Gymnastics: My Thoughts on an Athletic Hybrid Model to an Early Specialization Sport (part 1)

Part 1: Problems and Solutions

“You can’t build a skyscraper in a swamp.”

Anyone who has ever participated in the wild sport of gymnastics will tell you the list of athletic abilities required by the sport is a pretty long laundry list. The best gymnasts are often generally athletic and could hold their own in most recreational schoolyard sports, although that is not always the case. Sometimes watching a gymnast try to catch a ball closely resembles a blind dog trying to snatch a treat out of the air.

I am a huge advocate for the sport of gymnastics but you don’t have to do much research to find some pretty staggering data points on injuries and early departure from the sport. In any sport there is an inevitable risk of injury, regardless of how many “injury prevention” exercises you mix into your training.

My views on gymnastics can be a bit polarizing, which is okay. Remember this is simply one man’s opinion. So here we go.

As mentioned above, gymnasts have to be good at so many different things. Therefore it makes sense to start them in early youth to allow for more time to develop the skills and abilities needed. It is not uncommon to walk into a gym and see 5 and 6 year olds doing countless reps of bridges, back walkovers, and handsprings. Watching this as a parent can be downright disheartening, knowing that your own 5 year old still can’t tie their own shoes. Then when you ask about the program, you find out that these kids are training 12–16 hours a week strictly on sport specific movements. I personally see a handful of problems with this early skill centred specialization model.

1. Athletes are often selected for a competitive gymnastics program based on their natural “flexibility” which allows them to perform certain movements at an earlier age.
2. Being “flexible” allows athletes to perform certain skills with minimal technique and coaching.
3. Repetitive use of a movement through any single joint without proper strength and support will result in injury eventually.
4. An early introduction to a competitive mindset doesn’t always give us the outcome we intend it to.
5. Early selection gives a false sense of superiority to athletes and parents, which we all know is a problem.

Some of my previous athletes performing a highly choreographed competitive warm-up, which arguably took just as long to learn as the other 4 routines they had to train and remember. These athletes are between 8–10 years old. Outside of them looking professional and put together as a team, this serves little to no athletic value. It could be argued that this is fun for the group and builds a sense of team and belonging, which I strongly support.

I want to first of all take a look at the small country of Norway. Youth participation in sports in Norway is dictated by the Children’s Rights In Sport (Provisions on children’s sport) with no exceptions. Among other things, this document states that athletes are encouraged to participate in many different recreational sports at a young age with little to no opportunity to compete outside of fun intra-club experiences. In these early stages, participants get quality coaching in the sport(s) of their choosing. They participate in games, tournaments, and competitions without being ranked, scored, or compared until they reach 11 years of age. They simply PLAY! Norway has recently topped the medals podium at the last 2 consecutive Winter Olympics and holds the all time medal count record for Winter Olympics. Norway is also quickly climbing the ranks in the summer games across a wide array of sports. Not bad for a country with a population of 5.5 million. Comparatively, New York City has a population of 8.8 million as of 2022. Some honourable mentions include Karsten Warholm who broke his own 400m hurdles world record in Tokyo or Johannes Thingnes Bø and Marte Olsbu Røiseland who each walked away from Beijing with 5 medals in biathlon. This model is great in the sense that it allows athletes to experience and fall in love with the act of sport rather than committing insane amounts of time and money and creating an identity around being “a gymnast” by age 5, never having the time to experience another sport. This model fares true with my ideology of never being great at something you don’t truly enjoy doing.

While I love this model, I think it is still missing something, general fitness and strength. School physical education programs used to be a comprehensive introduction to physical literacy and fitness. In recent years, this has really declined in North America resulting in a smaller athletic base for youth. Over the past few years I transitioned out of being a competitive gymnastics coach and pursued a career running a small strength and conditioning business for athletes (mostly gymnasts). I recently returned to gymnastics specific coaching in a much smaller capacity, simply because I love it. When we watch a gymnast in their environment it is bewildering to see how capable they can be. However, take them off the uneven bars and put them under a barbell and we see the true holes in their athletic development. Gymnastics has become so specialized in its training methods that we seem to forget that it is first and foremost a power based sport requiring strength, speed, and other general athletic abilities. Basic fundamental movement patterns such as a proper squat and hinge pattern often get overlooked.

So here are my thoughts on an alternative track to the highest levels with quality and longevity as the driving force.

1. Zero competitions until 10+ years of age.

Allow athletes to fall in love with the act of flying, flipping, running, and jumping. I feel this would allow for more time to focus on proper development in general and sport specific basics without feeling rushed to teach certain skills, routines, and complex choreography in time for the competitive season.

2. FUNdations.

Imagine a class targeted for young potential gymnasts that allows for some quality sport specific development while working on general athletics and coordination. Now before you say, that’s what gymnastics is!… It isn’t. Some recreational programs I have seen often end up doing a better job of this than a pre developmental program, maybe not from a quality perspective but definitely from a substance perspective. I want a class where young athletes can learn to run, jump, dance, throw, catch, push, pull, squat, hinge, rotate, and resist, while focusing on developing strength, speed, and power in parallel with their slower but intentional sport specific development.

3. Prioritize the “extras”

Outside of the gym, focus on the things that will set you apart from the crowd. Things like nutrition, hydration, rest, academics and mental performance. These things often are thought of as secondary to training, when in reality these are the things that benefit us on a human level and are strongly related to longevity and success in all aspects of life.

4. Have fun and enjoy the process over the progress

I have said this before and I will say it again. You have to LOVE what you do! Embrace the struggles, smile through the trials and truly enjoy your experience through sport. Gymnastics is far from easy, but if you take it one step at a time and simply enjoy and trust the process, more often than not you will continue to improve in your pursuit of your goals. If you are solely focused on a specific end result or achieving a certain level, that desired outcome ends up clouding your judgment and taking away from the journey.

At the end of the day there are very few athletes in any sport that “make it” to the highest levels. So sit back and enjoy the ride. If nothing else sport should provide youth with physical literacy, a solid athletic base, happy memories, a safe environment to grow and teach athletes how to handle success and failures as part of life.

This concludes part one of my rant, addressing some concerns and providing some thoughts on an alternative route. Part 2 will dive deeper into how proper strength and conditioning can benefit the gymnastics world.