May 4, 2025 • 37 mins
Thanks for listening to The SHIFT Show! Check out SHIFT's most popular courses here
https://courses.shiftmovementscience.com/
In this episode, Dave introduces a new podcast format featuring co-host Alea as they tackle the science of workload management in gymnastics and injury prevention strategies. The pair examines groundbreaking research on training load spikes and why smart preparation matters more than ever.
• Tim Gabbet's research shows injury risk increases dramatically when workload spikes more than 50% in a week
• Injuries typically appear 1-2 weeks after workload spikes, making the connection hard to identify
• Gymnastics presents unique challenges with multiple events creating overlapping stress on similar body structures
• The "Floor to Ceiling" model illustrates how raising baseline fitness levels before preseason reduces injury risk
• Dave and colleagues developed a gymnastics-specific workload monitoring system combining time, perceived exertion, and intensity factors
• Their research tracking collegiate programs showed preseason has highest physical demands while postseason has greatest mental strain
• Summer preparation is crucial for building strength and conditioning before preseason begins
• Carefully managing plyometric progression before ramping up routine volume helps prevent overuse injuries
• Implement gradual progression from skills to parts to half-routines to full routines
• Plan training with strategic recovery periods (approximately three weeks on, one week reduced)
If you have topics you'd like us to cover in future episodes of this new format, please reach out and let us know!
We appreciate you listening!
To learn more about SHIFT, head here - https://shiftmovementscience.com/
To learn about SHIFT's courses, check our website here - https://courses.shiftmovementscience.com/
Also, please consider rating, reviewing, and sharing the podcast with your friends!
Thanks :)
Thanks for listening to The SHIFT Show! Check out SHIFT's most popular courses here!
https://courses.shiftmovementscience.com/
Want to join our online educational community of over 1000 gymnastics professionals and get 40+ hours of gymnastics lectures? Join The Hero Lab below!
https://shiftmovementscience.com/theherolab/
Check out all our past podcast episodes here!
https://shiftmovementscience.com/podcast/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
every day.
You essentially pay your duesby doing the harder thing when
it's the right thing to do.
Hello everyone.
Welcome back to the podcast.
After a small hiatus in break,we are back in action.
Alia, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
good, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
good, alia is new.
I asked her to be a co-hostbecause the long story short of
the podcast is that the clinicis very busy and the research
world is very busy and also wehave a bunch of courses and
projects we're working on and Igot to the point where I
couldn't do it.
I just couldn't keep up withsocial media and the podcast.
So, unfortunately, that was thefirst thing to go when you're
very busy, is I?
(00:42):
Actually I forgot to mentionthis last time, but I think that
people forget that we have likejobs and we're treating
clinicians like all the time.
So like the online stuff iscool and the research is cool,
but that's like a side hustlefor like your real clinic work
and so, yeah, I like actuallytreat people all day long and
like have stuff to do.
So the podcast and social mediais an added bonus, but yeah, so
I couldn't really keep up withit for a while.
(01:03):
And then I was trying to thinkthrough some formats that would
allow me to essentially putpodcasts out that are quicker,
that are helpful but are notthese long two hour deep dives
with guests and interviews, andI had the idea to essentially
just take my notepad, which islike where I work through all my
ideas and kind of write stuffdown that I'm thinking about, um
, and put them into like a longjournal kind of list and then
see if we could summarize atopic in maybe one episode
(01:25):
that's shorter, for like a halfhour or 40 minutes, not these
two hour long deep dives.
So that's where this format ofthe podcast came from, and I
thought of no one other than thewonderful Aaliyah to help me
out, because she's smart andalso I think that she sees
things similar to me.
But obviously I think you'rewhat?
Three years out of school, yeah.
So give the people a littlebackground on you and then we'll
(01:47):
we'll get into this first one,yeah, so I'm from Michigan.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I went to Michigan for undergrad and then I went to
Duke for grad school and then Idid a sports residency program
at Children's Healthcare ofAtlanta and then I accepted a
full-time position kind of rightafter residency, and then, from
like a gymnastics standpoint, Idid gymnastics I mean my whole
life pretty much and then didsome coaching after I like
(02:10):
graduated undergrad and then I'mnot currently coaching, but
I've coached for quite a whileperspective too and now I'm just
working full-time there we goin the big, real shoes.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, uh, alia came through champion, did a rotation
and then did her SES stuff likethat.
So lots of I think your ownclinic experience was good, but
also you just see things from abit of our lens coming through
Champion, and then now obviouslyyou have your own set of skills
, stuff like that.
So, yeah, and we'll kind ofbreak these up into episodes on
one topic, right.
So like a smaller topic and thefirst one that actually started
(02:50):
my entire like thought processfor wanting to do podcasts is,
um, a lot of the um thoughtsaround like workloads and like
college gymnastics season werecoming up because to timestamp
the episode, unfortunately, butwe're just at the end of college
season, we just finishedcollege season and we have like
regionals and nationals going onin Easterns and Westerns for
the club kids, um, and so Ialways just have like a big step
back uh, between like, okay,all the people in the clinic
that I'm seeing of, like how didthe season go?
(03:11):
Did we plan the season?
Well, you know also I do a lotof college consulting work
behind the scenes and a lot ofclub consulting work behind the
scenes, which I don't reallytalk about cause.
It's like keeping theirinformation private.
But a lot of colleges reach outto me at the end of a season
and ask me to share thoughts onkind of how I think about their
program and so I help them andthen throughout the entire year
we keep in touch and you know,seeing a lot of programs finish
(03:31):
up this year, I was reflecting alot back on who I worked with
last year and what's coming upnow and it just kind of like I
don't know.
It just generated a lot of likethoughts that I wrote down,
particularly because theworkload paper that we worked on
for like four years with TimGabbit and some other people,
which we'll talk about that justgot published this year and it
was like a very long end or along road that finally ended in
(03:52):
like a good paper beingpublished, I think.
And I was just thinking a lotabout like how hard pre-seasons
are and like injury rates andlike things that people are
going through.
So yeah, that's my bird's eyeview of the, I guess the the
entire kind of like thoughtprocess.
But do you have any openingthoughts about workloads and
college stuff and season, beingin the trenches yourself?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, I mean I think it's a little.
It's just hard.
Gymnastics is just a hard sportto like control volume with and
to make sure that you'reramping up slowly.
I mean I don't work with a lotof collegiate athletes, I work
mostly with the club athletes.
So it's hard for me from theperspective of depending on the
gym and how much time they letoff the kids off in the summer
or if they elect to take offmore time in the summer, they
(04:33):
could be jumping right back intoseason pretty much and then
just kind of coming back in.
And then I see a lot of likegrowth plate injuries, because I
see younger kids, so I'm notseeing.
I do see overuse injuries andlike the higher, like the older,
like high school kids, but alot I see a lot of grip plate
injuries that like pretty muchlike preseason or like rate.
A season starts.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah, for sure.
I think honestly it's harderfor younger kids because, um,
older kids who are in college orwho are like I don't know,
maybe like level nine, level 10or like 16, 17, 18, they
understand a lot about the sport.
They are like 16, 17, 18, theyunderstand a lot about the sport
, they can speak up, they know alot about, like you know what
they're feeling and what they'regoing through.
They can articulate a lot morewhat stresses them or what's
bothering them, whereas, likeyou know, 10, 11, 12 year olds
are kind of just doing what thepractice routine is or what
(05:14):
they're going through.
And so I think it's challengingsometimes because in younger
kids they have like a set seasonwith school and with stuff like
that and there's no kind oflike give and take sometimes on
their competition season layout,whereas I think in college in
particular, there's a lot morewiggle room with like, who can
take days that are modified, orwho can do more, who do less,
based on what they have going on.
So, yeah, I agree, it's hard.
It's hard to kind of manageworkload and try to like build
(05:36):
somebody up and get them readyfor a season, but then also not,
you know, get too ahead of yourskis where you start getting,
like you said, growth plateissues or stuff like that.
So, um, I guess just to reviewsorry, you have something else,
nope, oh, um, just to review, Ithink, a couple of papers before
we talk about ours, um, andkind of set the stage of how we
got to where our paper was toeventually end the episode with
(05:56):
helping people with advice.
Um, so Tim Gavin is probablythe most well-known person in
this kind of field.
He kind of uh, was, was uhperson in this kind of field.
He kind of was, I guess, theone who popularized a lot of
like workload type science.
And this first paper that cameout in 2015, essentially was
like Tim's claim to fame, whichwas essentially looking at
sports and saying that is therea correlation between a spike in
workload and injury risk?
(06:17):
And so when we say spike inworkload, we mean like the
classic example that comes up tome is like you're in preseason
and you're doing skills andyou're doing combinations.
Then you realize like oh my God, the meets a month away and
like we have to go, we have togo faster.
So you start doing like a lotmore routines, a lot more hard
impacts, a lot more vaults, um,you just do a like a lot more um
of certain skills or reps andwhat that does is it more or
(06:37):
less spikes someone's workload.
So the average workload thatsomeone has done, maybe like in
a week, so say, it's, like youknow, 15 to 20 volts per week,
if that is the average, and thenall of a sudden you're like, oh
man, we need to go, we need togo, and you keep doing more and
more and more and you do 20 or25 or 30 or 35, you could have
(07:01):
doubled someone's workload in aweek.
So that means what Tim showedin this paper was that if you
spike someone's workload over acertain amount in one week,
compared to the last two weeks,you have an increased risk of
overuse, injuries or somethinggoing wrong.
So it doesn't mean that youhave an increased rate.
It doesn't mean that if youspike your workload you're going
to, you know, tear yourAchilles.
It's not what we're saying.
What we're saying is that asyou increase workload, maybe in
(07:24):
an unplanned way, you start tohave an elevated risk week after
week, and the paper also showedthat it wasn't during the week
in which you spiked workload.
It was almost always like aweek or two delayed, which I
think is really important.
So yeah, if you're, if you'renot planning like a 12 month
period and then all of a suddenyou panic a bit, you double a
lot of workload or you do a lotmore strength conditioning, a
lot more plyo, I see that one alot.
(07:44):
There's a risk of overuseinjuries like shin splints or
like Achilles issues or low backtype stuff coming up.
So that is kind of the bigpicture.
But this paper in particular andif you're watching the podcast
you can see this graphic is thatthis graphic is kind of what
Tim got very famous for isessentially showing that there's
like this middle sweet spotwhere maybe you can train hard
and train smart and get somebodylike harder and, you know,
(08:06):
fitter and more prepared forseason without pushing that
threshold.
So essentially around like 1.3.
So if you do like 20, 10 to 20%more per week and you're
getting you know moreconditioning, more routines,
more ramp up, whatever you'reprobably in that you know risk,
that's probably okay.
Which is, if you spike like 50%or more and you start going
like in the you know 50%, 60%,doubling their workload, you
(08:28):
start to go into thatexponentially increased risk of
issues going sideways.
And so that's one side of thecurve, which is, yeah, if you
don't plan a sudden increase inworkload and you just throw a
bunch at the athletes, and I seethat as like conditioning
drills, plyos, you know newactive flexibility drills their
hips aren't ready for tons ofseries where they're backbending
a lot, there's just a higherrisk of things going sideways in
(08:48):
a couple of weeks.
And also, importantly, on theother side of the curve, you
under load somebody and you justdon't really work hard for
multiple weeks on end and thenexpect somebody to go to season
and be ready.
You're also increasingsomeone's workload risk because
they're not ready for season andthen you say, okay, by the way,
let's go vault on concrete, youknow, in the middle of a
Coliseum or something like that.
So there's a risk of over andunder loading and you have to
(09:09):
try your best to work very hardbut very smart is kind of the
takeaway of Tim's work in thisfirst paper.
So do you have any thoughts onthis one Leah, before we go to
the next one.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I think what you just said just tells us that we got
to plan like a whole year out,like.
That's why it's really, reallyimportant to try and plan out
the year as much as you can tomake sure that you're not
ramping up too quickly.
And I think something that I seea lot from like coaches, like
gyms that I've coached at, areyou have to pay attention to not
only the skills that you'redoing but also the conditioning
(09:38):
or the like drills that you'redoing, cause I see a lot of like
impact.
So they're doing more like backhandspring drills, front tuck
drills, back tuck drills, andthat's just like increased
impact.
So making sure that you're notforgetting about not just the
skills, not just the event work,but also the conditioning work
and making sure you're notoverloading the kids too much,
because the growth lightinjuries that I see or the
overuse injuries that I see alot of times I'll hear from the
(10:00):
kids that they're doing like,like their conditioning block is
just more skills and moreimpact and more drills, and we
just have to make sure thatwe're monitoring that side of it
too, to make sure that you'renot giving these kids too much
impact force yeah, no, Icouldn't agree more.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I think definitely on like the impact related plyo
type injuries.
So like achilles issues, knees,shin splints, like low back
type stuff.
Oftentimes it's lots of hardsurface ramp up paired with lots
of plyos and conditioning.
So they're doing lots and lotsof impacts on their conditioning
but they're also going toharder surfaces for vaulting and
for actual tumbling and stufflike that.
So yeah, that's a huge part andI think the pair with that is
that also you have to realizethat lots of skills overlap in
(10:36):
terms of like areas.
They stress.
So like low back is the mostprobably common example.
But like if you have a levelnine that is doing you know, a
layout step out on um beam.
They're working handspring,handspring or layout step out
for 10.
They're also doing archingskills on floor.
They do your Chanko.
Then maybe they're working likea pack or a Maloney.
Literally all four events havearching Right and so it's very
(10:59):
easy to just give someone anassignment and not realize
you're up in the clinic I haveAl, the girl who had a flare up
of like an.
She had an old stress reaction.
Got better last year but I hadan old flare up and I was like
what do you think Like maybe itwas different about the last
couple of months?
She's like well, we starteddoing a lot of back walkovers in
our warmups and also for, likebasics and conditioning, which
you know, high pressuresituations.
(11:27):
So there were times when Iwould do, like you know, 10 to
15 beam routines in one practice.
So we have like all a bunch ofnew back walkovers and warmups
and also in our drills and thenwe also have a huge spike in how
many beam routines they'rebeing asked to do per week.
And over the course of a monthher back got worse and worse and
worse.
So it wasn't like she did thefirst day of back walkovers and
a lot of her teens and her backhurt.
It was like three weeks afterthat it started to get sore on
(11:48):
kips and she couldn't reallylike sit comfortably in school.
And then I saw her yesterdayand she was like pretty flared
up.
So like, yeah, that's like apretty good example of like all
this maybe in the gymnasticsetting is good intentions, of
like doing harder drills andmaybe like getting your skills
together, but like you don'trealize that you're probably
throwing like two, if not threeto four times the workload on
somebody when you say, do 10beam routines or 15 beam
routines and you're not quiteready for it.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Definitely.
Yeah, it's.
It's complicated, it's not aneasy sport to like gradually
ramp up because they're theskills and the amount that
you're doing on different eventsis difficult to quantify.
So, like versus a running, likeif you were trying to ramp up
your running, it's pretty easyto like calculate out a
percentage and be like, okay,you're doing this amount of
mileage this week and then nextweek we'll do this amount of
mileage and then kind of spreadit out, whereas the gymnastics
(12:31):
it's like the amount of timethat it would take to make sure
that you're the amount of skillsthat you're doing and like
categorizing them by the type ofimpact that it is, and then
trying to make sure that youramp up slowly is a lot more
challenging.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, that is one of the nightmares of gymnastics.
That makes it awesome andfrustrating at the same time is
there's like lots of surfaces,lots of skills, lots of levels,
lots of you know differencesfrom person to person, which I
think will hopefully lead to whywe had to make a different
workload system of what justrunning in place is not the same
as gymnastics.
Yeah, so this is a second paperthat I actually think came out
(13:06):
a little while ago, but it'slike one of the more helpful
visual um kind of markers that Ithink tim tries to share,
because from the first umstudies that he did, a lot of
people said like okay, we'realways going to back off, we
don't have to, we have to bevery careful.
I think the analogy we use withthe college coaches is like a
glass cannon, like theseathletes are, like we don't want
to break anybody, we don't wantto hurt anybody, we don't want
to hurt anybody, we don't pushthem too hard.
But the opposite is true isthat you, if you want someone to
try to successfully survive afull season and have as much
(13:28):
performance successes aspossible, you have to work
extremely hard, but just in avery smart way.
So I think that, as we'll talkabout in the ending, the summer
and the preseason is is just soimportant to train very hard and
very smart, so like.
I think If you don't do thatand you don't instill the
mindset of like, well, the waywe reduce the risk of injury and
also increase the risk ofhitting our team goals is to
(13:49):
work really hard into, into,like, really, um, you know, take
care of ourselves when werecover after a really hard
training session.
Um, that's well thought out.
I think that is really themarker, and this paper came out
and I use this a lot when I,when I consult with people is,
essentially, you're trying toget somebody from their start of
season readiness level.
So, can you walk in and hitfour routines right now?
(14:09):
That is what's called the floor.
And then you're trying to getsomebody to the point where, in
season, right when they firststart their meets, or ideally a
little before, they're gettingto this like peak ceiling.
So the floor is the status inwhich they enter their like
off-season summer intopre-season or they get back to
school and the ceiling isprobably like what, january,
when you want someone to beready to go for skills and full
(14:31):
routines and be really confident.
So and then, of course, time islike the distance between how
far do you have to get somebodyfrom.
They're not really ready forfloor routines, they don't have
the endurance, they don't havetheir skills together.
How much time you have to theceiling is dependent on, kind of
when you start this preparation.
And I think these visualgraphics are really helpful
sometimes because they explainmaybe what the goal is of a lot
of people, which is gettingsomebody ready for a season, um,
(14:51):
but also the constraints wehave, which is that time is
really not your best friend,especially in, like the college
and high school setting, whenyou know you have summer things
going on, you have, you know,school things going on.
You can't just like magicallychange the structure of the
entire season.
That would be a lot.
And so you know, ideally, inone situation, if you, if you
could have a magic wand and youcan maybe start season later in
February, and only do February,march, april, you would
(15:13):
essentially be extending out thetime in which you have to
prepare.
So this slope of this greenline would be a lot slower and
you wouldn't risk, you know,spiking someone's workload too
aggressively.
So that is like the fairytalesituation of like we'll just
start season in February and,like you know, have, you know,
an extra two months to kind ofwork with.
The reality is that that'sprobably not going to happen,
and the problem is that if youget a little bit lost in the
(15:34):
preseason and you don't haveenough time, what happens is
that you have to dramaticallyincrease someone's workload to
be ready for meets, and that'swhere injury risk tends to go up
.
So if you, like I said, panicin the last month of season
because you didn't really doyour homework for September and
October, but then November comes, like, oh my God, we have a
meet in a month, right, or aninner squad in a month,
generally, this is where peopleget injuries or get really
frustrated.
They don't have enough time toget their skills or routines or
(15:56):
cardio, their endurance up, andso they either don't perform
well or they have some sort ofan unfortunate injury risk that
goes up.
So that's the unfortunatereality of times.
It does not work.
But the thing that we can doand this is Tim's kind of big
point is that maybe we can startour off-season preparation a
bit earlier so that somebodycomes into season at a higher
baseline floor level, right.
(16:18):
So this is like the collegesituation or in the high school
situation.
What you're doing in like June,july and August, I think makes a
massive difference on how readyand how fit and how prepared
you feel to handle a really hardpreseason which should be
challenging and get you readyfor season.
So this is kind of like themain modifiable point I tend to
tell college people and highschool people is like, well, if
you really want to have a goodnext April in states, regionals,
(16:40):
nationals, westerns, easterns,whatever, or conferences and D1s
, you have to be really thinkingabout well, like, where can I
get my edge?
It's probably in the off seasonmonths where everybody else is
maybe not working as diligentlyor as hard as I am.
So you know, getting a coupleof weeks off after may and then
getting in the gym and doing across training program, doing a
lifting program, doing a basicsprogram, you know, getting a lot
of your fitness levels up inthe off season is honestly one
(17:02):
of the biggest things that we'veseen change programs for the
better in the last five years as, like lifting has become more
popular.
So raising the floor obviouslymakes it a little bit less of a
slope to get to that same levelof, you know, performance at the
height and then, ideally, inTim's world.
You know, this graph shows thatif we can raise the floor coming
into preseason, and then wealso have this time component
(17:23):
worked out where we're notrushing too fast, we can have
this penthouse, so to speak,which is that you're actually
entering season overprepared,you're like doing back-to-back
floor routines and you'refeeling really competitive or
you've built up a really highchronic workload of routine
volume and that's obviouslygreat, right?
Everyone does their off-seasonwork and we work really hard
during the pre-season.
We're more than ready forin-season and we can manage
(17:44):
people.
And the last thing before thisis the longest explanation of
workloads ever is that sometimespeople unfortunately have
issues where they get hurt right, or it has to take time off,
they get sick, they have to stepaway from the gym for a while.
They, you know, tear theirAchilles or their ACL, they have
rehab.
Those people are entering in thesame group of a team setting
but below the average level offloor preparation because
(18:04):
they've been in rehab right,they haven't had time to train,
so they're quote unquote in thebasement.
So those people we have to beextra careful with, whether it's
good rehab or just a slowerreintroduction into the season
setting Um, because those peopleare probably chronically
underloaded from, uh you know,six months of rehab or whatever
else it is.
So, yeah, I think these graphsare very helpful.
Um, aliyah, what do you thinkabout these?
(18:25):
Any thoughts?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, I think, like when we're talking about the
basement, if you are like a PTor someone who's providing care
to someone who is injured, Ithink that's where you come in
with trying to get from thebasement to the floor and making
sure that while they're doingtheir rehab, you can maintain
their like cardiovascular andyour muscular endurance and
other areas.
So make sure that you don'tforget that piece, cause I think
that can make a big differencewhen you're transitioning
somebody back into a sport, solike if they're completely ready
(18:48):
when they're done with rehab,with everything else except for
maybe transitioning to like someof that skill work or some
conditioning that's a little bitmore higher, higher like impact
heavy, depending on what yourinjury is.
I think that can make a hugedifference and you being able to
like gradually progress someoneback up.
Because if they're going, ifyou get to the point where
you're done with rehab andyou're ready to start gradually
progressing them back to sportand they like can't run for
(19:09):
three minutes because they're sotired and fatigued, haven't
done anything for the last youknow, however many months that I
think that makes a bigdifference in their progression
back and just in general, likebeing fatigued at practice
because you didn't have enoughlike cardiovascular muscular
endurance can just put you athigher risk of being at injury
anyway.
(19:30):
So then when you add that inand then having like a having
not been at practice for threemonths because of an injury, I
think that can just be a bad.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And I think there's on therehab side there's like
definitely an art and maybe aknowledge base of like doing
stuff earlier than you probablythink for what is not the
involved limb.
So you know, we have people whoare like four weeks at a Tommy
John or ACL surgery that arelike doing more or less not a
full gym program but they likeare on their crutches, they sit
for all their box work they do.
There's a lot of stuff you canstill do once you get past the
(19:59):
first month and like yourstitches are out and you're not
obviously in so much pain.
So I forget the paper.
I don't have it on top of me.
It's from the AustralianInstitute of Sport, but
essentially they showed that Ithink Tim was working on this
too, but essentially they showedthat like the percentage of
workload that you can maintainin your off time like
dramatically reduces the time toget back.
So even if you maintain like a60% workload of like doing your
(20:21):
upper body and your core andyour other leg, there's so much
benefit to that on the otherside, which is that it's easier
for you to get back into thatkind of big picture cardio, big
picture, three hour practice ifyou maintain a bit of your
workload.
So I think that's a bit of aslippery slope Sometimes, like
I'm not saying somebody's likefour week at ACL they should be
doing bar conditioning and likeswinging that under the guide of
(20:41):
like a good strength coach or agood PT.
Together you can make a programthat has like a lot of stuff
along with your rehab, and Ithink that's probably very wise
for someone to try toinvestigate.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, and then I always try with my gymnast if I,
if it works out well, likethey're old enough and I can
trust them in the gym to do onlywhat they're supposed to do,
then giving them like a lot ofexercises that they can do at
the gym.
That way they're there, theycan get the social component of
being with their friends,they're still in that
environment.
That helps with accountabilitybecause hopefully their coaches
will kind of, you know, cue themlike hey, you need to do your
(21:11):
exercises, whatever you need todo, and then like participating
in as much conditioning as theycan within reason.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And from like a mental and a physical standpoint
.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, it's huge, absolutely huge, yeah, okay, so
that was kind of the roadleading up to our study that we
started making was met.
Tim read all his research, itwas great and then went to his
course and I was likeessentially at his course saying
like, okay, well, how do weapply this to gymnastics?
Which is like I can't just puta GPS monitor on someone and say
, run and tell me like how manymiles per hour you're running.
For how long.
I was like, yeah, tim, it'slike there's a lot of skills, a
(21:42):
lot of services, blah, blah,blah.
So Tim and I worked together fora year to come up with a system
where essentially we can createa.
I wouldn't say it's like aperfect way, but it's a way to
start measuring workload ingymnastics.
And essentially what we did isI used to do this with like
paper sheets and my optionalkids that I was coaching and
plug it into Excel.
But we would essentially take,you know, the time in which
somebody spent on an event, sosay 30 minutes, and we would
(22:05):
then ask the athlete, on a zeroto 10 scale, how hard do you
think just bars was?
So they say it's a seven out of10.
So you would multiply 30minutes times seven.
Right, that is a way to getwhat's called a session RPE.
And then the last thing isthat's different for gymnastics
we did is Tim suggested making aweighting factor system, and so
essentially we know that ingymnastics there's like levels
of intensity for what you'redoing, like doing basics, and
(22:27):
your warmup is not the sameintensity as doing a floor
routine.
So we categorized four levelsof intensity of one would be
basics, two would be likeindividual skills, three would
be combinations or half routinesand then four would be like a
mock competition or acompetition setting.
And so that's a way for us tolook at like objectively time
and then take an opinion of theathlete of what they feel is
going on and multiply that by aweighting factor which is
(22:49):
typically designated by thecoaching staff.
So it's like a mixed uh, mixedmarker of how the athletes
feeling versus the actualobjective workload they're doing
.
But when you multiply like 30times seven times three, for
example, I don't know what thatmath is off the top of my head,
but it gives you a number whichis a good way to kind of track
um about how hard certain eventsare or one person is really got
(23:10):
a challenging bar routineversus somebody else.
So it's just a way toindividualize workload.
And so this started out as likea Excel spreadsheet experiment.
And then it went to a validitystudy that we did with um, ellen
Casey, dr Casey, who's thewomen's team national position,
um and Marcia together.
We essentially said like isthis a valid way to measure it?
(23:32):
And that worked well.
So this paper that just gotpublished, that I presented last
year to the college coaches atum club nationals, was
essentially summarizing that wefollowed four programs um and
measured workloads across theentire season, from preseason
all the way to division one,championships, and I um let me
just make sure I scrub the nameyes, so I this is actually the
(23:52):
original data from um.
I pulled up one of these, whichis this was essentially looking
at um at the bottom here.
This is like kind of thosetraining loads by day.
So this is where somebody wouldput in okay, like 30 minutes of
bars multiplied by whatever myRPE is, multiplied by my coach's
uh assignment waiting factor,gives us, like you know, okay,
this much workload for bars,beam, vault, whatever and this
obviously this athlete, forexample, doesn't do one event I
can't tell which one off the topof my head, but she doesn't do
(24:13):
one event and so you don't seethat event kind of like
represented here.
She's a three event person.
So essentially this is ourdaily workloads from that system
we did right, which then givesus a weekly workload so we can
see like, okay, monday, tuesday,wednesday, thursday, friday is
like her entire workload, whichthen leads to a weekly workload
up here.
So 11,250 arbitrary gymnasticsunits would be like what you,
(24:34):
what you mark that as right.
But this is just the first timethat we've been able to present
a system that's like okay, canwe look at individual workloads
by person, by event, and thentake that to a weekly in a
monthly fashion, and then thisorange line up here, if you're
watching this, starts toaccumulate an acute to chronic
workload ratio.
That red line is at 1.3.
So essentially, after a fewweeks of data we can look at is
(24:56):
somebody spiking their workloadweek to week?
Too high, too low?
And then these other markers ontop of here were wellness
markers.
So how well did you sleep?
How sore are you, how tired areyou?
Blah, blah, blah.
So, yeah, this was essentiallyfrom the start of just me and
Tim talking was essentially afull week long of this is a full
.
What is this?
Uh, seven weeks of one person'sdata, um, before I think they
had an illness, so this wasseeing like the entire thing,
(25:17):
but we tracked all the athletesfor all 13 weeks throughout
season and then we're able tolook at some of the data of like
, okay, what does this tell usabout competition?
I don't know.
Do you have any thoughts onthis, leah, when you see like
all the graph stuff together?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I mean it's awesome.
I wish we could do it foreveryone, That'd be great $10
million grant.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Count me in.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I'm curious if you guys saw like any like with
their, their report of how hardthey worked or how tired they
were, If you saw any likechanges and fluctuations with
that and like any injuries oranything like that.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, I can only go on the reported stuff from the
college coaches because actuallythe athletic trainers are
required to record injuries butwe didn't have that data to like
release and cross-referencewhen we published it.
But I will say that generally,I would say in the beginning of
season it seemed like physicalburden was higher.
So in preseason you can seehere right, this was actually a
big takeaway that wasrepresentative is that preseason
(26:12):
is hard in college gymnasticsand also club, and it should be
hard.
That's when you're training themost.
So as you go farther down theseason you tend to have less
total workload but the mentalstrain goes up.
So people's wellness factorswould sometimes go down even
though their workload was alsogoing down.
Because in season, you know,hitting in front of a coliseum
of people is really stressfuland you have life and you have
the rest of school and exams andstuff.
(26:33):
The pressure of later season ismuch higher versus the early
season.
So I think in the beginning wesee that the pre-season is very,
very challenging and very, veryhard and it should be that way.
But we have to be very carefulabout how we approach that first
two months in particular whensomeone's coming back from
competitive season and then so,yeah, that's kind of one big
(26:54):
takeaway is that it's preseasonis the hardest, postseason is
the most stressful, I wouldprobably say, and that tells me
that the summer is so importantas a takeaway.
But then also the injuries thatI tended to hear about or see
were often always like shinsplints, achilles issues, you
know, overuse, knee stuff, backpain, just from like, the volume
in which they're trying to dois just so high.
(27:15):
Like, of course, there areaccidents, there's ACL tears,
there's stuff, ankle sprains,whatever happened, but like 75%
of most gymnastics injuries,based on the study you look at,
are overuse.
So that just tells me that likeone, we can modify stuff and
hopefully make that change, butthen also that a lot of our work
should be done in the offseason for kind of what we're
looking at.
So, yeah, that is your question.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
So this is the paper that we publish and then we'll
just kind of share some takeawaythoughts to help people.
So this was the paper that wepublished.
It's myself, tim, ellen, abunch of other people who worked
on it really hard.
Shout out to the whole team.
I feel like sometimes paperstake like years off my life.
I'm already happy when they'redone, but, like the amount of
work you have to do to get apaper published is crazy, um.
So this is a good example oflike one person's um, one
(27:57):
person's uh training loadthroughout the entire year of 16
weeks and then like warmupversus vault versus beam versus
whatever.
So we can essentially see,event by event, acute to chronic
workload ratios, which isreally awesome, right, you have
a bar specialist who's just areally good on bars is two other
event.
And then, like that's the maincomponent, they do, like they
deliver a high value routine on.
You have to really be much morespecific and track that
(28:17):
workload for their upper bodyversus lower body, for floor and
vault.
So this essentially was likelooking at some of the graphs in
the paper is is seeing it inreal form and seeing like, okay,
this preseason volume is reallyhard, really high, right, and
then here's conferencechampionships, regional
championships and nationalchampionships.
You can see that the overallworkload is descending down, but
obviously this part ofpostseason is the most important
and the most stressful forpeople.
(28:37):
So you're trying to play withfire, a bit of like how do we
make sure we do enough routinesto make sure we stay kind of
with it and together and inshape mentally to get to hit a
routine, but also not beatingsomebody up as the season goes
longer and longer, goes longerand longer?
And I think the big takeawayfor me is that a lot of the prep
work has to be done inpreseason to get somebody over
prepared and build up a reallyhigh chronic workload to make
sure they can safely go throughthe season, and that also we
(29:00):
have to be very careful abouthow we manage those, like you
know, 10 weeks of season itselfto not burn somebody out too
early, too fast.
And so in terms of like adviceand kind of maybe practical
takeaways for some of these,these things in the episode is,
I think that it's really reallyimportant that the summer and
the preseason is is is treatedwell and I think to Aaliyah's
point, you have to plan thewhole year and then, once you
have that plan in place, youhave to find a way to make sure
(29:22):
in the off season in the summerthat people are doing you know
hard training, particularly inthe strength conditioning side,
the cross training side, thelifting side, because that is
really the only time you have toget somebody truly stronger,
like if you really want to getsomeone's legs substantially
stronger, to have a bigger vaultor do a one and a half or land
to double flipping skills onfloor.
You know you are only going tohave eight to 10 weeks in the
(29:44):
summer to truly get someone'slegs stronger and truly get
someone's you know core stronger.
And that requires, you know,two to five days per week of
training and working hard andbacking off and deloading and
adding more and subtracting.
It's just like a goodperiodization program and so,
like, conceptually it makessense like, okay, we should work
hard in the summer, but havingworked with a lot of college
athletes, a lot of high schoolgymnasts, unfortunately, until
(30:06):
you make the plan relevant totheir goals, it's very hard to
get by it right, like getting upat eight o'clock to go lift for
two hours before.
You have to work all day beforeyou have something to do in the
summer is very challenging.
So you have to kind of like,unite the crew on, like okay,
what are our goals, what didn'tgo well last season and how can
we make sure we're betterprepared for next season?
We're like well, preseason hasto be a lot more challenging in
(30:28):
a to make this vault, if we wantto, you know, place at regional
conferences, you have to be onyour game and do this lifting
program that we have made foryou for twice a week and then
also get to the gym and do allyour basics and stuff.
So that's the first big takeawayI always give.
People is like the teams I seeconsistently who are in the mix,
top 10, top 20, have a lot ofkids in club.
They're going to nationals orEasterns or Westerns or or just
have happy kids that are healthy.
(30:49):
It's not even about competing,they're just enjoying their
season.
They're willing and able to dothe work in the off season to
prepare them to come into thefloor level of preseason at a
higher level, which, again,hopefully, as you work hard,
gets you to like that penthouse,kind of like really high level
stuff.
So that is one of the bigthings I advise to people.
The second thing I advise topeople is to be very careful
(31:11):
about your plyo ramp up.
As we talked about is that inthe end of August you should be
starting to ramp up the amountof plyos you're doing and how
hard your conditioning is, sothat when you get to season you
can ramp up the routines right.
If you, as we talked about, inareas, you ramp up all your
plyos, your conditioning andyou're also ramping up your
routine volume and your surfaceof is, it's harder If you do all
that in the same month it'sprobably going to cause a lot of
headaches.
(31:31):
So, end of August, be rampingup someone's plyo program and
then have a nice slowprogression of like skills to
parts, parts to half, half tofull routines and slowly
increase the time in which youspend on harder surfaces as the
as the months go on a preseason.
So that's what I kind of share.
I'm not sure if you have anythoughts or advice about that.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, I think from the like maybe this isn't as
much at the collegiate level,but when you've got like your
high school kids that are inclub and working on that like
plyo progression, I think if youhave, the time.
And I'm like oof, okay, we needto work on that.
So making sure that we're doingthings with good form, to make
sure that they're the plows thatyou are doing and the time
you're spending ramping up plowsthat way are done correctly and
not putting that at increasedrisk for injury.
So I feel like those resourcesare definitely out there.
(32:27):
So, if you can like go and lookat them, find them and make
sure that you're like looking atyour kids when they're doing
them and have good form, orteaching them what adequate form
is, so that when they're doingthem they can correct their own
form, I think it's really,really important.
And then, lastly, I have a kindof a question for you from a
practicality standpoint, where Isee mostly club kids in the
summers summers what do you haveany like practical
(32:52):
recommendations, either for theclub gyms or for the, the
athletes themselves, to try andfind a good like lifting program
in the off season or where theymight get that?
Find that, or yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
I think, in terms of like finding a good like
strength coach or someone who'sknowledgeable about sports in
general, you don't need to find,like a gymnastic specialist,
right, like champions, such aunique, uh odd duck where we
have people who are as good thatbut people who, um, either
physical therapists who havetheir like OCS or SCS, right.
So OCS is an orthopediccertified, sports is SCS.
Someone who has that knowledgebase is probably a good starting
(33:22):
point because they can referyou or help you get kind of from
zero to one, especially ifyou're coming back from an
injury.
Um, I think strength coacheswho have a CSCS is really good.
So a certified strengthconditioning coach is typically
the more like sports performanceoriented strength coach who
wants to work with athletes oractive people.
So, between those two groupseither OCS, scs and or somebody
with a CSCS you're probablygoing to find an environment
(33:43):
that works with athletes and hasa lot of people that are kind
of on that wavelength and thenfrom there, I think lots of
online resources will help youcreate a program that's specific
for gymnastics, right?
So, like, we have tons of stuffonline from like myself and
Nick and Dan and others that, ifyou want a sample program and
you want like something to getstarted.
We can help that person learnabout gymnastics to then, you
know, take it on.
(34:03):
We have like an entire courseduetion I made based on just
like all the things that wethink are valuable.
So yeah, find the person firstwho's like willing to learn and
maybe knows a lot themselves,and then maybe dovetail that
with some stuff that we'veoffered.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yep, yeah, I think that's mostly it.
I think the only other piece Iwanted to share is that try to
make sure that somebody planstheir competition season, their
meets and stuff like that outpretty well and think about that
like three weeks on, one weekoff kind of template.
I think it's unrealistic tojust hammer through months and
months of really hard workwithout giving someone a break
and then if you do have peoplethat are coming back in the
(34:38):
season in a variety of differentlevels, some people maybe have
gone to the vineyard for twoweeks in the summer and they're
not really up to speed with theconditioning program.
Other people have jobs andlives and they can't really be
there all full time.
Try to try to just separate abit of the workload into, like
you know, someone who had aninjury or someone who was away
or whatever.
They're not going to be able tohandle the same workload as
someone who was there and wasdoing everything because their
life situation allowed it.
Um, just be like courteous tothat.
(34:59):
You know, life happens.
Um, some people obviously dropthe ball and they fumble.
They go to the beach instead ofgoing to the gym.
Those people will just have tosuffer on the assault bike a bit
, but a lot of people, I think,unfortunately just can't.
You know, people got to work,man, people got to go to school,
people can't be full-timegymnastics in the summer all the
time.
So be accommodating to thosepeople who are a bit, you know,
all over the wavelength.
So, um, yeah, but I hopefully,um that kind of summary of like
(35:21):
the workload stuff's reallyhelpful.
So there's Tim's papers,there's that floor ceiling paper
.
That's really helpful too aswell.
Um, our paper got published,available for people, and I
think that hopefully the goal isthat we take the model of what
we found useful and startoverlapping it with like
practical recommendations onlike how much is too much, how
much is not enough, what do wedo to get ready for season, but
then also start overlaying thatwith like injury, risk of like
(35:43):
Achilles rupture, maybesomething like that, or shin
splints or something.
So that is the next step inprogress.
But just for now, I've alwayswanted to do a podcast on that
paper because it's now out, butI think in the framework of
workloads is very, very helpful.
All right, sweet, we will keepit there and then we'll be back.
We're going to do one topic perweek and so the next few weeks
we have some stuff on elbow, ocdand then culture, and then, if
(36:04):
you guys have topics you'd liketo hear about, we just have like
a Google doc where we share ourthoughts and like kind of
construct things and ideas.
But tell us if you like thisformat, if this is useful for us
to just banter on one topic andbe like a 30, 40 minute episode
, let us know about that.
And then also let us know ifthere are topics that you've
been itching to kind of maybehave a share some thoughts on,
but for now we'll send it off.
Bye.
every day.
You essentially pay your duesby doing the harder thing when
it's the right thing to do.
Hello everyone.
Welcome back to the podcast.
After a small hiatus in break,we are back in action.
Alia, how are you?
Speaker 2 (00:20):
good, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
good, alia is new.
I asked her to be a co-hostbecause the long story short of
the podcast is that the clinicis very busy and the research
world is very busy and also wehave a bunch of courses and
projects we're working on and Igot to the point where I
couldn't do it.
I just couldn't keep up withsocial media and the podcast.
So, unfortunately, that was thefirst thing to go when you're
very busy, is I?
(00:42):
Actually I forgot to mentionthis last time, but I think that
people forget that we have likejobs and we're treating
clinicians like all the time.
So like the online stuff iscool and the research is cool,
but that's like a side hustlefor like your real clinic work
and so, yeah, I like actuallytreat people all day long and
like have stuff to do.
So the podcast and social mediais an added bonus, but yeah, so
I couldn't really keep up withit for a while.
(01:03):
And then I was trying to thinkthrough some formats that would
allow me to essentially putpodcasts out that are quicker,
that are helpful but are notthese long two hour deep dives
with guests and interviews, andI had the idea to essentially
just take my notepad, which islike where I work through all my
ideas and kind of write stuffdown that I'm thinking about, um
, and put them into like a longjournal kind of list and then
see if we could summarize atopic in maybe one episode
(01:25):
that's shorter, for like a halfhour or 40 minutes, not these
two hour long deep dives.
So that's where this format ofthe podcast came from, and I
thought of no one other than thewonderful Aaliyah to help me
out, because she's smart andalso I think that she sees
things similar to me.
But obviously I think you'rewhat?
Three years out of school, yeah.
So give the people a littlebackground on you and then we'll
(01:47):
we'll get into this first one,yeah, so I'm from Michigan.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I went to Michigan for undergrad and then I went to
Duke for grad school and then Idid a sports residency program
at Children's Healthcare ofAtlanta and then I accepted a
full-time position kind of rightafter residency, and then, from
like a gymnastics standpoint, Idid gymnastics I mean my whole
life pretty much and then didsome coaching after I like
(02:10):
graduated undergrad and then I'mnot currently coaching, but
I've coached for quite a whileperspective too and now I'm just
working full-time there we goin the big, real shoes.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Yeah, uh, alia came through champion, did a rotation
and then did her SES stuff likethat.
So lots of I think your ownclinic experience was good, but
also you just see things from abit of our lens coming through
Champion, and then now obviouslyyou have your own set of skills
, stuff like that.
So, yeah, and we'll kind ofbreak these up into episodes on
one topic, right.
So like a smaller topic and thefirst one that actually started
(02:50):
my entire like thought processfor wanting to do podcasts is,
um, a lot of the um thoughtsaround like workloads and like
college gymnastics season werecoming up because to timestamp
the episode, unfortunately, butwe're just at the end of college
season, we just finishedcollege season and we have like
regionals and nationals going onin Easterns and Westerns for
the club kids, um, and so Ialways just have like a big step
back uh, between like, okay,all the people in the clinic
that I'm seeing of, like how didthe season go?
(03:11):
Did we plan the season?
Well, you know also I do a lotof college consulting work
behind the scenes and a lot ofclub consulting work behind the
scenes, which I don't reallytalk about cause.
It's like keeping theirinformation private.
But a lot of colleges reach outto me at the end of a season
and ask me to share thoughts onkind of how I think about their
program and so I help them andthen throughout the entire year
we keep in touch and you know,seeing a lot of programs finish
(03:31):
up this year, I was reflecting alot back on who I worked with
last year and what's coming upnow and it just kind of like I
don't know.
It just generated a lot of likethoughts that I wrote down,
particularly because theworkload paper that we worked on
for like four years with TimGabbit and some other people,
which we'll talk about that justgot published this year and it
was like a very long end or along road that finally ended in
(03:52):
like a good paper beingpublished, I think.
And I was just thinking a lotabout like how hard pre-seasons
are and like injury rates andlike things that people are
going through.
So yeah, that's my bird's eyeview of the, I guess the the
entire kind of like thoughtprocess.
But do you have any openingthoughts about workloads and
college stuff and season, beingin the trenches yourself?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, I mean I think it's a little.
It's just hard.
Gymnastics is just a hard sportto like control volume with and
to make sure that you'reramping up slowly.
I mean I don't work with a lotof collegiate athletes, I work
mostly with the club athletes.
So it's hard for me from theperspective of depending on the
gym and how much time they letoff the kids off in the summer
or if they elect to take offmore time in the summer, they
(04:33):
could be jumping right back intoseason pretty much and then
just kind of coming back in.
And then I see a lot of likegrowth plate injuries, because I
see younger kids, so I'm notseeing.
I do see overuse injuries andlike the higher, like the older,
like high school kids, but alot I see a lot of grip plate
injuries that like pretty muchlike preseason or like rate.
A season starts.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah, for sure.
I think honestly it's harderfor younger kids because, um,
older kids who are in college orwho are like I don't know,
maybe like level nine, level 10or like 16, 17, 18, they
understand a lot about the sport.
They are like 16, 17, 18, theyunderstand a lot about the sport
, they can speak up, they know alot about, like you know what
they're feeling and what they'regoing through.
They can articulate a lot morewhat stresses them or what's
bothering them, whereas, likeyou know, 10, 11, 12 year olds
are kind of just doing what thepractice routine is or what
(05:14):
they're going through.
And so I think it's challengingsometimes because in younger
kids they have like a set seasonwith school and with stuff like
that and there's no kind oflike give and take sometimes on
their competition season layout,whereas I think in college in
particular, there's a lot morewiggle room with like, who can
take days that are modified, orwho can do more, who do less,
based on what they have going on.
So, yeah, I agree, it's hard.
It's hard to kind of manageworkload and try to like build
(05:36):
somebody up and get them readyfor a season, but then also not,
you know, get too ahead of yourskis where you start getting,
like you said, growth plateissues or stuff like that.
So, um, I guess just to reviewsorry, you have something else,
nope, oh, um, just to review, Ithink, a couple of papers before
we talk about ours, um, andkind of set the stage of how we
got to where our paper was toeventually end the episode with
(05:56):
helping people with advice.
Um, so Tim Gavin is probablythe most well-known person in
this kind of field.
He kind of uh, was, was uhperson in this kind of field.
He kind of was, I guess, theone who popularized a lot of
like workload type science.
And this first paper that cameout in 2015, essentially was
like Tim's claim to fame, whichwas essentially looking at
sports and saying that is therea correlation between a spike in
workload and injury risk?
(06:17):
And so when we say spike inworkload, we mean like the
classic example that comes up tome is like you're in preseason
and you're doing skills andyou're doing combinations.
Then you realize like oh my God, the meets a month away and
like we have to go, we have togo faster.
So you start doing like a lotmore routines, a lot more hard
impacts, a lot more vaults, um,you just do a like a lot more um
of certain skills or reps andwhat that does is it more or
(06:37):
less spikes someone's workload.
So the average workload thatsomeone has done, maybe like in
a week, so say, it's, like youknow, 15 to 20 volts per week,
if that is the average, and thenall of a sudden you're like, oh
man, we need to go, we need togo, and you keep doing more and
more and more and you do 20 or25 or 30 or 35, you could have
(07:01):
doubled someone's workload in aweek.
So that means what Tim showedin this paper was that if you
spike someone's workload over acertain amount in one week,
compared to the last two weeks,you have an increased risk of
overuse, injuries or somethinggoing wrong.
So it doesn't mean that youhave an increased rate.
It doesn't mean that if youspike your workload you're going
to, you know, tear yourAchilles.
It's not what we're saying.
What we're saying is that asyou increase workload, maybe in
(07:24):
an unplanned way, you start tohave an elevated risk week after
week, and the paper also showedthat it wasn't during the week
in which you spiked workload.
It was almost always like aweek or two delayed, which I
think is really important.
So yeah, if you're, if you'renot planning like a 12 month
period and then all of a suddenyou panic a bit, you double a
lot of workload or you do a lotmore strength conditioning, a
lot more plyo, I see that one alot.
(07:44):
There's a risk of overuseinjuries like shin splints or
like Achilles issues or low backtype stuff coming up.
So that is kind of the bigpicture.
But this paper in particular andif you're watching the podcast
you can see this graphic is thatthis graphic is kind of what
Tim got very famous for isessentially showing that there's
like this middle sweet spotwhere maybe you can train hard
and train smart and get somebodylike harder and, you know,
(08:06):
fitter and more prepared forseason without pushing that
threshold.
So essentially around like 1.3.
So if you do like 20, 10 to 20%more per week and you're
getting you know moreconditioning, more routines,
more ramp up, whatever you'reprobably in that you know risk,
that's probably okay.
Which is, if you spike like 50%or more and you start going
like in the you know 50%, 60%,doubling their workload, you
(08:28):
start to go into thatexponentially increased risk of
issues going sideways.
And so that's one side of thecurve, which is, yeah, if you
don't plan a sudden increase inworkload and you just throw a
bunch at the athletes, and I seethat as like conditioning
drills, plyos, you know newactive flexibility drills their
hips aren't ready for tons ofseries where they're backbending
a lot, there's just a higherrisk of things going sideways in
(08:48):
a couple of weeks.
And also, importantly, on theother side of the curve, you
under load somebody and you justdon't really work hard for
multiple weeks on end and thenexpect somebody to go to season
and be ready.
You're also increasingsomeone's workload risk because
they're not ready for season andthen you say, okay, by the way,
let's go vault on concrete, youknow, in the middle of a
Coliseum or something like that.
So there's a risk of over andunder loading and you have to
(09:09):
try your best to work very hardbut very smart is kind of the
takeaway of Tim's work in thisfirst paper.
So do you have any thoughts onthis one Leah, before we go to
the next one.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
I think what you just said just tells us that we got
to plan like a whole year out,like.
That's why it's really, reallyimportant to try and plan out
the year as much as you can tomake sure that you're not
ramping up too quickly.
And I think something that I seea lot from like coaches, like
gyms that I've coached at, areyou have to pay attention to not
only the skills that you'redoing but also the conditioning
(09:38):
or the like drills that you'redoing, cause I see a lot of like
impact.
So they're doing more like backhandspring drills, front tuck
drills, back tuck drills, andthat's just like increased
impact.
So making sure that you're notforgetting about not just the
skills, not just the event work,but also the conditioning work
and making sure you're notoverloading the kids too much,
because the growth lightinjuries that I see or the
overuse injuries that I see alot of times I'll hear from the
(10:00):
kids that they're doing like,like their conditioning block is
just more skills and moreimpact and more drills, and we
just have to make sure thatwe're monitoring that side of it
too, to make sure that you'renot giving these kids too much
impact force yeah, no, Icouldn't agree more.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
I think definitely on like the impact related plyo
type injuries.
So like achilles issues, knees,shin splints, like low back
type stuff.
Oftentimes it's lots of hardsurface ramp up paired with lots
of plyos and conditioning.
So they're doing lots and lotsof impacts on their conditioning
but they're also going toharder surfaces for vaulting and
for actual tumbling and stufflike that.
So yeah, that's a huge part andI think the pair with that is
that also you have to realizethat lots of skills overlap in
(10:36):
terms of like areas.
They stress.
So like low back is the mostprobably common example.
But like if you have a levelnine that is doing you know, a
layout step out on um beam.
They're working handspring,handspring or layout step out
for 10.
They're also doing archingskills on floor.
They do your Chanko.
Then maybe they're working likea pack or a Maloney.
Literally all four events havearching Right and so it's very
(10:59):
easy to just give someone anassignment and not realize
you're up in the clinic I haveAl, the girl who had a flare up
of like an.
She had an old stress reaction.
Got better last year but I hadan old flare up and I was like
what do you think Like maybe itwas different about the last
couple of months?
She's like well, we starteddoing a lot of back walkovers in
our warmups and also for, likebasics and conditioning, which
you know, high pressuresituations.
(11:27):
So there were times when Iwould do, like you know, 10 to
15 beam routines in one practice.
So we have like all a bunch ofnew back walkovers and warmups
and also in our drills and thenwe also have a huge spike in how
many beam routines they'rebeing asked to do per week.
And over the course of a monthher back got worse and worse and
worse.
So it wasn't like she did thefirst day of back walkovers and
a lot of her teens and her backhurt.
It was like three weeks afterthat it started to get sore on
(11:48):
kips and she couldn't reallylike sit comfortably in school.
And then I saw her yesterdayand she was like pretty flared
up.
So like, yeah, that's like apretty good example of like all
this maybe in the gymnasticsetting is good intentions, of
like doing harder drills andmaybe like getting your skills
together, but like you don'trealize that you're probably
throwing like two, if not threeto four times the workload on
somebody when you say, do 10beam routines or 15 beam
routines and you're not quiteready for it.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Definitely.
Yeah, it's.
It's complicated, it's not aneasy sport to like gradually
ramp up because they're theskills and the amount that
you're doing on different eventsis difficult to quantify.
So, like versus a running, likeif you were trying to ramp up
your running, it's pretty easyto like calculate out a
percentage and be like, okay,you're doing this amount of
mileage this week and then nextweek we'll do this amount of
mileage and then kind of spreadit out, whereas the gymnastics
(12:31):
it's like the amount of timethat it would take to make sure
that you're the amount of skillsthat you're doing and like
categorizing them by the type ofimpact that it is, and then
trying to make sure that youramp up slowly is a lot more
challenging.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Yeah, that is one of the nightmares of gymnastics.
That makes it awesome andfrustrating at the same time is
there's like lots of surfaces,lots of skills, lots of levels,
lots of you know differencesfrom person to person, which I
think will hopefully lead to whywe had to make a different
workload system of what justrunning in place is not the same
as gymnastics.
Yeah, so this is a second paperthat I actually think came out
(13:06):
a little while ago, but it'slike one of the more helpful
visual um kind of markers that Ithink tim tries to share,
because from the first umstudies that he did, a lot of
people said like okay, we'realways going to back off, we
don't have to, we have to bevery careful.
I think the analogy we use withthe college coaches is like a
glass cannon, like theseathletes are, like we don't want
to break anybody, we don't wantto hurt anybody, we don't want
to hurt anybody, we don't pushthem too hard.
But the opposite is true isthat you, if you want someone to
try to successfully survive afull season and have as much
(13:28):
performance successes aspossible, you have to work
extremely hard, but just in avery smart way.
So I think that, as we'll talkabout in the ending, the summer
and the preseason is is just soimportant to train very hard and
very smart, so like.
I think If you don't do thatand you don't instill the
mindset of like, well, the waywe reduce the risk of injury and
also increase the risk ofhitting our team goals is to
(13:49):
work really hard into, into,like, really, um, you know, take
care of ourselves when werecover after a really hard
training session.
Um, that's well thought out.
I think that is really themarker, and this paper came out
and I use this a lot when I,when I consult with people is,
essentially, you're trying toget somebody from their start of
season readiness level.
So, can you walk in and hitfour routines right now?
(14:09):
That is what's called the floor.
And then you're trying to getsomebody to the point where, in
season, right when they firststart their meets, or ideally a
little before, they're gettingto this like peak ceiling.
So the floor is the status inwhich they enter their like
off-season summer intopre-season or they get back to
school and the ceiling isprobably like what, january,
when you want someone to beready to go for skills and full
(14:31):
routines and be really confident.
So and then, of course, time islike the distance between how
far do you have to get somebodyfrom.
They're not really ready forfloor routines, they don't have
the endurance, they don't havetheir skills together.
How much time you have to theceiling is dependent on, kind of
when you start this preparation.
And I think these visualgraphics are really helpful
sometimes because they explainmaybe what the goal is of a lot
of people, which is gettingsomebody ready for a season, um,
(14:51):
but also the constraints wehave, which is that time is
really not your best friend,especially in, like the college
and high school setting, whenyou know you have summer things
going on, you have, you know,school things going on.
You can't just like magicallychange the structure of the
entire season.
That would be a lot.
And so you know, ideally, inone situation, if you, if you
could have a magic wand and youcan maybe start season later in
February, and only do February,march, april, you would
(15:13):
essentially be extending out thetime in which you have to
prepare.
So this slope of this greenline would be a lot slower and
you wouldn't risk, you know,spiking someone's workload too
aggressively.
So that is like the fairytalesituation of like we'll just
start season in February and,like you know, have, you know,
an extra two months to kind ofwork with.
The reality is that that'sprobably not going to happen,
and the problem is that if youget a little bit lost in the
(15:34):
preseason and you don't haveenough time, what happens is
that you have to dramaticallyincrease someone's workload to
be ready for meets, and that'swhere injury risk tends to go up
.
So if you, like I said, panicin the last month of season
because you didn't really doyour homework for September and
October, but then November comes, like, oh my God, we have a
meet in a month, right, or aninner squad in a month,
generally, this is where peopleget injuries or get really
frustrated.
They don't have enough time toget their skills or routines or
(15:56):
cardio, their endurance up, andso they either don't perform
well or they have some sort ofan unfortunate injury risk that
goes up.
So that's the unfortunatereality of times.
It does not work.
But the thing that we can doand this is Tim's kind of big
point is that maybe we can startour off-season preparation a
bit earlier so that somebodycomes into season at a higher
baseline floor level, right.
(16:18):
So this is like the collegesituation or in the high school
situation.
What you're doing in like June,july and August, I think makes a
massive difference on how readyand how fit and how prepared
you feel to handle a really hardpreseason which should be
challenging and get you readyfor season.
So this is kind of like themain modifiable point I tend to
tell college people and highschool people is like, well, if
you really want to have a goodnext April in states, regionals,
(16:40):
nationals, westerns, easterns,whatever, or conferences and D1s
, you have to be really thinkingabout well, like, where can I
get my edge?
It's probably in the off seasonmonths where everybody else is
maybe not working as diligentlyor as hard as I am.
So you know, getting a coupleof weeks off after may and then
getting in the gym and doing across training program, doing a
lifting program, doing a basicsprogram, you know, getting a lot
of your fitness levels up inthe off season is honestly one
(17:02):
of the biggest things that we'veseen change programs for the
better in the last five years as, like lifting has become more
popular.
So raising the floor obviouslymakes it a little bit less of a
slope to get to that same levelof, you know, performance at the
height and then, ideally, inTim's world.
You know, this graph shows thatif we can raise the floor coming
into preseason, and then wealso have this time component
(17:23):
worked out where we're notrushing too fast, we can have
this penthouse, so to speak,which is that you're actually
entering season overprepared,you're like doing back-to-back
floor routines and you'refeeling really competitive or
you've built up a really highchronic workload of routine
volume and that's obviouslygreat, right?
Everyone does their off-seasonwork and we work really hard
during the pre-season.
We're more than ready forin-season and we can manage
(17:44):
people.
And the last thing before thisis the longest explanation of
workloads ever is that sometimespeople unfortunately have
issues where they get hurt right, or it has to take time off,
they get sick, they have to stepaway from the gym for a while.
They, you know, tear theirAchilles or their ACL, they have
rehab.
Those people are entering in thesame group of a team setting
but below the average level offloor preparation because
(18:04):
they've been in rehab right,they haven't had time to train,
so they're quote unquote in thebasement.
So those people we have to beextra careful with, whether it's
good rehab or just a slowerreintroduction into the season
setting Um, because those peopleare probably chronically
underloaded from, uh you know,six months of rehab or whatever
else it is.
So, yeah, I think these graphsare very helpful.
Um, aliyah, what do you thinkabout these?
(18:25):
Any thoughts?
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Yeah, I think, like when we're talking about the
basement, if you are like a PTor someone who's providing care
to someone who is injured, Ithink that's where you come in
with trying to get from thebasement to the floor and making
sure that while they're doingtheir rehab, you can maintain
their like cardiovascular andyour muscular endurance and
other areas.
So make sure that you don'tforget that piece, cause I think
that can make a big differencewhen you're transitioning
somebody back into a sport, solike if they're completely ready
(18:48):
when they're done with rehab,with everything else except for
maybe transitioning to like someof that skill work or some
conditioning that's a little bitmore higher, higher like impact
heavy, depending on what yourinjury is.
I think that can make a hugedifference and you being able to
like gradually progress someoneback up.
Because if they're going, ifyou get to the point where
you're done with rehab andyou're ready to start gradually
progressing them back to sportand they like can't run for
(19:09):
three minutes because they're sotired and fatigued, haven't
done anything for the last youknow, however many months that I
think that makes a bigdifference in their progression
back and just in general, likebeing fatigued at practice
because you didn't have enoughlike cardiovascular muscular
endurance can just put you athigher risk of being at injury
anyway.
(19:30):
So then when you add that inand then having like a having
not been at practice for threemonths because of an injury, I
think that can just be a bad.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
And I think there's on therehab side there's like
definitely an art and maybe aknowledge base of like doing
stuff earlier than you probablythink for what is not the
involved limb.
So you know, we have people whoare like four weeks at a Tommy
John or ACL surgery that arelike doing more or less not a
full gym program but they likeare on their crutches, they sit
for all their box work they do.
There's a lot of stuff you canstill do once you get past the
(19:59):
first month and like yourstitches are out and you're not
obviously in so much pain.
So I forget the paper.
I don't have it on top of me.
It's from the AustralianInstitute of Sport, but
essentially they showed that Ithink Tim was working on this
too, but essentially they showedthat like the percentage of
workload that you can maintainin your off time like
dramatically reduces the time toget back.
So even if you maintain like a60% workload of like doing your
(20:21):
upper body and your core andyour other leg, there's so much
benefit to that on the otherside, which is that it's easier
for you to get back into thatkind of big picture cardio, big
picture, three hour practice ifyou maintain a bit of your
workload.
So I think that's a bit of aslippery slope Sometimes, like
I'm not saying somebody's likefour week at ACL they should be
doing bar conditioning and likeswinging that under the guide of
(20:41):
like a good strength coach or agood PT.
Together you can make a programthat has like a lot of stuff
along with your rehab, and Ithink that's probably very wise
for someone to try toinvestigate.
You know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, and then I always try with my gymnast if I,
if it works out well, likethey're old enough and I can
trust them in the gym to do onlywhat they're supposed to do,
then giving them like a lot ofexercises that they can do at
the gym.
That way they're there, theycan get the social component of
being with their friends,they're still in that
environment.
That helps with accountabilitybecause hopefully their coaches
will kind of, you know, cue themlike hey, you need to do your
(21:11):
exercises, whatever you need todo, and then like participating
in as much conditioning as theycan within reason.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
And from like a mental and a physical standpoint
.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Yeah, it's huge, absolutely huge, yeah, okay, so
that was kind of the roadleading up to our study that we
started making was met.
Tim read all his research, itwas great and then went to his
course and I was likeessentially at his course saying
like, okay, well, how do weapply this to gymnastics?
Which is like I can't just puta GPS monitor on someone and say
, run and tell me like how manymiles per hour you're running.
For how long.
I was like, yeah, tim, it'slike there's a lot of skills, a
(21:42):
lot of services, blah, blah,blah.
So Tim and I worked together fora year to come up with a system
where essentially we can createa.
I wouldn't say it's like aperfect way, but it's a way to
start measuring workload ingymnastics.
And essentially what we did isI used to do this with like
paper sheets and my optionalkids that I was coaching and
plug it into Excel.
But we would essentially take,you know, the time in which
somebody spent on an event, sosay 30 minutes, and we would
(22:05):
then ask the athlete, on a zeroto 10 scale, how hard do you
think just bars was?
So they say it's a seven out of10.
So you would multiply 30minutes times seven.
Right, that is a way to getwhat's called a session RPE.
And then the last thing isthat's different for gymnastics
we did is Tim suggested making aweighting factor system, and so
essentially we know that ingymnastics there's like levels
of intensity for what you'redoing, like doing basics, and
(22:27):
your warmup is not the sameintensity as doing a floor
routine.
So we categorized four levelsof intensity of one would be
basics, two would be likeindividual skills, three would
be combinations or half routinesand then four would be like a
mock competition or acompetition setting.
And so that's a way for us tolook at like objectively time
and then take an opinion of theathlete of what they feel is
going on and multiply that by aweighting factor which is
(22:49):
typically designated by thecoaching staff.
So it's like a mixed uh, mixedmarker of how the athletes
feeling versus the actualobjective workload they're doing
.
But when you multiply like 30times seven times three, for
example, I don't know what thatmath is off the top of my head,
but it gives you a number whichis a good way to kind of track
um about how hard certain eventsare or one person is really got
(23:10):
a challenging bar routineversus somebody else.
So it's just a way toindividualize workload.
And so this started out as likea Excel spreadsheet experiment.
And then it went to a validitystudy that we did with um, ellen
Casey, dr Casey, who's thewomen's team national position,
um and Marcia together.
We essentially said like isthis a valid way to measure it?
(23:32):
And that worked well.
So this paper that just gotpublished, that I presented last
year to the college coaches atum club nationals, was
essentially summarizing that wefollowed four programs um and
measured workloads across theentire season, from preseason
all the way to division one,championships, and I um let me
just make sure I scrub the nameyes, so I this is actually the
(23:52):
original data from um.
I pulled up one of these, whichis this was essentially looking
at um at the bottom here.
This is like kind of thosetraining loads by day.
So this is where somebody wouldput in okay, like 30 minutes of
bars multiplied by whatever myRPE is, multiplied by my coach's
uh assignment waiting factor,gives us, like you know, okay,
this much workload for bars,beam, vault, whatever and this
obviously this athlete, forexample, doesn't do one event I
can't tell which one off the topof my head, but she doesn't do
(24:13):
one event and so you don't seethat event kind of like
represented here.
She's a three event person.
So essentially this is ourdaily workloads from that system
we did right, which then givesus a weekly workload so we can
see like, okay, monday, tuesday,wednesday, thursday, friday is
like her entire workload, whichthen leads to a weekly workload
up here.
So 11,250 arbitrary gymnasticsunits would be like what you,
(24:34):
what you mark that as right.
But this is just the first timethat we've been able to present
a system that's like okay, canwe look at individual workloads
by person, by event, and thentake that to a weekly in a
monthly fashion, and then thisorange line up here, if you're
watching this, starts toaccumulate an acute to chronic
workload ratio.
That red line is at 1.3.
So essentially, after a fewweeks of data we can look at is
(24:56):
somebody spiking their workloadweek to week?
Too high, too low?
And then these other markers ontop of here were wellness
markers.
So how well did you sleep?
How sore are you, how tired areyou?
Blah, blah, blah.
So, yeah, this was essentiallyfrom the start of just me and
Tim talking was essentially afull week long of this is a full
.
What is this?
Uh, seven weeks of one person'sdata, um, before I think they
had an illness, so this wasseeing like the entire thing,
(25:17):
but we tracked all the athletesfor all 13 weeks throughout
season and then we're able tolook at some of the data of like
, okay, what does this tell usabout competition?
I don't know.
Do you have any thoughts onthis, leah, when you see like
all the graph stuff together?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
I mean it's awesome.
I wish we could do it foreveryone, That'd be great $10
million grant.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
Count me in.
Speaker 2 (25:40):
I'm curious if you guys saw like any like with
their, their report of how hardthey worked or how tired they
were, If you saw any likechanges and fluctuations with
that and like any injuries oranything like that.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, I can only go on the reported stuff from the
college coaches because actuallythe athletic trainers are
required to record injuries butwe didn't have that data to like
release and cross-referencewhen we published it.
But I will say that generally,I would say in the beginning of
season it seemed like physicalburden was higher.
So in preseason you can seehere right, this was actually a
big takeaway that wasrepresentative is that preseason
(26:12):
is hard in college gymnasticsand also club, and it should be
hard.
That's when you're training themost.
So as you go farther down theseason you tend to have less
total workload but the mentalstrain goes up.
So people's wellness factorswould sometimes go down even
though their workload was alsogoing down.
Because in season, you know,hitting in front of a coliseum
of people is really stressfuland you have life and you have
the rest of school and exams andstuff.
(26:33):
The pressure of later season ismuch higher versus the early
season.
So I think in the beginning wesee that the pre-season is very,
very challenging and very, veryhard and it should be that way.
But we have to be very carefulabout how we approach that first
two months in particular whensomeone's coming back from
competitive season and then so,yeah, that's kind of one big
(26:54):
takeaway is that it's preseasonis the hardest, postseason is
the most stressful, I wouldprobably say, and that tells me
that the summer is so importantas a takeaway.
But then also the injuries thatI tended to hear about or see
were often always like shinsplints, achilles issues, you
know, overuse, knee stuff, backpain, just from like, the volume
in which they're trying to dois just so high.
(27:15):
Like, of course, there areaccidents, there's ACL tears,
there's stuff, ankle sprains,whatever happened, but like 75%
of most gymnastics injuries,based on the study you look at,
are overuse.
So that just tells me that likeone, we can modify stuff and
hopefully make that change, butthen also that a lot of our work
should be done in the offseason for kind of what we're
looking at.
So, yeah, that is your question.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
So this is the paper that we publish and then we'll
just kind of share some takeawaythoughts to help people.
So this was the paper that wepublished.
It's myself, tim, ellen, abunch of other people who worked
on it really hard.
Shout out to the whole team.
I feel like sometimes paperstake like years off my life.
I'm already happy when they'redone, but, like the amount of
work you have to do to get apaper published is crazy, um.
So this is a good example oflike one person's um, one
(27:57):
person's uh training loadthroughout the entire year of 16
weeks and then like warmupversus vault versus beam versus
whatever.
So we can essentially see,event by event, acute to chronic
workload ratios, which isreally awesome, right, you have
a bar specialist who's just areally good on bars is two other
event.
And then, like that's the maincomponent, they do, like they
deliver a high value routine on.
You have to really be much morespecific and track that
(28:17):
workload for their upper bodyversus lower body, for floor and
vault.
So this essentially was likelooking at some of the graphs in
the paper is is seeing it inreal form and seeing like, okay,
this preseason volume is reallyhard, really high, right, and
then here's conferencechampionships, regional
championships and nationalchampionships.
You can see that the overallworkload is descending down, but
obviously this part ofpostseason is the most important
and the most stressful forpeople.
(28:37):
So you're trying to play withfire, a bit of like how do we
make sure we do enough routinesto make sure we stay kind of
with it and together and inshape mentally to get to hit a
routine, but also not beatingsomebody up as the season goes
longer and longer, goes longerand longer?
And I think the big takeawayfor me is that a lot of the prep
work has to be done inpreseason to get somebody over
prepared and build up a reallyhigh chronic workload to make
sure they can safely go throughthe season, and that also we
(29:00):
have to be very careful abouthow we manage those, like you
know, 10 weeks of season itselfto not burn somebody out too
early, too fast.
And so in terms of like adviceand kind of maybe practical
takeaways for some of these,these things in the episode is,
I think that it's really reallyimportant that the summer and
the preseason is is is treatedwell and I think to Aaliyah's
point, you have to plan thewhole year and then, once you
have that plan in place, youhave to find a way to make sure
(29:22):
in the off season in the summerthat people are doing you know
hard training, particularly inthe strength conditioning side,
the cross training side, thelifting side, because that is
really the only time you have toget somebody truly stronger,
like if you really want to getsomeone's legs substantially
stronger, to have a bigger vaultor do a one and a half or land
to double flipping skills onfloor.
You know you are only going tohave eight to 10 weeks in the
(29:44):
summer to truly get someone'slegs stronger and truly get
someone's you know core stronger.
And that requires, you know,two to five days per week of
training and working hard andbacking off and deloading and
adding more and subtracting.
It's just like a goodperiodization program and so,
like, conceptually it makessense like, okay, we should work
hard in the summer, but havingworked with a lot of college
athletes, a lot of high schoolgymnasts, unfortunately, until
(30:06):
you make the plan relevant totheir goals, it's very hard to
get by it right, like getting upat eight o'clock to go lift for
two hours before.
You have to work all day beforeyou have something to do in the
summer is very challenging.
So you have to kind of like,unite the crew on, like okay,
what are our goals, what didn'tgo well last season and how can
we make sure we're betterprepared for next season?
We're like well, preseason hasto be a lot more challenging in
(30:28):
a to make this vault, if we wantto, you know, place at regional
conferences, you have to be onyour game and do this lifting
program that we have made foryou for twice a week and then
also get to the gym and do allyour basics and stuff.
So that's the first big takeawayI always give.
People is like the teams I seeconsistently who are in the mix,
top 10, top 20, have a lot ofkids in club.
They're going to nationals orEasterns or Westerns or or just
have happy kids that are healthy.
(30:49):
It's not even about competing,they're just enjoying their
season.
They're willing and able to dothe work in the off season to
prepare them to come into thefloor level of preseason at a
higher level, which, again,hopefully, as you work hard,
gets you to like that penthouse,kind of like really high level
stuff.
So that is one of the bigthings I advise to people.
The second thing I advise topeople is to be very careful
(31:11):
about your plyo ramp up.
As we talked about is that inthe end of August you should be
starting to ramp up the amountof plyos you're doing and how
hard your conditioning is, sothat when you get to season you
can ramp up the routines right.
If you, as we talked about, inareas, you ramp up all your
plyos, your conditioning andyou're also ramping up your
routine volume and your surfaceof is, it's harder If you do all
that in the same month it'sprobably going to cause a lot of
headaches.
(31:31):
So, end of August, be rampingup someone's plyo program and
then have a nice slowprogression of like skills to
parts, parts to half, half tofull routines and slowly
increase the time in which youspend on harder surfaces as the
as the months go on a preseason.
So that's what I kind of share.
I'm not sure if you have anythoughts or advice about that.
Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, I think from the like maybe this isn't as
much at the collegiate level,but when you've got like your
high school kids that are inclub and working on that like
plyo progression, I think if youhave, the time.
And I'm like oof, okay, we needto work on that.
So making sure that we're doingthings with good form, to make
sure that they're the plows thatyou are doing and the time
you're spending ramping up plowsthat way are done correctly and
not putting that at increasedrisk for injury.
So I feel like those resourcesare definitely out there.
(32:27):
So, if you can like go and lookat them, find them and make
sure that you're like looking atyour kids when they're doing
them and have good form, orteaching them what adequate form
is, so that when they're doingthem they can correct their own
form, I think it's really,really important.
And then, lastly, I have a kindof a question for you from a
practicality standpoint, where Isee mostly club kids in the
summers summers what do you haveany like practical
(32:52):
recommendations, either for theclub gyms or for the, the
athletes themselves, to try andfind a good like lifting program
in the off season or where theymight get that?
Find that, or yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1 (33:02):
I think, in terms of like finding a good like
strength coach or someone who'sknowledgeable about sports in
general, you don't need to find,like a gymnastic specialist,
right, like champions, such aunique, uh odd duck where we
have people who are as good thatbut people who, um, either
physical therapists who havetheir like OCS or SCS, right.
So OCS is an orthopediccertified, sports is SCS.
Someone who has that knowledgebase is probably a good starting
(33:22):
point because they can referyou or help you get kind of from
zero to one, especially ifyou're coming back from an
injury.
Um, I think strength coacheswho have a CSCS is really good.
So a certified strengthconditioning coach is typically
the more like sports performanceoriented strength coach who
wants to work with athletes oractive people.
So, between those two groupseither OCS, scs and or somebody
with a CSCS you're probablygoing to find an environment
(33:43):
that works with athletes and hasa lot of people that are kind
of on that wavelength and thenfrom there, I think lots of
online resources will help youcreate a program that's specific
for gymnastics, right?
So, like, we have tons of stuffonline from like myself and
Nick and Dan and others that, ifyou want a sample program and
you want like something to getstarted.
We can help that person learnabout gymnastics to then, you
know, take it on.
(34:03):
We have like an entire courseduetion I made based on just
like all the things that wethink are valuable.
So yeah, find the person firstwho's like willing to learn and
maybe knows a lot themselves,and then maybe dovetail that
with some stuff that we'veoffered.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yep, yeah, I think that's mostly it.
I think the only other piece Iwanted to share is that try to
make sure that somebody planstheir competition season, their
meets and stuff like that outpretty well and think about that
like three weeks on, one weekoff kind of template.
I think it's unrealistic tojust hammer through months and
months of really hard workwithout giving someone a break
and then if you do have peoplethat are coming back in the
(34:38):
season in a variety of differentlevels, some people maybe have
gone to the vineyard for twoweeks in the summer and they're
not really up to speed with theconditioning program.
Other people have jobs andlives and they can't really be
there all full time.
Try to try to just separate abit of the workload into, like
you know, someone who had aninjury or someone who was away
or whatever.
They're not going to be able tohandle the same workload as
someone who was there and wasdoing everything because their
life situation allowed it.
Um, just be like courteous tothat.
(34:59):
You know, life happens.
Um, some people obviously dropthe ball and they fumble.
They go to the beach instead ofgoing to the gym.
Those people will just have tosuffer on the assault bike a bit
, but a lot of people, I think,unfortunately just can't.
You know, people got to work,man, people got to go to school,
people can't be full-timegymnastics in the summer all the
time.
So be accommodating to thosepeople who are a bit, you know,
all over the wavelength.
So, um, yeah, but I hopefully,um that kind of summary of like
(35:21):
the workload stuff's reallyhelpful.
So there's Tim's papers,there's that floor ceiling paper
.
That's really helpful too aswell.
Um, our paper got published,available for people, and I
think that hopefully the goal isthat we take the model of what
we found useful and startoverlapping it with like
practical recommendations onlike how much is too much, how
much is not enough, what do wedo to get ready for season, but
then also start overlaying thatwith like injury, risk of like
(35:43):
Achilles rupture, maybesomething like that, or shin
splints or something.
So that is the next step inprogress.
But just for now, I've alwayswanted to do a podcast on that
paper because it's now out, butI think in the framework of
workloads is very, very helpful.
All right, sweet, we will keepit there and then we'll be back.
We're going to do one topic perweek and so the next few weeks
we have some stuff on elbow, ocdand then culture, and then, if
(36:04):
you guys have topics you'd liketo hear about, we just have like
a Google doc where we share ourthoughts and like kind of
construct things and ideas.
But tell us if you like thisformat, if this is useful for us
to just banter on one topic andbe like a 30, 40 minute episode
, let us know about that.
And then also let us know ifthere are topics that you've
been itching to kind of maybehave a share some thoughts on,
but for now we'll send it off.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
NFL Daily with Gregg Rosenthal
Gregg Rosenthal and a rotating crew of elite NFL Media co-hosts, including Patrick Claybon, Colleen Wolfe, Steve Wyche, Nick Shook and Jourdan Rodrigue of The Athletic get you caught up daily on all the NFL news and analysis you need to be smarter and funnier than your friends.