How Much Should a Gymnast Weigh?

How much should a gymnast weigh? Don’t worry, I “googled” this too as a teen gymnast. Here’s the honest answer from a gymnastics dietitian: there is NO ideal number. A gymnast should weigh whatever her body needs to grow, train and stay healthy, and for a kid who is still growing, that number is supposed to keep going up.

Now, I know that answer can feel frustrating. You want a number. Gymnasts, parents, coaches and judges tend to be numbers people. As a former gymnast and a judge for 18+ years, I get it. But weight is one of the most sensitive topics in our sport, and when it’s handled the wrong way, it can start a lifelong struggle with food, body image and performance.

Here’s the thing. We see it all the time in our practice. A gymnast goes through puberty, her body changes, she looks a little slower in the gym, and the adults around her decide her weight is the problem. She gets told to lose a few pounds. To lose weight, she has to under fuel. And then she ends up injured, often with a stress fracture, and somehow it’s her fault.

If we had just kept the focus on performance instead of a number, we probably would not have ended up there.

So let’s talk about what actually matters: weight vs body composition, growth charts, puberty, and what to do if you’re worried.

Listen: Episode 196, What Should Your Gymnast Weigh?

I went deeper on this in Episode 196 of The Gymnast Nutritionist podcast, including a real story of how a gymnast’s puberty was handled the wrong way.

Is there an average weight for gymnasts?

No, and you wouldn’t want to use one if there were. Two gymnasts can weigh the exact same and look completely different. Weight is just a number on a scale. It does NOT tell you how much of that number is bone, muscle or fat.

The gold standard for body composition is a DEXA scan. But we don’t use DEXA for body composition under 18, because there are no published body fat standards for children and adolescents. The only time a young gymnast should get one is if we’re worried about bone density.

Think about it. Gymnastics has changed SO much. Parents ask me why today’s gymnasts don’t look like Kerri Strug or Shannon Miller. The code of points has evolved. The difficulty required even at Level 9 and 10 is so high that gymnasts need a lot more muscle mass than they did 20 or 30 years ago. Bodies have evolved with the sport.

What about BMI for gymnasts?

BMI (weight divided by height squared) was built as a rough stand-in for body fat, and it falls apart for athletes. Muscle is heavy. Most male gymnasts would technically be labeled “overweight” or “obese” by BMI, even with body fat in the single digits. That tells you everything you need to know about BMI for gymnasts.

You can’t look at a gymnast and decide if she weighs enough or too much. You can’t go by BMI. And you shouldn’t be doing body fat testing on a growing kid.

How do you know if your gymnast’s weight is healthy?

For kids and teens, we use growth charts. In the US, that’s the CDC 2 to 20 charts, one for girls and one for boys. What matters most is how your gymnast has tracked along HER curve over time.

Some gymnasts have always been on the lighter side, tracking around the 10th to 25th percentile. That’s normal for them. Others have a more muscular build and track around the 80th to 90th percentile. That’s also normal for them. What gets our attention is a gymnast crossing away from her usual curve, in either direction.

Growth charts are only good to a point, though. They were built from healthy, average kids, not 12 year olds training like professional athletes. So we use them to look at growth history and line it up with injuries, puberty and development.

Do not be surprised if your gymnast’s percentile goes UP after puberty. It doesn’t mean she’s gained too much weight. It reflects how much more muscle she carries than a non-gymnast.

Unfortunately, a lot of pediatricians don’t know this. We’ve had gymnasts get really inappropriate comments at the doctor about their “weight gain,” when most of it was the muscle they need to stay healthy at their level.

Puberty changes a gymnast’s weight (and that’s supposed to happen)

Kids and teens are supposed to gain weight. Girls and boys keep gaining into their early twenties as part of normal growth. Their bones, brain and organs are growing too, so weight gain is NOT just body fat. It’s muscle, bone growth and bone density.

As a rough range, kids around 9 to 13 often gain 5 to 7+ pounds a year, and teens around 14 to 18 can gain 15 to 40+ pounds over the last years of puberty. That’s just a range, NOT a target. Every kid grows on her own timeline, and a growth spurt can come early, late, or all at once.

A gymnast should not weigh at 18 what she weighed at 12. If she does, her growth has likely been held back by not getting enough energy. More on that in Does Gymnastics Stunt Your Growth? and my two-part series on the high-level gymnast and puberty.

That’s also why it never makes sense to tell a growing gymnast she needs to weigh a certain number, or to get back to the weight she competed at two years ago. She’s not done growing.

Why does my gymnast look slower after puberty?

It makes sense that people blame weight. Her body changed, she’s heavier, and she’s not as explosive. But usually the real problem is one of these:

• She’s still under fueling, so her body can’t build the strength it needs.
• Her strength hasn’t caught up to her new body yet. The body changes first, and strength has to catch up.
• Something else is going on, like low iron, which can hit endurance hard.

What worked for your gymnast before puberty may not work after it. Not because anything is wrong with her body, but because a new body needs a new approach. A lot of gym strength programs aren’t really programs at all: Level 4 and Level 10 doing the same random list of exercises. Post-puberty gymnasts need conditioning that’s progressive and planned.

Why you can’t compare gymnasts’ bodies

So much of body shape is genetics: muscle size, where body fat likes to sit, frame size, bone structure, visible abs. No gymnast chose that.

Shawn Johnson has shared that she struggled with disordered eating. No amount of restriction was ever going to make her look like Nastia Liukin. And Nastia could never have bulked up to look like Simone Biles. It’s not in their genetics.

The reality is, comparison is a trap anyway. As a professional, I can tell you that some of the gymnasts other kids envy are secretly struggling with disordered eating. It’s always her vs her, never her vs a teammate or an elite role model.

Some people need a higher body fat to have normal hormones and a regular period. Others can be leaner and still be healthy. There’s a reason I keep saying there’s no one number. If your gymnast has lost her period, read No Period, No Problem?.

Should gymnasts weigh themselves?

No. Not at home, not in the locker room, and not because a coach told them to. Weight is just one of dozens of factors that affect performance, and it changes constantly.

Weight swings 3 to 5 pounds in a single day with food in the gut, hydration, electrolytes, sore muscles and stored carbs. None of that changes how she performs. But for a numbers-driven gymnast, seeing a pound up on the scale can ruin her whole practice. If she didn’t know the number, she could have walked into the gym feeling fueled, energized and great.

In our practice, we don’t have gymnasts weigh themselves, and we don’t ask parents to weigh them either. When we do need to track growth, we have ways to do it without the gymnast seeing the numbers.

We’re getting better as a sport. But there are still gyms with a scale in the locker room and coaches who tell gymnasts what they “should” weigh, usually with a scare tactic about load on the joints. The truth is, a growing gymnast needs MORE fuel, not less, to recover and stay healthy. Her body will put growth ahead of recovery, so she’s already at higher injury risk.

Should a gymnast ever lose weight or go on a diet?

Most of the time, no. Especially not a gymnast who is still growing.

There are some cases where a gymnast’s weight has gone well past what her growth chart and genetics would predict. But when that happens, there’s almost always something going on with food, and it usually started with a diet, restriction, or someone trying to change her body.

Every gymnast I’ve worked with who was put on a diet or told to stay at a certain weight ended up with a dysfunctional relationship with food. Restricting leads to binging, and that cycle can actually ADD body fat. Telling her to “lose weight” won’t fix it. It drives more disordered behaviors.

I know parents and coaches mean well. You might think a couple of pounds will make her faster and lighter. You have to fast forward the tape.

A real story: when puberty is handled the wrong way

A few years ago, I worked with a gymnast at a very elite gym. She’d been in the homeschool program training 30 hours a week for years, and like most gymnasts at that level, she was massively under fueled. She ate nothing before five-hour morning workouts. Lunch was a chicken Caesar salad.

After committing to her dream D1 school, she moved to the 20-hour afternoon program. With less training and more fuel available, her body finally caught up with puberty that summer. She gained height and weight, and her body changed. All of that was normal. It should have happened gradually from 11 to 15, not all at once at 16.

That fall she was struggling, and her mom sent me videos. Yes, she was slower and her amplitude was down. But her labs showed she was very low in iron, and she was still under fueled. Her body couldn’t build strength out of nothing.

We were working on getting her to eat before practice and fuel during workouts. Then her coaches pulled her parents aside about her weight. Then they pulled HER into the office and had the same talk, which is a SafeSport violation. A coach even started quizzing her on breakfast and told her the dressing on her salad was “fattening.”

She shut down and stopped working with us. She got injured that year and spent most of her college freshman year injured. She’s a talented gymnast who should be in the lineup far more than she has been.

Everyone knew her body changed. The question should have been “How do we get you strong enough for your new body?” and the answer was eating enough.

What about adult gymnasts and body composition testing?

It’s a different conversation for adults who are done growing. We work with college gymnasts and national team members in their twenties, and some of them get DEXA scans. It’s honestly never something I love, because it usually messes with them psychologically, no matter how much they say they’re fine.

If it’s going to happen, we want informed consent and a real talk about risks and benefits. Body fat percentage does NOT equal performance. Getting leaner means under fueling, and under fueling hurts repair, recovery and bone density.

Gymnastics is an aesthetic sport, but it’s not bodybuilding. Super-lean physique athletes have often dieted for months, tanked their hormones and lost strength to get that look. Your best body composition as a gymnast is probably not as lean as you think.

I’ve met several gymnasts who crushed Level 10, stayed healthy and earned D1 full rides, then got body fat tested on campus for the first time. For some, it sparked an eating disorder. You can’t predict who it will hurt.

I know how this goes from the inside. As a teen gymnast, I developed an eating disorder trying to look like a gymnast whose body was nothing like mine. It’s a big part of why I practice the way I do.

What to do if you’re worried about your gymnast’s weight

If you think something is off, have that conversation privately with an expert, NOT in front of your teen. Choosing the wrong words can start disordered eating and body image issues that are really hard to come back from.

• Don’t weigh her or comment on her body, even as a compliment.
• Check fueling first. Most gymnasts who “feel heavy” are under fueled. Our free Gymnast Fueling Quiz is a good place to start, and here’s how to spot acute vs chronic under-fueling.
• Get labs. Low iron can look exactly like “she’s slower since puberty.”
• Ask about strength and conditioning. Is it progressive and planned for her new body?
• Work with a pediatric and adolescent sports dietitian, not the bodybuilding coach at the gym or a gymnastics coach.

For more on body image, read 8 Truths About the Gymnast Body.

How much should a male gymnast weigh?

Same answer: there’s no ideal number. But boys’ bodies change a little differently.

• Puberty usually starts later for boys, so the big growth spurt often lands right in the middle of their competitive years.
• They gain a LOT of muscle. Weight and growth chart percentiles can jump fast, and that’s what builds the strength men’s events demand.
• BMI is even more misleading. Most male gymnasts would be labeled “overweight” or “obese” by BMI with body fat in the single digits.
• Under fueling hits them too. Boys who don’t eat enough can have delayed growth and puberty, stalled strength, and more injuries.

The plan is the same: track his own growth chart, fuel for growth AND training, and let strength catch up to his new body. More for boys on our men’s gymnastics nutrition page.

FAQ

How much should a 12 year old gymnast weigh?

There’s no set number. A 12 year old is growing, so her weight should keep going up. A pediatric sports dietitian looks at how she’s tracked on her own growth chart over time, not at a chart of other gymnasts.

Do gymnasts have to be skinny?

No. Gymnasts of all body types are excelling, and today’s code of points rewards strength and power. Many successful gymnasts carry a lot of muscle and sit at higher percentiles on the growth chart.

Is it normal for a gymnast to gain weight during puberty?

Yes. Weight gain during puberty is expected and healthy. It’s bone, muscle and organ growth, not just body fat.

Should coaches weigh gymnasts?

No. Weighing gymnasts can start anxiety, disordered eating and performance issues. If there’s a real concern, it belongs with a qualified dietitian and medical team.

Need help?

If your gymnast is going through puberty and struggling, a coach or doctor has already said something, or things just feel chaotic, we are your people. We work with gymnasts who need to gain weight, and gymnasts who’ve been told they weigh too much. Learn more about The Balanced Gymnast® Program.