Landing drills

Coach,

I was wondering what kind of drills you do to prepare your gymnasts legs/knees for big dismounts onto hard mats? Every year around this time my knees feel like they are going to explode on impact. As season progresses it doesn't seem to get any better either. Vault is especially bad :-\

As always any advice is greatly appreciated!

It could be that you are landing wrong

A combination of depth drops, proper strength and conditioning of the legs, and good joint preparation series.

The first thing you want to look into is whether your general posture is out of alignment. These things can be subtle and hard to see unless you know what you are looking for, but the book "Pain Free" by Pete Egoscue is a great and inexpensive resource that can help you handle a lot of this at home. If your body is dysfunctional, even slightly, all the training you do will probably make things worse and at best will have no impact, even if your training is perfect. If you do the tests and determine that your body IS 100% functional (meaning there are no musculoskeletal dysfunctions, even slightly) then you have probably simply not properly conditioned your body to safely absorb the landing impacts.

I'm not coach, but I have seen in my gym this drill, Take a semi-hard gym mat, and get a soft landing. stand at the edge of the mat, and jump of, STICK IT!!! Once that gets easy, add a half twist, once that gets easy, add another half twist Keep doing this, until you can do 2-2 1/2 twists always sticking it, once you can do that, do a back flip off of the box. (I would suggest you already have a back flip down before trying this ) And then after that my guess would be to either add a half twist to the back flip, or to do a pike, then a layout.

Hope that helps

Ace, where you competing out of in Sac? What are you landing?

I go to college in VA and compete for their team out here. I've been at Technique gymnastics, International gymnastics centre (Oleg Ibyadullian) and Byers over the years. When I go home now a days, I work out at Byers with coaches Mas Watanbe, Ron Howard, Guard Young, Debbie and Eli Rodriguez.

HB: layed full twisting kovacs dismount and the style I do really rockets me into the ground. PB: double pike. VT: used to do kaz 1/1 but am working hand double front now.

Where do you coach?

Slizz: Thanks for that site, I'll have to look into it!

I used to coach in Norcal but now I'm in Socal. Must be fun over at Byers.

You are dismounting with a Kolman?

If you aren't opening up before your landing, you'll be landing any of these dismounts short which aggravates the knees and ankles a lot.

Its pretty much a Cassina but you don't catch the bar. Fulfills the D dismount category.

It is not a kolman but more accurately described as a full twisting double layout.

In order to prepare your legs for the beginning of a new competitive season, you will need to gradually acclimate your legs to once again accepting the hard landings. For example at the end of high bar series, begin ending with either a back layout or double tuck off.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer