weight training

[mayestra12]

Do gymnasts train with weights? If so, what age do they usually start. I'm just curious.

 

[hakunamatata]

Depends on the coach's philosophy. Some coaches like weight training, others don't. We did some when I was a gymnast, but for the most part my coaches were big on conditioning using body weight only. There's certainly enough exercises to do with your own body weight when you have things like p-bars and leg-lift bars to work with. We also used ankle weights and elastic bands a lot. At the gym I coach at we use medicine balls occasionally but we avoid dumbbells. It's a rec program so the girls don't do any hardcore conditioning like team girls do. If the coaches like to use weight training, when the gymnasts start it depends on what kind of program they're in. Usually conditioning gets intense around level 5, so whatever age they are at that time...

 

[CoachTodd]

Any conditioning a gymnast needs to do can be done with their own body weight for the most part. The training intensity can be alternated to have similar results to using free weights. Most doctors recommended not using heavy weights until after puberty but I'm not really certain what is considered heavy in reference to the size of a kid.

 

[All Chalked Up]

You're really not supposed to be doing weight lifting unitl you're at least 16 years old. My gym doesn't do any weight lifting at all; it's more beneficial for gymnasts to use their body weight.

 

[GymSurvivor]

When my gym does conditioning (esp. bar conditioning) we use ankle weights. Simply doing kips and things like that. Although sometimes if you have your tennis shoes with you, they permit you to put those on instead. haha.

But we don't do any training specifically with weights. We just add ankle weights on bars, it does make the skill a LOT easier when you take them off!

 

[gymdog]

Not really, if you mean like traditional weight training that say, football players would do. Some gymnastics training regimens will use small weights (such as ankle weights or weight bands on the core). Post pubescent male gymnasts might use weight vests which can be fairly heavy. It is better to have the weights on the core, and I do not believe this should be done with young children, esp ankle weights. Just not worth any risk.

I do like resistance bands though, and recommend those in favor of ankle and wrist weights for kicks, leaps, dance training. When I was around high school age we did use weight bands (core) for a lot of things in the summer, but mostly we used resistance bands.

 

[Deleted member 9865]

I was reading about this quite recently,

Most conditioning should be resistance training, so that muscles are worked in groups.

I also read but am not sure about it, that using weights can confuse some gymnasts spacial awareness.