It is no secret that gymnastics is a challenging sport. Many people even think that it is in contention for being one of the most difficult sports. In order to be proficient in gymnastics it requires a balance of strength, flexibility and coordination. This article is dedicated to helping you improve your strength at home to help empower you to achieve new heights in gymnastics.
As mentioned in our guide on how to practice gymnastics at home, always be aware of the possibility that you are overtraining. If you ever have any concerns that you are overtraining, ask your coach for their feedback.
Setting Expectations and Creating Goals
Conditioning at home is a difficult thing for anyone to motivate yourself to do. It might be easy to find the motivation for a week or two but that will not help you gain long-term strength. To stay motivated for the long term it is a great help to set some strength goals for yourself.
Some examples of this might look like (fill these in based on a practical goal for yourself):
- Be able to do ____ pushups in a row
- Do ___ pull-ups in a row
- Do ___ crunches in a row
- Hold a handstand for ___ seconds
Goals like these are a great way to measure your progress and scale up your abilities over time. Best of all they can always be increased, once you hit your goal start working towards the next one and see how much you can achieve from your hard work. You might surprise yourself!
How To Get Started Strength Training?
When digging into the world of strength training you might be overwhelmed at first with questions like; What should I start with? What should I prioritize? And where can I find exercises or workout plans to follow? Let’s address each one of those questions starting with what you should focus on.
In most situations the best answer is to do a little bit of everything, working to improve your core, leg, and arm strength all at once. By spreading the workouts over these muscle groups you can improve your overall strength while avoiding overtraining. If there is one particular muscle group that you would like to focus on then take some more time to strengthen that as well.
Here is how you can work on conditioning your largest muscle groups at home.
How To Build Core Strength?
Your core is quite literally at the core of all of your strength training, as such it should have a strong focus in your training. Core strength plays a key role in nearly every gymnastics move particularly in flipping and tucking, as well as various bar movements. A strong core helps your skills to be more controlled and faster to allow for a more controlled landing.
Here are some great core strengthening exercises to do at home:
- Crunches
- V-Ups
- Plank
- Supermans
- Russian Twists
- Mountain Climbers
How To Build Leg Strength?
Leg strength is essential for nearly every movement in gymnastics, but it makes the biggest difference on floor and vault where you need to generate power for tumbling passes and punching. Being able to run quickly and jump high can make a massive difference in gymnastics where a matter of milliseconds can separate a perfect vault from a potential fall.
Leg exercises can be a bit more difficult to train at home since the legs are such a strong muscle group. Nevertheless here are some great exercises that you can do at home:
- Sprints
- Air squats
- Pistol squats
- Lunges
- Wall Sits
- Calf Raises
How To Build Arm Strength?
Arm strength is another key to all gymnastics events but most notably on bars where you need to be able to pull yourself around with ease. This requires a great amount of strength. Additionally, when tumbling or blocking off the ground you will only be able to generate as much power as your arms can withstand so increasing your arm strength can help improve many different aspects of your gymnastics abilities.
Some exercises to increase arm strength would include:
- Pullups
- Pushups
- Handstands
- Tricep Dips
- Bicep Curls
Extra Conditioning Also Includes
Conditioning your arms, legs, and core are great way to build your strength and reach new heights in gymnastics, but there are also some other overlooked parts to work on strengthening. Some of the most injury-prone are your wrists and ankles. By doing exercises to improve these and other small body parts you can help to reduce the chances of injury when training.
Unlike the other sections, these do not come with many large goals other than simply avoiding injury. It is all about balance to make sure that you have no weak points. If you build strength in your legs, core, and arms you might feel like you can get an extra couple of inches when punching out of a roundoff, but it will all be for nothing if your ankles cannot handle that impact. Make sure to strengthen all parts of your body, not only the larger muscle groups.
Where To Find Strength Training Tutorials
Luckily there are hundreds of thousands of videos online to help you work out, find motivation, and make the process more fun. YouTube has many great resources for finding workout inspiration, look through a couple of videos and find someone that works for you to guide your fitness journey. As a general rule make sure that they have some kind of education or training as a personal trainer to ensure they are giving good and safe exercise advice.
Measuring Results and Tracking Progress
After some time conditioning at home, you will start to see small progress. It may be just one more pushup in a row or it might be even less noticeable. The important part is that the change is happening even if you cannot see it.
Tracking your progress can help to keep you motivated and can show how far you have come. This is where you can see the fruits of your labor and you will also be able to feel the changes while you are practicing gymnastics.
We hope that this helps you to begin your conditioning at home process. Have fun working out there and enjoy all the benefits that go along with fitness.
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