I woulddefinitely encourage you to go
back and listen to the other twolectures.
First, because there's a lot ofinformation inside of those
lectures that's going to besuper important for you know,
the framework and the structureof how we're making all of this
come together to compete formeets or to get ready for a big
performance or to kind of peakfor one part of the year.
So kind of as we talked aboutin the last few lectures, is
we've we've built upon the, thegeneral principles, and then we

(02:19):
moved on to talking about how weget ready in the preseason and
then now we're going totransition into the in season
and go to the off season.
Remember that if I wastypically building this from
scratch, if I was consultingwith a program, if I was
building a program for athletesthat I work with, I'd actually
start with the end of the year,work all the way backwards and
start with the off season and dothe off season programming
first, then the preseason, thenthe in season.
But in the essence of trying tomake sure people learn this and

(02:41):
kind of understand this to thebest of their ability, we're
going to actually start with themiddle part here, which is
going to be the preseason, thenthe in season, then we'll talk
about off season last in thenext lecture.
So with that in mind, let's kindof go back to our analogy we
used in the last few lecturesabout the hourglass right?
So we talked about how thehourglass really represents the
capacity of the athlete and howinevitably, as you go through a

(03:01):
competitive year, there is sandin the top of the hourglass that
represents the athlete'sability to do skills and compete
well and their kind of overallbandwidth that inevitably is
going to slide through thehourglass into the bottom.
You're going to kind of run outof that energy or run out of
that steam as the year goes on,because you know doing high
level sports, competing andtraining is challenging.
Whether you're, you know, justdoing this for fun and you're

(03:23):
just doing this on your own,you're not ever getting a score,
you're never going in front ofa judge.
Or if you're someone who'sliterally trying to make a world
or Olympic team, it kind of allmatters the same.
Our human stress responsesystem and the way we tolerate
training load is reallyuniversal between a lot of
people, and so that's kind ofwhat we talked about in the
first lecture.
But we talked a lot in thepreseason about how we really
wanted to put more sand in thetop of the hourglass by doing

(03:44):
preseason really really well.
So the off season training, thepreseason training we talked
about, you know, developingskills and putting those into
skill combinations, the workoutsthat we would use to kind of
get ready for the competitiveseason, how do we get ready for
meets?
That would be putting theactual sand into the hourglass.
Right, we're doing really goodstrength and conditioning,
really good power developmentstuff.
The print progression fromstrength to power development,

(04:05):
from the general aerobic base ofcardio to that really
aggressive bursted 60 to 90second cardio.
That's really putting more sandin the hourglass, getting
someone ready to preparethemselves for the competitive
season or get ready to gothrough a bunch of meets in a
row.
So what we're talking about nowis we're talking about it's
inevitable that that sand isgoing to go through the glass.
Right, you're probably notgoing to get really really

(04:25):
strong during season.
You're probably not going toget much, much faster and fitter
during season.
You're going to definitelyoptimize your technique.
You're going to get betterhitting your routines.
You're going to definitelymaintain some of those qualities
, but essentially we're kind ofusing everything we have to
compete well throughout the year.
So what we're trying to talkabout in this lecture is some
strategies or some differentworkouts or some things we're
going to do to try to reallycontrol the amount of sand that

(04:47):
slides through that hourglassbottleneck and the rate at which
that sand happens right.
And we talked about earlier inthe athlete wellness section how
getting proper sleep andgetting proper time and stress
management, having really goodplans and periodization programs
for times between really hardtraining sessions, also feeling
yourself for performance,getting more hydration in your
daily day, that is going to helpkind of keep your sand from

(05:08):
pouring through the hourglassright.
If you don't sleep a lot, youdon't take care of yourself, you
don't have time off, theworkouts are too close together
or too hard, close back to back,you might really pour a lot of
that sand through the hourglass.
Versus as we talked about inthe first lecture is out in the
first lecture is going thosecycles of stressing the athlete,
then letting them recover, thenstressing the athlete, letting
them recover.
We're going to build up thecapacity so that we're going to
actually control the sand to goa little bit slower during

(05:29):
in-season by having properperiodization workloads, by
having proper scientific thoughtbehind what we're doing, by
communicating with the athletesabout how they're feeling.
All of those things are goingto help us a little bit more
during this competitive year.
But what we're going to try totalk about is those same four
categories, right, and we'regoing to break those down and
talk about what we're doing ineach of those categories to get
ready for meets, to get readyfor the biggest performances, to

(05:51):
the actual, you know, routineson a show that you have to do,
or when you're facing a team, orwhen you're going to an
invitational or trying to make acompetition team.
What are you doing for workouts?
What are you doing for thestrength and conditioning?
What are you doing for thecardio and what are you doing
for the athlete wellness?
Okay, so, big picture, let's goback to this as we did in the
first one, right?

(06:12):
What are we?
What are the main goals of inseason right?
Number one most people at thecompetitive level are trying to
hit their routines and they'retrying to have a really, really
high potential meet.
They're trying to do the bestpossible job they can do to hit
their four or their six routinesbased on artistic, or hit their
trampoline, their tumblingroutines, whatever it should be
rhythmic.
They're trying to really havegreat meets.
They're trying to reach theirhighest potential and do all of
the hard work they've beenhaving over the summer or the
preseason.
Have that show off.

(06:32):
For some people, they want, youknow, to get a good score, to
get an all around score, to makea team, to make it to States,
regionals, nationals, get acollege scholarship, make a
national team.
Other people just want toperform, they just want to show
off, they just want to have fun,they just want to show the
things they've been working on.
So, regardless of whether it'slike you're really hardcore on
the competitive side or you'rejust more recreational and doing
this for fun, both of thesethings kind of come together
here.
Okay, so number two, absolutelyimportant we must maximize as

(06:56):
much as we possibly can athletehealth and wellness throughout
this competitive year, right?
Anyone who is involved ingymnastics knows that the
competitive season can be very,very brutal on athletes, right?
About five to six months that'sreally really challenging.
You have school, you havefamily life, you're trying to
juggle your other commitments,like it's very, very taxing
physically, mentally andemotionally on the athletes.
So, as we are trying to competeat our best, another way to

(07:19):
make sure we maintain that highlevel of competitive edge, and
that high level of competitivepotential is by making sure
athletes are well right, makingsure they're physically and
mentally and emotionally takencare of.
And that is what we're going tothink about with terms of how
we make our workouts, how weprogram, why we're doing certain
exercises, but also some of theother things we're working on
around just the trainingenvironment to really make sure
that someone's mentally andemotionally ready to compete,

(07:41):
they can handle the pressure ofthose meat situations, they feel
comfortable, they feel likethey're recovering well from
those meats because they're very, very challenging on their body
.
Okay, number three.
I think the main reason a lotof us kind of want to get in
here right Is to have a goodtime and reach their goals.
So maybe they have some goalsthey've set and we'll talk about
those.
Maybe they have some goals thatthey're reaching for.
We want to make sure we have aspecific plan that's broken down
into smaller segments to helpthem reach those goals.

(08:03):
If we never plan for thosegoals, we never talk about those
goals, we never talk about howthose goals changed, it can go
off the rails pretty quick.
So these big three things arekind of our buckets we're
looking at, when we look atthese goals.
Okay, we're going to go basedon a couple things here, right?
So I typically like to look atthe season into two sections in
the same way we looked at thepreseason in two sections as
well.
So our big goal if say we haveit towards the end of the year,

(08:24):
it's a, it's a show, it's astate, it's original, it's a
national championship, it's ainternational championship,
whatever else, it should be theOlympics.
We're pretty much going toalways break these down into
yearly cycles within thein-season of that yearly cycle.
The first three months areprobably going to be not your
biggest, you know, most perfectsets ever.
Really, the goal of the firstthree months of the competitive
season is to trying to just getin your rhythm right, trying to

(08:45):
hit clean, confident sets.
We don't need to be hitting ourcraziest difficulty, our
craziest upgrades.
We don't want to be goingperfect every single time
because if we enter the firstmeet and hit absolutely perfect,
no matter what all the time, Idon't know if we've been pushing
our goals hard enough.
Right, we actually want to havesome trial and error and it's
going to take some time to kindof find our rhythm and make sure

(09:05):
we're getting in the right, youknow, sequence of events or the
sequence of skills in a routinethat we're getting into the
competitive mindset, and I thinkthat's going to take time.
I don't think that's going tojust be like, okay, we're doing
routines and as soon as we turnon that meat light switch,
everything goes perfect,everything goes well.
I obviously want people tocompete well, I want them to do

(09:34):
the best they possibly can.
But if someone doesn't hitperfect sets every single time
in the first couple meets of theyear, I'm not overly worried
about it.
Right, because we're going tohave things to work on.
There's always going to be waysto change things.
There's going to be ways toclean up some sets, to do some
skills that are different.
Try to think about orderchanges, try to think about what
meets we're competing at.
It's a lot of things that aregoing to kind of have to be
worked out in order for athletesto feel like they're really in
a good kind of flow, state orrhythm when they're doing their
routines.
The ability to, you know, stepup and confidently raise your

(09:55):
hand and say I'm ready to go.
Let's get this done Takes sometime and couple months of the
season Okay, versus trying to dothe second part of the season,
which is usually the last twomonths.
That's typically what peoplewould call like championship
season.
Right, that's peaking.
Right, that's trying to makesure that your biggest meets,
the ones that you care the mostabout, are you're really, really
ready to go, you're running onall cylinders, you feel like

(10:16):
your routines are solid, you'vehad a lot of reps, you feel
really, really good in thecompetitive environment and you
feel as though you are ready todo your best.
Right, that is typically whatpeople are looking for is trying
to peak for those last twomonths.
So obviously, artisticgymnastics might have these four
to five months where it's alittle bit different.
Elite gymnastics has a littlebit more of a two peaked season
where sometimes there's someevents like in the middle of the
season.
There's some things in thelater for championships, a lot

(10:39):
of different variability aroundthe world based on kind of the
setting.
You work in college gymnastics,the shorter season that's very,
very dense here in the US, soit's going to be different for
everybody, right?
But again, the key here is tounderstand that it can probably
be broken up into two sectionsand you want to plan
intentionally for how you'reapproaching the first part of
the season versus how you'reapproaching the second part of
the season, very, very differentmentalities you have here.

(10:59):
Okay, the second part of theseason might be where you put
those upgrades.
If you want, you put up theoptional levels.
Obviously you put in some, somebigger skills.
You've been working, you try toget some more difficulty bonus,
you try to get some moreconnections, but it's going to
separate you a little bit frompeople, some unique skill
combinations.
But really more importantly isyou're trying to just hit under
pressure.
You're trying to hit reallyreally big routines when it
counts the most, on the meets,that is, or when the situation

(11:23):
arises on the meets, that is, orwhen the situation arises.
Okay, we try to make sure we'repeaking for probably two meets
of the season and those twomeets are probably going to be
either the back to back weekendsor about two or three weekends
apart.
So it's if you look at theliterature on, you know tapering
and peaking and humanperformance.
It's really hard to maintainsomeone's top, top year of
performance for more than thoselike two to three weeks, right,

(11:44):
it's really challengingsometimes to go through like six
weeks or seven weeks and expectpeople to be firing on all
cylinders all the time.
So with that in mind, we canplan for that, we can train for
that.
But also we want to berealistic in the fact that we
don't expect someone to havethree or four or five meets in a
row where it goes absolutelyflawless and they have unlimited
energy, they're never tired,nothing sore, they feel great.

(12:06):
It's probably not going tohappen that way.
So you have to realize okay, asa coach, as a medical provider,
as a strength coach, as a parentworking with gymnasts or as a
gymnast themselves listening tothis, you're going to have
probably two big meets that arereally, really important to you,
whether those are put togetheror whether those are maybe
separate.
Throughout the year.
You want to kind of put youreggs in those two baskets and
plan the year around that,because that's probably when
things are going to matter themost.

(12:26):
Again, for some people that'snever getting a score and just
they want to have a greatperformance.
They want to show off all theirhard work in front of people or
on their own.
That's totally cool.
It might be a show For otherpeople.
That might be.
The colleges are looking atthem at a national championship
and the national JO championship, and that's at the club level
where they're going to getlooked at for scholarships, or
maybe it's the nationalchampionship for college, or

(12:48):
maybe it's an elite qualifier,or maybe it's um, you know, a
world championships, right, oran olympic championships or an
olympic team, whatever else itshould be.
So you have to realize what'syour individual goal and you
have to kind of build yourcalendar years around that.
Okay, I think it's reallyimportant to know here one of
the most important pieces as wefirst look at this section of
gymnastics specific training.
We talked about skills toroutines, to meet combinations.

(13:08):
One of the most importantthings that I think athletes
need is they have to havecommunication about what the
schedule is, when it ishappening, when the meets are,
and they have to be able to planwell ahead of time around these
things, right, I think some ofthe gyms that I've worked with
on the club level unfortunatelysometimes don't have this worked
out well in advance and theykind of add meets last minute or

(13:29):
they kind of add things lastsecond, and that's obviously
different if someone's trying toqualify or move level, but they
don't really solidify theirschedule well in advance.
Sometimes it's no fault oftheir own, it's just the meets
don't come together well.
But you really want to have yourcalendar year planned out,
pretty much set, before youstart the end season.
You really want to know what'sgoing on and this quote from Tim
is really important here.
It says it's not the workloadthat's the problem, it's the

(13:49):
workload you're not prepared for.
And that's why you need to knowthe meets, because if you know
the meets, you can plan your onweeks and your off weeks
throughout the season and youcan tell athletes ahead of time
hey, this week we don't have ameet, we're going to go a little
bit harder.
So let's try to prepareappropriately.
Let's get the mental headspaceready.
Let's make sure we're takingcare of ourselves.
We're sleeping, we're bringingsnacks, we're taking care of

(14:09):
ourselves with our school andour time management.
Versus another week when theyare traveling for a weekend,
they have to know in advance toget their schoolwork done or try
to get themselves oriented oftheir sleep schedules or what
they're doing for stressmanagement techniques.
You can't just throw randommeats or just say like, hey,
we're going to try this and thentry that.
You have to really bedeliberate.
The more you communicate withthe athletes about what's going

(14:29):
on, the better.
I promise you that.
So try to get these things donewell, well in advance.
Okay, one of the best thingsyou can do is communicate about
the meat schedule, those hardweeks, the taper weeks, the
biggest competition and therationale for why you're making
training decisions.
I think the more times you caninvolve athletes in the
educational process and say thisis why we're going so hard
today.
I know you're tired, I know youfeel gassed, but this is why we

(14:52):
have to do this, becausesomeday down the road you might
have back-to-back training days.
You might make, you know, areally, really great meet
performance and have to do a daytwo.
If that's your goal in college,you might have a back-to-back
regional day.
You might have an eventfinalist day, right.
For somebody else it might betwo weekends back-to-back their
training.
It's like, listen, we're goingto have this meet and it's going
to be right next to this weekand this second meet is one of
the more important meets of theyear.

(15:13):
So we're going to simulate thisa couple of weeks leading up to
it, maybe a month before, and Ineed you to be ready for that.
But there there's a rationalefor it.
There's a communication linebetween that.
So giving those things inadvance really really does help
athletes but not only parentsand coaches, medical providers,
everybody on the same pagetrying to see what's the best
thing for the athlete.
With an athlete centered model,the more communication the

(15:34):
better.
Okay, when you look at maybe ayou know mock schedule of what
you would put up on a calendar.
So maybe you have a giantcalendar in your gym for the
month to month.
I think it's really good tohave one of these to write it up
with like a dry erase board orwrite it up in a binder and you
could just outline the goal, youknow baseline of what we think
we're going to do here, right?
So maybe this is a situation ofthe in-season, maybe in the

(15:55):
in-season A.
So maybe you know you havethese two meets back to back.
Well, you're going to sharethis calendar with the athletes,
right?
So say they have Monday.
They would do their half sets.
Tuesdays are a routine day.
Wednesdays are routine.
We'll take a light day forskills and prehab on Thursday.
We'll do a mock meet on Friday,right?
We talked about in the lastlecture how there's many
different types of approachesyou would do to these workouts.

(16:16):
This on Tuesday might be awarmup with basics, two routines
on bars and then week half,like we talked about, versus
this day on Wednesday might justbe a warmup, one pressure set
and then corrections, right?
Versus this mock meet might beliterally exactly what you're
doing rotation order for Friday,right?
So you know you're starting onbars, you know you're going to
do X, many people in a group.
You're going to simulate that.

(16:37):
You're going to simulatesaluting a judge and sitting
down for four people betweentouches.
You know, for trampoline youmight be taking different
intervals of when you're allowedto take your touches, take your
warmups and then you want toget there and try to simulate as
much as possible of the meatsetting right, with distractions
, with rushing, with bumps, withall that kind of stuff, right
Within this week.
That routine day of Tuesdaywith those two routines and

(16:58):
corrections is very differentthan the warmup pressure set
here, which is very differentthan the mock meat, right.
So if athletes know in advancewhat's coming, they can prepare
themselves mentally andphysically for these kinds of
things.
And so if you have this in mind, then you go through the entire
week right, leading up to themeet.
We're going to do skills.
On Monday, it's a nice, easyramping day routines, routines,
mock meet.
We're going three days kind ofhard right in a row.

(17:20):
We got to be ready for that.
Some people like to do this,some people like to do the mock
meet on Wednesday.
Take a light day Thursday.
Everybody is different, right,but the point I'm trying to make
here is that you need to havethis well in advance.
If you know when the meets are,you can break down when you're
going to be doing one per month.
You can break down when theroutines are, when the light
days are, you can reallycommunicate with athletes about
how to do this.
No-transcript, I didn't know Ihad to do routines today, right,

(17:52):
and they freak out a little bit.
So we're trying to make sure weeducate the athletes and get
them involved in the planningprocess.
Two other random things that Ithink are really important to
have on the schedule here andtry to make sure you're thinking
about.
These are things that wecreated at our gym in response
to having a lot of frustrationsin season with some different
things, and we have found thatthese two things are extremely

(18:14):
helpful.
Okay, so the first is going tobe what we call a stoplight
system for move ups, right.
So this is something that wouldbe done well in advance of
season, but it always comes backinto play with season right,
because you need to have really,really clear lines in the sand
about level requirements andwhat it takes to move up and
what it takes to compete a levelsafely with parents, with
gymnasts, and you have to beregularly checking back in about

(18:37):
why somebody is or is not doinga certain level or is or is not
doing a certain skill, becauseit's for a safety thing or why,
for example, they're not reallydoing the best job that they
think they can to meet.
So we clearly line out for ourall the way through.
I mean, compulsories is prettymuch easy to go because of the
actual routines are the same,but more so with optionals and
up like okay, this is what youneed for level seven, level

(18:58):
eight, level nine, level 10, totry to go to college.
All of those things we havewritten out and we're very, very
clear about it on a sheet withbinders as they change, as the
code changes, so it can berelated to the requirements that
they have to fulfill on eachevent.
It can be the skills that areexpected of them when they're
working, like level six, workingup to level seven, of having
your giants before you go tolevel seven, not like trying to
learn your giants at level seven, for an example.

(19:19):
Right Attendance is also a hugething.
We talk about that.
You have to be here for acertain percentage of time and
do the strength and conditioningand do all the drills and be
here for safety reasons of doinghard gymnastics, but also
mental skills and timemanagement skills and just, you
know characteristics of what webelieve in, like our community
guidelines, of how we treatpeople and how we respect people
and how we work together out inbinders and stuff that we would

(19:45):
use and that would be very,very helpful for us to lean on
when maybe something came up inseason about why someone didn't
do this skill or didn't competewell or something happened or
whether or not maybe moving upthe season before.
But we use them in the offseason when we do our move ups.
We then revisit them again veryclearly with a preseason parent
meeting and then we againregularly check in with our
gymnast halfway through the yearto say like, hey, how are your
goals going?
Uh, we talked about these kindof things you want to do.

(20:07):
Is that still in line?
Here's where you're at withvault bars being floor.
Here's where you're at withyour pommel horse routine or
your ring routine.
This is what you need to getfor requirements.
Look at our attendance is alittle funky.
Here is everything okay.
Let's look at your strengthconditioning binder right.
We have these small little 50to 20 minute meetings with every
single athlete individually tokind of go over these things and
make sure we're overcommunicating, because nobody
likes to be blindsided rightWith bombing a meet and getting

(20:28):
a six right If they wanted tohopefully get a really good
score or not moving up in levelor not having the season that
they really wanted for.
So you can use these things tokind of be checking back in and
to see, like, what's going onand why are we making progress
or why are we not makingprogress.
And if someone's doing reallyreally well and they're crushing
it and they really want tomaintain that, these are also
really really helpful to pick.
Well, look at it, you're doingthese skills, you're doing your
assignments.
You've been here a lot.

(20:49):
You're doing a really great jobof time management.
You've been killing it withyour sleep like it looks really
good.
All those things can be really,really helpful to move up.
So I highly encourage people toyou know, but I really
encourage you to make your ownbecause things change.
Things change based on levelsand age and goals, so the things
that we expect or we try tohave for the athletes might not

(21:09):
be the same thing for you.
So hopefully you guys can sitdown and make one of these
whether you already have orwhether you have one that's kind
of in the process and justrefine those, because these are
extremely helpful.
The other thing that we use isour rule of seven.
We call it so.
Essentially, what the rule ofseven is is that each athlete,
each gymnast, must show seven ofthe skills or routines in mock

(21:29):
competitions, setting the weekleading up to a meet to be
eligible to compete that event.
So what I mean by that is inthe two weeks or the week or two
leading up to the meet, theyhave to flip seven of their
vaults or they have to do sevenof their full bar routines with
their hardest skills, or showseven of their round of back
handsprings on the floor.
If they're a younger athletewho's nervous about that, they

(21:50):
must show those successfullyseven times safely, okay, not
just like winging it, but safely.
Show us that as a coachingstaff and show themselves
honestly that they're confidentof that, because we believe that
that number helps us to getmore of a solidified base for
confidence.
But also, too, it typicallyhappens over the course of
multiple days, right?
They can't just come and doseven vaults and call it a day.

(22:11):
They have to do that multipledays in a row, and I think that
that really helps to keep themas safe as possible.
We never want someone to betrying a skill or doing a beam
series or trying to do some hugevault or some new parallel bar
skill or big trampoline skill,when maybe they haven't gotten
fully over a mental block orthey haven't mastered the
technique for how to do itsafely, or they don't really

(22:33):
thrive well under the pressuresetting just yet in competition
and maybe that's a risk ofsafety.
So we use this for every singlemeet.
So every time a new meet comesup, they have to show seven of
those things are going tocompete, not without like no
spotting, no mats, no stacks,like just warm up, compete like
it normally would be.
And I think that we have apretty hard rule that says, like
you know, there's there's noteven really a conversation about

(22:53):
can I just chuck it or can Ithrow it, unless we have these
seven things right, and I thinkthat really helps us understand
how to be safe and how to takecare of ourselves.
So I would definitely encouragethat conversation to happen in
your gym as well, because Ithink it eliminates a lot of the
hey well, maybe she'll let mecompete or maybe I'll just do
this in the meet or maybe I'lljust show up.
That's really not a safe way togo about gymnastics and it also
produces a very high level ofanxiety for the athletes.

(23:17):
Okay, so some in-season examples, just like we talked about last
time.
So a lot of these stuff ispretty common knowledge for
people, but I want to reviewsome of it.
So you might do a timed warmupwith a like touches and then go
through a pressure set.
You might do pressure sets withthe built-in order and wait
times to kind of, like I said inthe last lecture, like they
call it ice and the kicker right, like, sometimes, the judge you
know it takes 14 minutes togreater routine or something

(23:38):
like that.
So you might have a long waitafter your touch warmup.
So you might want to simulatesome of that kind of stuff.
Right, we would do some prettyin depth video reviews of each
routine after we do it.
So say, we'll have somebodyholding the iPad, they'll do it,
they'll do their routine,they'll chalk up our site,
they'll do routine, they'll grabthe iPad, they'll film the next
person behind it and then,after we all go through routines
, the coaches will pull eachperson aside, one by one and say

(23:59):
, okay, well, this is thiscorrection, this is what we
thought about here, this is howwe can improve this.
We'll make some plan of attackfor, like drills, to work on our
stuff, and then they'll go workon that that day or the next
day.
Okay, we might do another twoor three sets of routines.
And again, we talked about howit varies very, very differently
between you know pommelroutines for men, five or 10

(24:24):
ring routines without somethingseriously going wrong.
So, understanding that youmight do you know, one or two or
three routines in a day andhave lots of corrections in
between.
You might do a day where youreally just focus on drills and
basics and corrections inbetween, that where you do a
lighter day and it's really justtechnical refinement.
So a lot of these things aregoing to come up based on your
preferences, based on the meetsthat you have and based on how
many days or times you havebefore that.
But again, you have to planthese things out in advance.

(24:45):
Okay, another in season examplehere, right.
So say we might do on unevenbars, for example, we might do a
basics and a shaping warmup.
We would do one routine, kindof a pressure set.
We do maybe a video review ofthat routine and say here are
the, here's the skill that youstruggled on the most.
Let's do three of that skill ina correction.
Let's do a couple of drills tosupport that skill and then
we'll do a second and thirdroutine.

(25:06):
After we've corrected that alittle bit, we'll try to hit
that skill and that entireroutine altogether.
So the order of this may bearound the you know the flow of
the gym would be able to take abar turn coach, go to a couple
of side stations or drills, do acouple of side shaping or
strength drills and then comeback, chalk up, get ready in
line.
So it's a good flow for thegroup.
Okay, as we talked about moreand more, there can be examples

(25:28):
of this beyond just this.
So, for example, for vault, wemight do a timed warmup and we
might do a pressure set or agroup with the vault, like all
everyone's all eyes on theactual vaulters themselves.
So it simulates the competition.
Do those three corrections ordrills, routines.
You might do four more vaultsafter that, right after we get
all the things broken down.
We talked about how inpreseason maybe it's vaulting
uphill to stacked mats, but nowit might be actually just doing

(25:49):
four more actual vaults or fivemore actual vaults and then
everyone can maybe have like agroup come together and talk
about you know things to work on, patterns, you notice things to
not work on, just notes fornext practice, and you can take
that kind of with you.
Okay, let's move on to strengthand physical preparation.
So there's two main approacheshere that you can do and I
encourage people to talk amongsttheir staff and talks amongst
the resources of what they cando.

(26:10):
There is one approach that ispretty much all focused on
gymnastics, so it's pretty much100% gymnastics and you're going
to build in time for prehab ormaintenance strength care, right
.
So the examples might be doinga daily dozen, like Nick Ruddick
suggests, doing a daily warmupthat has all sorts of basics and
maintenance care built in.
I'm doing four days ofgymnastics, specific strength
and conditioning, and maybe youthrow in a little bit of lower

(26:31):
body strength or a little bit ofa general core or general upper
body maintenance care, likerotator cuff rehab or hip care,
glute work, just to kind ofmaintain the ability of the
athletes to feel pretty good.
So maybe on a light day youmight toss in some of that
prehaber maintenance care or youmight do some of those things
on a deload day or an extendedwarmup when someone's maybe
coming in off a hard weekend.
So you can just go allgymnastics for all of your

(26:52):
strength and conditioning andjust build in these times for
maintenance care.
You can also do it.
I've seen this done really,really well at the college level
.
When they have some strengthconditioning coaches to work
with is that you could do.
75% of your time would begymnastic specific but you would
have 25% of your time reallyfocused on the general
maintenance care.
So maintaining your strength,maintaining your power and some
of the more, like you know,prehab or athletic training or

(27:13):
physical therapy type rehabexercises to kind of maintain
integrity throughout the year,right?
So maybe you would do yourdaily dozen.
Maybe now.
Instead you do three gymnasticsspecific days and then one day
either it's in the weight roomor whether it's not, or whether
it's just at the gym.
Whatever you want to do is youdo some more of the general
strength and power work.
So maybe you continue to dosome of those seated med ball or
so, the seated dumbbell jumpsand the broad jumps and some of

(27:35):
the anti rotation core exercisesand some of the upper back
strength or the direct hip liftsand stuff like that, things
that you were doing in thepreseason to get ready for the
competitive season.
But it is important, if youlook at the literature, to try
to maintain those adaptations, alittle bit of stimulus per week
, so keeping the volume low butthe intensity high.
I've seen that work reallyreally well also.
So if somebody wants to do that, that's cool.

(27:57):
If you're stuck in a situationwhere you don't have a lot of
time, you don't have a lot ofspace or equipment and you're
just trying to get it all in,maybe just doing four specific
days of general gymnasticsspecific work and try to fill in
a couple of those stations orfill in a couple of those things
, I know it's really challengingtime wise, but also challenging
programming and planning wise.
So you have to really make surein advance.
You bust out your binders.
You say, okay, how much time wehave for strength, how much

(28:17):
space do we have, what's theequipment and what are those
kind of categories of things weneed to fulfill for, like,
squatting versus hinging, versusjumping, versus handstands.
You got to map all that outusing the templates that we gave
you in the last lecture andkind of say what you're going to
do to make sure it feels okayand you feel like you're getting
all of your stuff donethroughout the week.
So either of these approachesis good.
I think it's personalpreference.
But just keep keep in mind thatwe're pretty much all hammering

(28:38):
away on gymnastic specificstrength and season and trying
to really focus on routines.
That is one of the biggestgoals.
So we don't want to go crazywith extra strength conditioning
.
So some gymnastic specificexamples, just kind of
revisiting these right.
So the hollow and arch shaping,core compression, handstand
holding, press handstands, ropeclimbs, some sort of shoulder
opening, closing or kind ofpushing and pulling back,
protraction, retraction, activeflexibility work and event

(29:01):
specific strength those arereally the big categories.
There's obviously much, muchmore to that for like, based on
the event or skill or the needsof the athletes.
But Nick and I have talked alot about this and we think this
is kind of incorporates a lotof the different categories that
you would have.
A lot of this is from Nick'sdaily dozen, which I highly
recommend people check out anduse.
I've added in some more of myown just based on some of the
people that I've worked with andI've picked up some ideas along

(29:22):
the way.
But essentially some sort ofgymnastics specific work.
You know that's going to bedone almost all the time, every
day in season to try to makesure we're really optimizing for
routines, optimizing for meets.
So just some examples here.
So we might just do some pikerope climbs, right, pretty
pretty, no brainer, prettystaple.
But you could do pike, youcould do straddle, you could do
talk, you could do straight, youcould do one leg like.

(29:43):
There's a lot of options basedon the athletes.
But getting some sort of ropeclimb work in some press
compression work here, this is areally great exercise for both
the compression aspect of thehandstand but then also the, the
actual press handstand itself.
So I like these quite a bit tojust lean your body weight over,
learn how to press right andjust slowly unweight the toes
and lean forward.
I think these are really greatside stations.

(30:03):
These are really great warm-updrills to do as well.
So press handstands and presswalks forward and backwards over
here just doing some kind oflower body compression work, so
going from the l to the vposition trying to hold three,
three seconds on each with ashoulder blade blocked behind.
These are really really helpfulto learn on compression work
but also just maintain corestrength.
So really good side station todo.
You can tuck, you can do.

(30:23):
One leg you can do you know alittle bit less aggressive
version of this if you want to,but just showing some examples,
you could just do an L holdright, but something to work on.
That compression strength isreally really important for bars
.
And then just some handstanddrills here against the wall,
some static holds, so in astraddle just trying to work on
that stacking position of a casthandstand.
Very easy side station, veryeasy to put in a warm-up.

(30:44):
Very easy to put on a generaldaily dozen list of whatever
you're doing from nick's kind ofcomponents.
But just some examples here ofdifferent gymnastics, specific
categories to kind of tackle acouple more here as well.
So for bars so here's some somesorry up here in the top left
hand corner we have some closingshoulder angle, so up in a
hollow feeder up on top of themat here and she's just working
on closing her shoulders all theway down.

(31:06):
Then she would kind of startand go back to the beginning all
the way back up.
So very, very good warmup, very,very good side station for
those who struggle with kidsthat don't have great bar
strength.
But you're trying to find moretime to fill it in so you could
do it as a side station, as awarm up, as part of a side drill
between turns.
But we do shoulder closing onthis side and then we also have
shoulder opening on this side,so standing, bringing the floor

(31:26):
bar overhead.
So it's very, very common tokind of do a turn and go over
and do five closes, five opens,larger bar weight, the bar.
Make it easier, make it harderfor athletes.
Those things are totally fine.
But shoulder opening andshoulder closing with a straight
arm is very, very important formany, many things in gymnastics
.
So whether you're working onyour chanko drills and you're
throwing overhead, whethertrampolinas are working on
overhead jumps for just height,whether men's gymnastics are

(31:47):
working on, you know, to pelttaps and very aggressive P-bar
taps.
All these things kind ofopening and shoulder closing
come together.
So you want to be working thesedrills pretty much every day.
And then, as we've revisitedbefore, but some just
plyometrics, some high tuckjumps over the panel mats trying
to maintain that gymnasticsspecific stiffness and bouncing
off the floor.
You could also do this overhere with some like springboard
drills, like trying to get highbody tension, of teaching the

(32:10):
athletes how to keep the earscovered, how to keep the body
tension in the line.
You're really, really straight.
Another one I really reallyenjoy doing from Nick is what he
calls five dimensions of astraight line, which is
essentially just trying to finddifferent ways for the athletes
to lay flat.
So lay on your stomach flat,lay on your back flat, hang flat
, do a handstand flat, juststand flat.
Right, there's many differentways to do it, but just teaching
body tension, just teaching,can you squeeze a super straight

(32:31):
line and work on some activeflexibility as well.
So some more examples here, butagain, those categories, what
you're looking for.
I'm sure everybody who'slistening to this lecture could
give five or 10 amazingexercises for each category of
press handstands, of shoulderopening, of plyos, of body
tension.
We could have an entire weekendcourse on that.
But you just want to try tofind as much as you can to

(32:51):
fulfill those categories andthen all the extra things that
you might need some developmenton.
Okay, so when we look at maybe aprogramming example, so for
men's art sorry for women'sartistic gymnastics in a block
of maybe 30 or 45 minutes youmight do four sets of 10 in and
out panel mat jumps.
You could do a rope climb inbetween there and then do a set
of 10 L to leg V-ups, going fromL to V, l to V.
That's a very gymnastic,specific maintenance care type

(33:13):
strength exercise and power typeexercise.
Then they might go over to dosome broad strip jumps, jump on
the right, jump on the left forsplit, split jumps and then do
straddle jumps on the rod strip,a little bit easier on their
legs or on their knees, butworking active flexibility.
Those cast handstands, thosepower cast handstands, are added
back in as a maintenance careto do.
Then maybe do some corporateactions or arch hollow snaps
over a panel mat, so they layover a panel mat snap to work

(33:37):
arch and hollow.
This would be a very, very goodkind of in season workout to do
to get a lot of strength gainsmaintained and a lot of power
gains maintained, but in a very,very specific gymnastics way to
try to keep those thingsfocused on routine peaking.
So here's an example for men'sartistic gymnastics.
We might do those same in andout pano mat jumps, the rope
climbs, the leg lifts.
But maybe now we changed someof the specificity to be more

(33:57):
for parallel bars, right.
So maybe we do reverse physioball rocks, right.
So our hands are behind usreaching up, our feet up on a
physio ball rocking far forwardas far as we can, then pulling
back reverse planche rocks forthe front swing of parallel bars
, the front extension swing ofpommel horse.
Maybe we do P-bar handstandpushups instead of cast
handstands because it's a littlebit more specific to what they
need for that discipline in thesport.

(34:17):
But they still do the artralissnap.
So a little bit of tweakingthere based on what they need.
But again, examples is justvery, very specific to the
gymnastics aspects and all thosebody weight type explosive
power things we're trying to getto.
Okay.
So the other thing that we'vetalked about too right is doing
some maintenance care or somegeneral examples.
What are you doing formaintenance care in the upper
body in particular, if you'rechoosing to maybe add these into
side stations, or maybe ifyou're choosing to do a separate

(34:39):
day where you do just specificwork for all the things that are
?
You know more of that generalkind of category?
So for the upper body, I thinkupper body, upper back rowing is
really important for a lot ofgymnasts who don't do that.
So face pulls, feet, elevatedrows, renegade rows, all the
rotator cuff exercises thattypically get overlooked but are
very, very important in seasonso nobody gets nagging shoulders

(35:00):
.
So sideline dumbbell, externalrotation, prone tees, prone wise
, prone news, standing fullhands banded external internal
rotation at zero degrees, thenalso at 90 degrees, again, just
grunt work, particularly formen's gymnastics.
That kind of has to be donetwice a week.
Other things that are reallyreally good to our Turkish get
ups and overhead loaded carriesto try to maintain some of that
dynamic stability in theshoulder.
So we might toss in a couplelaps of those and then anything

(35:23):
we can possibly do to maintainflexibility, because typically,
as the competitive year goes on,the flexibility gets a little
bit worse.
A little bit worse as athletesget stiffer and stiffer from
doing a lot of high volumetraining.
So eccentric chin ups or pushups to try to maintain lat and
pec flexibility we might do somewall angels, some stomach
circles for active flexibility,for female gymnast as well.
But those are all just reallygood things to add into,

(35:43):
particularly, like I said, likea light day.
If you have a day where you'retrying to just get some recovery
in, this is a really great wayto add some workouts and that
aren't super stressful but aregoing to kind of fill in some of
those gaps that maybe you don'thave time for because you have
so much routine work to do.
So just some examples here theseare feet elevated rows in the
top left-hand corner Over hereon the right side these are
stomach shoulder circles foractive flexibility.

(36:03):
So good kind of maintenancecare type work for the active
flexibility.
In the bottom left we have theside-lying dumbbell external
rotation just to kind of get theback of the posterior rotator
cuff a little bit stronger.
And then we have some Turkishget-ups here in the bottom right
, so pressing straight ahead,one leg is extended up and kind
of coming up to the elbow, shewould press and bring her foot
all the way through.
And the reason Turkish setupsare so good is because they work

(36:24):
the shoulder in a variety ofdifferent ways.
But also the core is gettingchecked in many, many ways.
So a couple of reps of theseare very, very good to keep in
your maintenance care typeprogram.
Okay, so for the lower body,again on that same idea of what
are we trying to do to fill inthe gaps, to make sure we're
getting balanced about the hipjoint balance around the core.
So single leg weighted hiplifts and single leg RDLs
typically are very underlookedand very under trained, so the

(36:45):
hamstrings and glutes get very,very underdeveloped compared to
the quads in the inner thigh.
So adding in some of those arevery good, along with side plank
clamshells, side plank leglifts or lateral band walks,
making sure you're doing thesein a way that's challenging
enough.
Okay, single leg balance, orsome ankle stability, because
ankle sprains are very, veryhigh risk factors for gymnastics
.
So you might have some anklerolling, so keeping your ankle

(37:06):
flexibility up, but then alsodoing some single leg jumping
and landing, some double legjumping and landing to maintain
proper quality of movement thereand then maintaining some of
the flexibility for jumps andfor leaps by doing eccentric
split sliders to the front andto the side with straddles and
then doing needle kicks, activeflexibility, l or stalled or
press work and swim through.
It's all just really goodactive hip flexibility things to
kind of keep in mind.

(37:27):
So just some examples here.
So here's the weighted hip liftup in the top left hand corner.
Over here on the top right handcorner you can see some farmer
carry marches, which helps tomake the core be prepared for
high impact forces, which is whywe do it so much for
maintenance, care and season.
We don't want someone's back toget sore or hips to get sore if
they don't know how to handlethe landing forces.
Okay, and then a side plankclamshell is on the bottom left

(37:47):
here you can see the band aroundher knees to make it pretty
challenging.
And then we have on the rightsliders, right so split sliders.
She like slowers down all theway and then lifts up with her
hands.
Very good for activeflexibility, very good to try to
maintain some of the jumps andthe leaps and things that most
people are looking for in seasonof getting the angles they need
for no deductions, okay.
So here's a specific programmingexample again of what we might

(38:08):
do on one of these maintenancecare days, if you have them.
So we might do four sets ofeight offset single leg
kettlebell RDLs, which is asingle leg deadlift with the
weight in the opposite hand withone leg on the ground.
So it kind of works on therotational control and the
stability.
A lot of beam coaches are bigfans of those because it helps
them to control and land theirjumps and leaps when maybe
they're off.
Okay, we might do three sets of10 of like a prone, you with a
dumbbell or a sideline externalrotation and then do some bird

(38:31):
dogs or some core work at somedeep core activation With.
Second set would be someweighted hip lifts, doing five
stomach circles up to the panelmat and then doing some of those
side plank clamshells.
Okay, so you can order these,which is kind of filling all the
things that you don't reallyhave time to do.
But doing all these things aregoing to massively help in
season to maintain some of theircapacity and maintain some of
those cranky joints and kind ofpreventing some of the onset of

(38:52):
those.
Alright, so let's shift gearsand talk about cardio and energy
systems.
Okay.
So we have to remember thatroutines are going to be the
major source of their energy andcardio systems work.
I think a mistake I used tomake was trying to go too hard
on some of the cardio work whilewe were still training routines
and I think it built up toomuch stress and they wouldn't
recover as well.
The athletes struggle torecover.
So now I typically in seasonspend most of my time doing

(39:15):
energy systems for routines, butI do throw in some event
specific work, like we'll talkabout, to try to just augment or
try to have accessory builduppieces to that.
So we might try to maintainmaybe one day per week where we
do one of those faster twitchbursted workouts and try to get
that quick twitch fiber aspector that high, high degree of
stress in a 60 to 90 secondwindow to be maintained.

(39:36):
We can train for that.
We want to be very specificabout how we do that, though.
Okay, we only have so much gasin the tank, so we don't want to
be going super, super hard justfor the sake of it.
We have to be very, veryintelligent and very, very
calculated about the specific,intentional nature of the
workout that we're doing ifwe're going to choose to do a
very intense anaerobic burstedworkout, because they're very,
very taxing on your nervoussystem and they're very, very

(39:58):
taxing on some of thephysiological systems.
It's hard to recover from areally hard anaerobic workout.
Sometimes you get a little sore, sometimes you get really,
really tired and you might draintheir energy too much earlier
in the week and then not haveenough routines later in the
week.
So being mindful of that isreally, really important.
And one thing I really like todo here is doing short bursted
interval work.
Okay, so the way I like this isversus like the long interval

(40:26):
work we did in the preseason,which was 60 to 90 seconds, an
absolute slog of a workout wherewe're not really worried about,
you know, doing two or threeroutines or competing in a meet,
so we can afford to be a littletired, but this situation is
trying to go really reallyexplosive, really really fast on
a short interval.
So that max effort is the goal,right.
So we're going to do these inlow to moderate volume, but very
, very, very high intensity,because we don't want to add too
much extra impact on their body, like their shins or their back

(40:46):
, right?
So we want to pick exercisesthat are very safe to do, just
like we did in the preseason,but they really demand a lot of
your body, right?
So the sleds and some of thejumps and the runs and stuff
gymnastic specific exerciseswork well.
Here, too, we want to pickthings that are really going to
be beneficial, that are going tobe very, very challenging, but
we're not going to add too muchjunk mileage onto somebody, okay
.
So here's an example of one thatI really like doing in season.

(41:08):
That seems to maintain a highdegree of intensity, but it
really works on these intervalsso that they can understand how
to control themselves, right?
So we might do a 10 very fast,explosive plate hops and then
five maximal effort squat jumpsand then two laps of a bear
crawl.
So bear crawl down, bear crawlback right.
That will probably only takeyou maybe 15 to 20 seconds,
right, 25 seconds max if you'rereally struggling, but most

(41:30):
people can do that in 15 to 20seconds and you keep that
interval really, really short.
So they would alternate withyour partner five times each.
So they would each do fiverounds of that, which would
probably take them probablyaround three to five minutes.
Okay, you would all rest for twominutes after the last group
goes.
That allows you to recover andget your energy system back in
the glycolytic system and sometime to recover.
It's not a perfect work to restratio but given their

(41:51):
constraints of practice timesbeing not four hours long um for
allowing for an hour of cardio,we have to do this.
So two minute rest that allowsyou to get your cardio and your
energy system back so you canthen go really max effort again
on the next set.
So the next set would be fiverounds again of 10 quick taps,
five max effort plyo pushups andthen two sled push laps.
So plate hops are when you kindof just jump onto a panel mat,

(42:11):
side to side, really fast withyour legs.
As you'll see, quick taps arekind of front to back, right,
and then you would do the samething.
You would do those five roundsfor each person, rest two
minutes.
The last round of five would be10 pogo hops, five max effort
jump, cast handstands on thefloor and then two all out
sprint laps back and forth.
So you can still see its wholebody.
You can still see we're workingvery, very aggressively but
we're intentionally trying to doa workout.

(42:31):
It's going to stimulate thatvery explosive, very fast twitch
, very, very high, highintensity, because that's going
to be what we need to maintainfrom a physiological point of
view to get the most out of ourroutines that we want to do.
Okay, so we might do this.
All in all, this this workoutmight take you 15 minutes, right
, 15 to 20 minutes, but it'svery, very intentional.
There's not just running forthe sake of running, or panel

(42:52):
mats for the sake of just doingplyos.
Okay.
So you'll see an example hereof someone doing this, so you
can see down on the floorthere's these plates that
they're jumping, so they woulddo their plate hops here, so 10
plate hops, and you can see howwe organize this in a group.
And then they would come down,they would do their uh, five
this is a jumping lunges in thiscase, but five jumping lunges
to get a very explosive kind ofworkload going and then they

(43:13):
would get their sled.
They would push as fast as theycan down.
I think they did three laps inthis one.
So sprint down, sprint back,sprint back, sprint down again.
I think normally, because wehave the rod strip in the back
there that's longer.
So I had them do three lapsbecause I wanted a pretty good
interval.
So, yeah, I think this video is20 seconds long, right, for the
entire thing that they tookthem to do is about 20 seconds.
And then you know they woulddrag the block back to their
partner and then the personwould go start their plate hops.

(43:35):
So that person is dragging thesorry, the sled back as they
start, so they would do theexact same workout we just
talked about.
Okay, so that's a really goodway.
It's very specific.
It's not just doing circuitsand getting tired for getting
tired.
It's very much based on a goodenergy system science.
Okay.
So another option for in seasoncardio is actually the opposite
of you know that, really reallyhigh intensity, which is active

(43:55):
recovery.
So a lot of places do this andI think this is a really really
smart thing to do.
Is, you know, maybe on yourlight day, when you're coming
back and you're feeling a littletired, you're feeling a little
sore, is that you actually dolike a nice 20 minute or so
circuit or some sort of reallyeasy active recovery work with
cardio, like a middle, a low tomoderate heart rate, cause it
helps to get the body ofrecovered right.

(44:15):
So it helps with circulation,it helps blood flow, it helps to
get the joints moving if you'rea little sore and stiff.
And you can do this two ways.
You can maybe just go for alonger you know nice easy bike
or a nice easy, like you knowwalk for some people on a Sunday
you can also.
I think a lot of colleges I workwith are turning turning their
their minds onto this idea.
So they'll have someone come infor their light day and they'll

(44:36):
have like some bike setup, abike or two minutes of a bike or
a jog, and then they'll kind ofswitch with a partner who's
doing like an active recovery ora maintenance care type
exercise, something thatathletic trainer gave them some
of those prehab exercises, someof those things we just talked
about, like the upper body andlower body, kind of maintenance
care type stuff.
So they would just alternatebetween these two, again not
trying to get super tired, nottrying to get super dead, but
just like getting a sweat going,getting the body little bit.

(44:56):
These are really really helpful.
Some people really really likethese as the first day back when
they're coming off a reallyhard meet weekend or a really
hard travel weekend.
So maybe Monday you use one ofthese days you do skill
corrections and basics and thenTuesday, Wednesday, thursday you
get back on the routine train.
Okay, so an example here youmight have four rounds of one
minute on each station in agroup.
So the first station might be alight jog or a light little air

(45:18):
bike.
You can also jump rope on asofter surface.
That's a really good one too aswell.
The second station might be alower body, like dynamic
stretching or some sort ofactive flexibility.
Maybe it's some of thosesliders, maybe it's some kicks,
maybe it's some nice and easyhip mobility.
The third exercise might be acore or something that's really
really kind of like mid-levelshaping, so hollow rocks or
shaping of like those fivedimensions of a straight line or

(45:38):
some sort of nice and easy, youknow, a bird, dog, dead, bug
combination.
The fourth exercise is some sortof upper body active
flexibility or prehab work tooas well.
So maybe some face pulls, maybesome chin up lowers, maybe some
lat stretches, some someshoulder circles.
But essentially you would haveeveryone go through that,
because you're just trying toget the body moving.
You're just trying to getthings kind of going right.
Some people just like to havethe athletes just go for a nice

(45:59):
30 minute walk outside at abrisk pace to try to get their
heart rate up a little bit.
Some people like biking, somepeople like hiking, like
whatever it is.
But again, the idea is a lightto moderate effort to get the
body going a little bit and notjust make it feel like you're
walking around with concretelegs.
Okay, try to really make sure,as we shift our way into athlete
wellness here, to reallyintentionally build time to give
the athletes time for prehab ormaintenance care programs.

(46:21):
I think I know all too well howhard it is to just be busy and
have to get more done, more done, more workouts, more routines,
more, more, go, go, go.
But if you don't build in someof these active recovery, these
light days, it feels absolutelyimpossible to recover from the
hard practices and the hardmeets right.
So I encourage people tointentionally plan going all the
way back to that month longcalendar of why you want to plan

(46:42):
light days in, to tell theathletes that you're going to
have intentional things likethat, to make them make sure
they feel like they're takencare of right.
So build in light days, buildin a cool down for 30 minutes
right where you guys finish yourevents early and everyone can
do their prehab binder.
Everyone can do some of theirmaintenance care work.
You can do one of these activerecovery workouts right.
Or just open the gym up, if youcan, early 30 minutes so people
can get there beforehand and dosome of their maintenance care

(47:04):
work, do some of their softtissue care work, right.
I know it's hard for everyone tofind space and time, but you
have to find some way to makethis happen, because if you
don't do this intentionallythroughout the season, it gets
away from you and you findyou're never doing it.
Athletes are always just doingthe work and they're really,
really beat up and they start toget really cranky backs and
really cranky shins and wristsand it feels like you're too far
behind the eight ball to doanything about it.

(47:25):
So, knowing that you have tointentionally plan what day of
the week or what time during themonth, are you going to build
this in as a cool down?
Are you going to build this inas a light day?
You're going to build this in.
Can you have the athletes comeearly, like what is going to
happen, to try to make it work?
A lot of athletes come fromschool.
They can't get there 30 minutesearly, so maybe you're going to
have to find time to help themout with that, okay.
So, with athlete wellness inmind, remember that we talked

(47:46):
about some things that controlthat sand.
That sand going through is, byfar and away, communication is
going to be one of the mostimportant things.
So if you have a whole group ofpeople that come in their legs,
are super tired, they're barelykeeping their eyes open or test
times coming around, they'rereally, really struggling.
Maybe you can flip-flop dayswhere you can go okay, instead
of taking a light day tomorrow,we'll do our light day today,
we'll do our routines tomorrow.
Because I know everyone's kindof dying here.

(48:06):
Maybe one athlete had a really,really tough day, a really
really tough, um, you know,situation with school or family
life, or they're buried in theirhomework and they just can't
get to sleep.
Maybe you adjust their stuffwhere they can do the routines
the next day or they can adjusta little bit.
You have to try to adjust tothe athlete's read of what
they're telling you, becausechances are you're not going to
get a lot out of them, but alsoyou're going to build trust with
that athlete about oh, thisperson really cares about me and

(48:28):
listens to me.
There are other times when theathlete comes in a little tired,
a little sluggish, and you'relike, hey, we planned for this,
we knew this was going to come,so we're just going to push
through.
Right, we're going to do itsafely, we're going to adjust as
we need.
We might have to tinker alittle bit here and there, but
we're going to get through theseroutines right.
There's a time and a place forboth ends of the spectrum.
But again, communication is key, and why?
Educating the athletes as muchas possible is going to tell

(48:49):
them what's a heads up about ofthe plan.
Okay.
So constant reminders, constanteducation about sleep hygiene,
about stress management, feelingfor performance, making sure
they're getting their work doneon time, making sure they're
trying to plan for when theirmeet.
Weekends are when they'retraveling.
They're not going to have time,so they're not staying up to
two in the morning on Sundaynight after their meet.
They're trying to do as much asyou can.
The other thing we'll end hereand we'll talk about is some

(49:10):
sort of basic wellness andtracking.
Your journaling program issuper duper helpful during
season and I mean the whole year, but particularly in season to
keep an eye on these things.
Okay, so what we do with all ofour athletes and binders and
this has been something we'vebeen working on for a long time
is we do a basic wellness ortracking journal.
Right, so we have these.
This is actually a picture fromthe journal.
On the top right hand corner ishere so sleep quality, physical

(49:31):
readiness, energy readiness,overall mood and then a wellness
score, which we're actuallymoving away from, but these four
numbers are probably the mostimportant anyways.
So, essentially, zero is theworst.
10 is the best.
So, for sleep, you say what wasthe quality of your sleep on a
0 to 10 scale, zero is terrible.
10 is the best sleep you everhad in your life.
Soreness how fresh do yourmuscles feel right now?
Zero is, they have.
Zero, you know.
Zero readiness I feel super,duper sore.

(49:53):
I couldn't do anything of mylife dependent on it.
Whereas 10 is I don't feel anysoreness at all.
I feel amazing.
My legs feel ready to go, readyto rumble.
I feel awesome, right, energyzero is I am completely, you
know, toast.
You got to peel me off the matto get me going.
10 is I feel like I'm going torun through a wall.
I'm super duper energetic.
Right mood, crappy mood.
It's a zero.
I feel like crap.
I just don't want to work out.

(50:13):
I'm in a bad mood.
10 is, I feel, amazing.
I'm super duper happy, right.
So you add those scores up ifyou want to get a 40% score.
But I think looking individuallyis probably more important and
you just see how these thingstrend over time.
If an athlete is constantly youknow not or is in line with
what you want, you want to havecommunication about that.
You also give them some blankjournal space, just some extra
notes.
You worry starting or somethingyou're not you know, like tests
or something stressing you out.

(50:34):
Having some blank space to dothat is really really important.
What we're looking for is thatwe know that it's going to be
some changes, everyone's goingto be different, but we're
looking for patterns orstandouts, right.
So consistently low sleep orconsistently really crummy mood
across like a week, like what'sgoing on there.
You got to talk to the athletehey, why are we sleeping like
garbage?
Why are you feeling like thismood is really really low.
Is there an injury starting?
Is there something you'restressed about?

(50:54):
Is it routine?
Is it me to that your familylife like what's going on here.
A consistent lack of energy isusually more related to sleep
and also proper feeling forperformance and hydration.
Okay, the also looking for theopposite pattern of something
you don't expect.
So say in training is supposedto be really really tough for
these couple weeks, but everyonescores are through the roof,
they feel great, they're notsore at all, they feel amazing,
right, you actually don't wantthat.

(51:15):
You want training to bechallenging enough, to be a
little bit lower, so maybe inthe middle, but not crushed.
Same thing with the opposite.
So maybe when you don't thinkthe workouts are that hard it's
supposed to be an easy periodand everybody is tanking, right,
everyone's scores are really,really low.
Well, that's also raised forconcern to about why we all feel
so terrible for trying to takemore of a deload.
Right, maybe you're notappreciating how hard the
training programs actually are.

(51:35):
The perception of what youthink it's going to be versus
the reality is different for theathletes, and so maybe if the
whole team is feeling like that,you can kick a step back and
kind of acknowledge that alittle bit.
I found personally, as we kindof just wrap things up here for
tapers and deloads is somethingthat a lot of people ask me
about when to taper, when todeload, what does that look like
?
There's a lot of differentscientific literature here.
There's a lot of differentopinions on this.

(51:55):
For me personally, I have foundthat for the smaller local
meets, a three-day taper istypically okay.
So you're kind of maintainingthe intensity but you're pulling
down the volume.
Like I said, like that Tuesdayworkout where you had two to
three routines and thenWednesday it was one routine
with corrections and then youtook a light day, they did a
mock meet on Friday and youcompeted on Saturday.
That's a three day taper rightto kind of pull down the amount
of volume you're doing, but justdo the really high intensity

(52:17):
pressure sets.
For things that are much biggerbig meets like states or
regionals or nationals, Iactually try to do a full seven
day taper.
So the thought process being isthat you have so much time
under your belt from from doingthese, you know prep work that
you can take a full week whereyou're kind of just doing
pressure sets or just doingreally high intensity work and
building in more prehab, morerecovery work to try to get
their bodies ready as humanlypossible.

(52:38):
So I think five to seven days.
Some people do a longer one ifit's a really big meet, but I
found that five to seven days ispretty good for travel meets.
You have to really think aboutall the things that go into that
.
You can't just expect the taperto go super smooth because it
might be a time zone change, itmight be a sleeping change, it
might be different equipment, itmight be packing different food
, different snacks, all thatkind of stuff.
So if you have someone who'straveling for a weekend meet and

(52:59):
they're going to be doing theirmeets at you know, nine in the
morning and they always work outat 5pm at night, you have to
try to think about that well inadvance and try to see how can
you prepare that athlete for it.
Either maybe you can get atouch in the training hall, you
can get there early, or just dosome sort of activity at that
time to get their body ready forit about two weeks before
leading up to it.

(53:20):
Okay, for a taper or deload, Ipersonally like to lower the
volume but maintain theintensity because we don't want
to lose that really impressivepower and speed and readiness.
So we might reduce the sets orthe reps slightly might reduce
the overall volume or density.
So take away maybe one chunk ofthe exercises that aren't super
, super important.
We might replace a medium daywith a light day or a prehab, so
the total volume throughout theweek is lower.

(53:41):
So there's different ways to dothis.
I typically just pull off someof the sets and reps and try to
have the high quality effort ofexplosive power be really the
goal.
But I also will maybe change acouple of the days.
So maybe not do another hardday of strength but instead just
do a lighter prehab day, likewe just talked about.
So the overall volume of theweek is lower, leading into the
couple of meets.
All right, and just to take aweek example here.
So we might have something herewhere we go like medium right,

(54:05):
heavy, heavy, then we light,then we medium, we compete, we
off right All the way through.
We could do another examplemight be just doing in our
gymnastics side, so this isgymnastics on the left, this and
we might just do some shapingand core and basics works.
On Monday, the second day, wemight do our warmup and our
pressure set.

(54:25):
If we talked about cut thevolume down on the strength
conditioning to be 75% of whatit was, with high quality
intensity for these two days.
As we're doing our pressuresets and our warmups by Thursday
, which is pretty much do alight basic day, friday would be
our mock day or our mock meet,with very, very little to know,
just basic mental work and basicshaping and body work, so that
on Saturday we can compete.
This is kind of essentially thevisual representation of what I

(54:46):
just outlined here, so taperingthroughout that no-transcript.

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