Women How is your conditioning organized and structured?

[gymisforeveryone]

How is your conditioning organized and structured? Do you do it at the beginning, in the middle or at the end of the practice? Do you have circuits or do you do the conditioning on the floor all together and at the same time? Or do you use conditioning sheets with repetition numbers the kids read and go do by themselves? How much time do you use for it daily?

I try to find some new ideas. We currently do a circuit one day a week and the other two they read a sheet.

 

[Moxiegrl83]

We do a mixture of "traditional" conditioning and Crossfit style conditioning. Our HC crossfits daily and modifies some of their WOD's for gymnastics. The Level 3's and up all condition together, with the optionals usually doing higher reps. She will write the workout on a white board, and the kids just follow the list. Sometimes it's timed to see who has the best. They condition first, before rotations. When the other coach conditions, he typically sticks to a more "normal" conditioning style, but the kids seem to like the variety.

 

[JBS]

We hired a former level 9 that now has a degree in exercise science.

We event coach...her event is strength/conditioning/mental toughness/nutrition.

Compulsories do strength during each rotation.

Optionals rotate to our strength coach as a normal event each day just as they would rotate to bars or beam. They also do event specific strength at their events.

 

[Gymishome]

It depends. Sometimes we have circuits, and sometimes we all get together and condition. When we do the latter, it's about 2 1/2 hours in to a 4 hour practice. We don't spend much time on it when we are close to a meet but normally it's about 15 mins to half hour (depending on what kind it is). We do not have them do conditioning at home like some gyms.

 

[Hayleigh]

My training group gets split into three groups of 4-5 depending on the day as some people cannot make Saturday training. We do 3 conditioning stations every session, these are a circuit of skipping, step ups and high legs etc. The second station is core conditioning, which at the moment consists of sit ups, crunches, v-ups and straddle-ups etc. And finally beam complex, which we do as walks, high leg lifts (trying to hold the lift at the top, at the front, side, back and in needle scale). But on Friday and Saturday we do ballet conditioning, bar conditioning and flexibility work instead.

 

[Hayleigh]

Sorry, forgot to say these conditioning sets take about 1 hour and 15 minutes most sessions. But before a competition we only do one of the three conditioning sets, and my coach usually chooses to do flexibility Friday and Saturday and beam complex for our other sessions, as she doesn't want us to be sore at the comps

 

[Clover]

"We event coach...her event is strength/conditioning/mental toughness/nutrition."

JBS - That is awesome! Don't want to hijack the thread, but I would love to know how she works the mental toughness and nutrition into her station/event.

 

[catou]

Here we do about half an hour of conditioning, each training. We train between 2.5 to 3.5 hours, 3x a week, for a total of 9 hours/week. We don't have any conditioning planned in the event rotation schedule, so we have to do it whenever we can. On top of that, in the category my gymnasts are in, they have to train tumbling and trampoline, in addition to the other 4 events. We also have about 45 minutes of dance training.

On thursday, they have 10 exercises to do. Exercises are written on a sheet with the number of repetitions. They have to do them thrice. On that day, we try to train power, as we do a 20 minute circuit type of warm-up, and that warm-up focus on form. We are working that way as we just don't have space. So we use parallel bars, walls, pommel horse, a bit of floor space...

On friday, we focus on form. They still have to do 10 exercises, 3 times. On both days, we condition during trampoline rotation, as we only have one, 30 minutes, and 9 gymnasts.

On sunday, we use conditioning as the warm-up so everyone to the same exercises together. I decided to to that, as I sadly know that some (particularly one) don't complete her repetitions and has a tendency not do to the exercises with good technique. We train strength, and this way we can keep an eye on everyone and see who's struggling with which exercise.

 

[JBS]

"We event coach...her event is strength/conditioning/mental toughness/nutrition."

JBS - That is awesome! Don't want to hijack the thread, but I would love to know how she works the mental toughness and nutrition into her station/event.

She has a major in exercise science and a minor in psychology. She is very big on helping the girls (especially the teens) stay positive and become more mentally tough.

We taper the strength down and increase the mental toughness as we move towards a meet. It has been working well. The mental toughness is usually done sitting in a group...thinking...writing...focusing...venting...talking...drawing...

Here is a 5' x 5' banner we did...this one took a few extra hours on a Sunday night.

Nutrition is just an overall topic that is covered...we try to do one major topic every two to three weeks. Once a topic is covered...she never really backs off of it. Hydration was covered last month...now we are on protein.

This whole concept has been working great...I have always wanted to address some of this stuff...but have not really had a good way to do it. Having a specific person (coach) to do this is phenomenal.

EDIT: While I give her topics to work and general guidelines to go by...she really just does her thing...that's why we hired her.

 

[hammy1207]

We do a little bit of everything. We do some event conditioning, crossfit circuits, and traditional stuff.