Why Your Gymnast Won’t Reach their Off-Season Goals

Upgrade season is the time of year where most gymnasts are finished with competition season and have a few months to recover, get new skills, learn new routines, and hopefully level up for the next competition season. It’s a short period of time for gymnasts to reach their off-season goals.

For developmental program gymnasts in the United States, this is about May through December. For elite gymnasts, their off-season (upgrade season) is about August/September through February. But can be earlier/later depending on whether or not they need to compete in elite qualifiers, etc in participating in the HOPES program or trying to reach Junior or Senior Elite. And when it’s an Olympic year, this season is shortened and jam-packed with high level competitions.

For most gymnasts, there are very specific skills they need to learn and perfect before their coaches will allow them to compete at the next level.

And for upper-level gymnasts, learning new skills helps to set them apart competitively when it comes to NCAA recruiting or elite competition.

Gymnasts often enter the upgrade season with a sense of renewed motivation and excitement. And yet this often wanes and many gymnasts end up injured, tired, burnt out, and falling short of their goals that next competition season.

When Gymnasts Start their Off-Season Goals Already Injured

One of the biggest threats to a gymnast reaching their goals during the off season is going into it already injured. Why?

First, a lot of gymnasts start the competition season with existing nagging injuries that then turn into season ending injuries. No gymnast wants to miss out on competition season. But if you don’t take time to rest and recover…the body will make time for you.

We also see a lot of gymnasts who get injured and stay injured during competition season because their body can’t withstand the demands of training.

And when they continue to try and train while injured, this only sets them back more or leads to sub-par performance (or worse injuries).

Your Gymnast isn’t “Closing the Recovery Gap”

Summer training is usually when most gyms increase practice duration and intensity. Workouts often go from 4-4.5 hours a night to 5-7+ hours during the day. This alone is a HUGE problem when the gymnast is already not “closing the recovery gap”. And will then struggle even more to recover from the extra conditioning and cardio.

The “recovery gap” is a term we use to define the energy deficit (calorie deficit) that so many high level gymnasts are “walking around in” all the time. They’re not eating enough to support normal growth/development -> repair/recovery -> and adaptation to training. Aka, the get better, stronger, faster process).

When gymnasts go into a workout underfueled, they are often then too exhausted to learn new skills. Or too sore to make corrections quickly enough to get the skills in the short time frame. Making it nearly impossible for the gymnast to reach her off-season goals.

And when they are underfueled, they’re also so tired they begin to “cheat” at conditioning. So not only are they not getting new skills, they’re not getting physically stronger either. And then all of these things compound their lack of recovery and increased risk of injury.

Burnt out from long summer workouts

If we’re being honest, a LOT of gymnasts dread long summer workouts. Summer workouts are TOUGH. Gymnasts are still tired coming off a full school year and competition season. Their other friends are just hanging out by the pool all day, and they are often mentally burnt out.

We work with a LOT of high-level gymnasts (level 10, elite, national team) who actually secretly hate gymnastics. Yes, I said it.

On social media, everything looks happy happy from the outside. And even if you ask them in public, etc…they’ll tell you they love gymnastics, are so excited about their elite or NCAA career, etc.

But behind the scenes, so many of them are exhausted and burnt out from years of “the grind”. And, nutrition plays a big role in that.

How? When your gymnast is constantly tired, sore, exhausted and falling short of their off-season goals…Gymnastics isn’t as fun like it was back in levels 4/5 when skills came easily, and it was all fun and games.

Level 10/elite gymnastics is incredibly difficult. But the gymnasts we work with are motivated and really do want to reach their goals.

As sports dietitians, I view our role as helping gymnasts to feel good in their bodies. Then they can give their best efforts in the gym, optimize recovery, and ultimately work smarter. Not harder.

Gymnastics is as Mental as it is Physical

There’s also the mental component of this sport which is HUGE. And if the brain is underfueled…it will have a difficult time regulating mood + emotion which is critical in this sport.

When a gymnast isn’t closing the recovery gap (and continues this pattern season after season) emotions and mental focus will start to tank. And when they start struggling with skills, performance anxiety, etc, parents will hire a sport psychologist which can be so helpful. But, it will not be as helpful as it COULD if the gymnast is underfueled.

Do you have a gymnast with a lot of tears and fears during summer training as the stress and pressure of not getting skills start to take their toll? I’d be very curious as to their nutrition status and if they’re truly getting enough to fuel their brain.

I always say that nutrition won’t “fix” a mental block or fear. Bbut if the brain is underfueled it’s going to have a hard time putting the tools and skills to work learned through therapy, coaching, etc that are needed to overcome these psychological challenges.

In Summary

Upgrade season can feel new and fresh and hopeful. But sadly so many gymnasts end up frustrated and disappointed by the time preseason rolls around. Cue the gymnast waving goodbye to those off-season goals!

All the uptraining in the world doesn’t matter if the skills still aren’t ready by preseason for routines and skill testing/verification.

You can avoid the stress and pressure of feeling like they’re on a time crunch when they start the off-season on the right foot. By optimizing your gymnast’s fueling they’ll have the energy they need to grow/develop, repair/recovery, and adapt to their training!

If you’re looking to level up your gymnast’s nutrition, learn more inside “Fuel the Routine“. A podcast for parents of competitive gymnasts.