How To Improve Your Gymnastics

How To Improve Your Gymnastics

1: Handstands

The best way and easiest entry for improvement in our gymnastics, both pulling and pushing movements, are holds. Holding a handstand against the wall, both facing towards and away from the wall, is such a super way to build up strength and stability in your handstand. Befre even thinking about handstand push ups, you should be able to hold a 60second hs hold against the wall.

If I can?

If you have a 60 second hold then we begin to work our pressing strength. Seated DB press here or pike push ups is a fantastic way to build some specific handstand pressing strength. Your goal on this should be 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps

What if I cant?

A lot of times if you find it tough to hold a handstand position for 60 seconds, it could be a mobility issue or a stability issue vs strength. Two of my favourites on this would be a PVC shoulder flexion test (testing shoulder flexion), a wallslide test (checks our scapular movement and thoracic mobility) and a single arm overhead carry (tests our stability on both sides)

Spending time working on these mobility and stabiltiy issues can really help us towards our handstand goals

2: Pull Ups

Similar to our handstands, we start things off with a 60-second rig hang. This is a prerequisite before we should even think about pull-ups. If we find things a bit too spicy here, we must work on our hanging strength before progressing. 

Normally hanging is a strength issue but it could be due to our lats being a bit tight as well, so checking things out with some foam rolling of the lats could identify if the lats are a bit locked up.

If I can hang?

Your next "test" is to see can we complete 6-8 strict pull ups. For me this is a must to show before we begin kipping pull ups. Its super important to have a good base of strength and health in the shoulders before we get dynamic in the movement. EMOMs can be a great way to work on pulling strength. Doing about 50% of your max strict pull ups for 4-5minutes in an EMOM format. Adding in some barbell or DB rows here too, specifically targets the lats and gets the strong. Bicep curls are also a fabulous way to build specific pulling strength as well and keeping our joints nice and healthy

If I can't hang?

A super way to start this would be lowering the seconds to maybe a 10-15sec hang. Farmer carries are a super grip exercise too. Throwing in some ring rows here will definitely help build up some strength. Banded pull ups are also a super exercise as it builds our pulling motion through full range. 

If you need any help on the above, or notice one of these areas needs some extra love please let me know. I would love the chance to help. Showing you the mobility tests, helping with a mini strength program (can be done before or after class) Being consistent 2-3 times a week on our gymnastics will really help you towards your goal.