I recently spent time optimizing my gymnastics training and I thought others could benefit from what I learned and the process I followed. The following post contains the fundamentals, as I understand them, of building a high-quality workout program for an intermediate gymnast.

If you disagree with anything I say in here, please do leave a comment, I can’t claim that my information is perfect and I’d love to learn more. Note, however, that this post is not targeted at bodybuilders or advanced gymnasts. An advanced gymnast needs to consider more than the contents of this post and gymnastics training is not bodybuilding.

Takeaways

By the end of this post, you should be able to put together your own custom workout routine. To achieve that, this post helps you answer the following sets of questions.

Program Structure

How often should you train?
How often should you train each ability?
How should you vary your training from day to day, week to week, and month to month?
How much should you rest?

Workout Structure

What order should you train abilities in?
How should you select exercises?
How many exercises should you do per workout?
How should you arrange exercises in a workout?
How many sets and reps should you do for each exercise?
How much weight/time should you use for each exercise?

Resources

If by the end of this post, you’re looking for further information, my primary resources were a combination of Stretching Scientifically and the Science of Sports Training (and countless blogs, books, discussions whose source I’ve forgotten over the years). The content in both of these books is excellent but the organization and repetition of said content make them long, difficult reads.

I’ve distilled the essentials below and contextualized them with the routine I built based on the recommendations of these books. If you’re looking for more information, I do recommend reading them–so long as you acknowledge that they may be difficult to follow and repetitive at times.

Goals, Resources, and Constraints

Before you begin, take a moment to consider your training goals (what skills you want to master) as well as your resources/constraints (time, energy, equipment, etc). These will guide the tradeoffs you make as you build your exercise program.

In my case,
Resources/Constraints
I have a good level of baseline fitness.
I can work out 2 hours per weekday and 3 hours per weekend day.
I have a pullup bar, rings, parallettes, minimal weights, and a workout room with puzzle mats.
I do not have full gymnastics equipment or heavy-weights.
Goals
Priority 0: Maintain all of my stable gymnastics skills, get a stable ring handstand, maintain ring swing handstand progress, improve ring swing mobility, get an L-Cross, improve ring straddle planche, improve ring press handstand, get a perfect pancake
Priority 1: Build back-uprise handstand strength, get a 2 second 1 arm handstand, even out leg strength
Priority 2: Get a manna, get a seated press handstand, do 3 one arm chin-ups
Priority 3: Improve endurance
With this information, I have the beginnings of a program in the form of daily exercise allotments.

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
2 hours	2 hours	2 hours	2 hours	2 hours	3 hours	3 hours

Program Structure

Now that you have goals and time for exercise, you might think it’s time to fill those blocks. First, however, you should plan the structure of your exercise regimen. By the end of this section, you will have the skeleton of your routine filled out. To do that you will decide:

How often to train.
How often to train each ability/goal.
How to vary training from day to day, week to week, and month to month.
How much to rest.

Before making those decisions, you’ll need to understand periodization, but first, a few definitions. It is important that you interpret my use of these words as defined below as it will increase the clarity of the remainder of the post.

Ability: A general category of capacities such as technique, speed, coordination, strength, endurance, and mobility.
Skill: A specific skill such as Floor Press Handstand.
Intensity: The degree of exertion in an exercise or workout. How hard the exercise is.
Volume: The amount of work done during a period of time (workout, day, week, month). This is the number of sets/reps/time multiplied by the intensity of the exercise.
Super-compensation: Improvement of an ability due to training it and resting. This is what happens when you do pull-ups on day 1, rest for 1 or 2 days, and can do more pull-ups on day 3 or 4. It’s the reason exercise improves abilities.
Fatigue: A reduction in abilities, usually due to training.

Periodization: Activity, Rest, and Super-compensation

In order to effectively periodize your routine, you have to understand super-compensation first.

Super-compensation

Super-compensation is what happens when you exercise an ability, rest it, and the ability improves beyond its original level.

When you exercise, you become fatigued and the ability you are training gets worse. As you rest, however, that ability recovers then super-compensates to a level greater than it was before you exercised. It’s a simple concept but it’s the key to improving performance through exercise, so make sure you understand before continuing.

Equally important are under-compensation and over-training. The former is what happens when you train too little. The latter is what happens when you train too much.

3 possible compensation curves demonstration super-compensation (ideal), under-training, and over-training. — 3 possible compensation curves: super-compensation (ideal), under-training (bad), and over-training (bad). The leftmost graph is your goal.

This picture provides part of the answer to the question, “how often should I train?” Answer: You should re-train each ability at the peak of its super-compensation curve then rest it until it re-peaks.

Unfortunately, this simplistic answer is complicated by a few factors:

Each ability recovers at a different rate than the others (generally 1 to 3 days). For example, you might recover from a strength workout in 2 days but need 3 days for an anaerobic endurance workout. That makes it hard to ensure every ability is trained when it peaks which results in under-training.
Training one ability (ex. Speed) can negatively impact the recovery of others (ex. Strength) and can even prevent the other abilities from super-compensating, resulting in over-training of those abilities.
Fatigue accumulates not only in individual abilities but also across all abilities at once. If you train every ability as soon as it peaks, you will exercise too much and end up overtraining, reducing your rate of improvement across all abilities.

Periodization

You can solve the challenge of maximizing super-compensation while avoiding over and under training with 3 forms of periodization:

Activity level: Vary the intensity and volume of your exercise across all timeframes.
Exercise selection: Vary the sport-specificity of your exercises throughout the year.
Ability selection: Vary the abilities you train each day and the abilities you are focusing on each month.

Activity Level

You should vary your activity level (volume and intensity) across short, medium, and long timeframes. That means that you will work out more/harder for some days/weeks/months while other days/weeks/months you will workout less/less hard.

Short Term

You can maximize short term recovery by scheduling high activity days, low activity days, and total rest days each week.

You should exercise 3 to 6 days per week, resting for the remainder. Depending on your baseline fitness as well as exercise volume/intensity, however, you may need more or less rest. If you accumulate a lot of fatigue from week to week, reduce your activity level. Conversely, if you are not making improvements, increase your activity level.

Medium Term

Even though you will vary your activity level from day to day, you will likely still accumulate some fatigue from week to week. To counter this, you should include 1 reduced activity week each month. The easiest way to do so is to do the same workouts but with lower intensity and volume.

Furthermore, you should increase volume and/or intensity for the first 3 weeks of the month to progressively overload the abilities you are training. This is very important because, as you improve, you need increased stimulus to continue to experience super-compensation.

Long Term

Finally, you should vary the volume and intensity of your program from month to month.

A high volume of exercise builds baseline fitness and stabilizes newly acquired abilities. High-intensity exercise rapidly improves the ability you are training. Intuitively, that means that alternating high volume months with high-intensity months will let you build new abilities, stabilize them, then build new abilities on top of your new baseline.

You can periodize volume and intensity as follows:

Start with low volume and low intensity.
Increase volume, building your baseline fitness while keeping the intensity low to moderate.
Peak volume and start to reduce it while increasing intensity–you should rapidly improve in the intensely trained abilities.
Peak intensity and increase volume once more-this should stabilize your new abilities.
Repeat steps 3 and 4 a few times, depending on the timing of your competition season.
Right before and during competition season, keep intensity low and volume moderate to maintain your abilities while staying recovered for your competitions.

Bringing it all together. In my case,
Next years competition season is 1 year away and my baseline fitness is good. I am therefore starting the year with a high level of volume and moderate intensity. I exercise 6 days per week, rest on the 7th, and use a 3 week accumulation to 1 week deload training pattern. I rest on Friday to ensure I am well recovered for long, high volume workouts on Saturday and Sunday.
In weeks 1 to 3, I am increasing volume. In week 4 I will deload. In weeks 5-7 I will increase intensity. In week 8 I will deload.

Deepening blue shows increasing volume followed by a deload week. Deepening pink/red shows increasing intensity followed by a deload week.

	Saturday	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Week 1	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Rest
Week 2	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Rest
Week 3	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Rest
Week 4	2 Hours	2 Hours	1.5 Hours	1.5 Hours	1.5 Hours	1.5 Hours	Rest
	Saturday	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Week 5	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Rest
Week 6	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Rest
Week 7	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Rest
Week 8	2 Hours	2 Hours	1.5 Hours	1.5 Hours	1.5 Hours	1.5 Hours	Rest

Exercise Specificity

Throughout the year, you should vary how closely your workouts resemble competition. As a general rule, the farther away the competition season is, the more general your exercises should be. The closer it is to your competition season, the more your workout should look like a competition.

For gymnasts, general exercise=swimming, directed exercise=handstand pushup, sport-specific exercise=back-uprise handstand, competitive exercise=partial/full routines.

By varying your exercise specificity, you not only avoid overtraining, but you also maximize improvement over the long term by building basic skills before building specific skills.

In my case,
I’m currently limited in the amount of competitive as well as general exercise I can do. Furthermore, the competition is 1 year away. Therefore, I am doing a lot of directed and sport specific exercise in an attempt to build up my baseline abilities.

Ability Training

You should select a few abilities to focus on each month and spend more time improving those while putting the others in maintenance mode. By focusing on a limited set of abilities each month, you can devote a lot of attention to each without overtraining.

Using your selected “focus abilities” as a guide, you should vary the ability you train each day to maximize recovery and train at the peak of your super-compensation curve. As discussed in the super-compensation section, perfectly aligning super-compensation curves is hard so you can use these rules of thumb as guides:

Coordination and mobility training are minimally fatiguing and you can train them daily.
Technique training requires maximal recovery so you should train it after rest days or after training days that don’t negatively impact the technique you want to train.
Speed and strength training should not be trained two days in a row as they negatively impact each other. Likewise, aerobic endurance and anaerobic endurance training days negatively impact each other. Therefore, you should alternate speed/strength work with aerobic/anaerobic endurance work.
You may be able to get away with training similar abilities two days in a row if different muscle groups are taxed. For example, upper body strength followed by lower body strength or sprints. Note, however, this can still lead to overtraining due to not giving the central nervous system sufficient recovery time between similar workouts.

In my case,
I am focusing on Technique, Upper and Lower Strength, and Mobility. I am not doing any speed or endurance training but the events I compete do not require a lot of speed so I don’t really train it. Anaerobic endurance, on the other hand, is essential but I have decided to deprioritize it until later in the season.

Day	Saturday	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Exercise Time	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Up to 1 Hour
Trained Abilities	Technique, Coordination, Mobility	Upper Strength, Mobility	Lower Strength, Mobility	Technique, Coordination, Mobility	Upper Strength, Mobility	Lower Strength, Mobility	Rest, Mobility
Target Skills	Ring Handstand, Jumps, Leaps	L-Cross, Press Handstand, Back-uprise strength, One arm Pullup	Hip Hinging	1 Arm Handstand Manna, Jumps, Turns, Scales	Planche, Levers, L-Support	Squat

Workout Plan

At this point, you know how to structure your program and now you’re ready to plan out what to actually do in each workout. To do so, you will need to know:

What order to train abilities in.
How to select exercises.
How many exercises to do.
How to arrange individual exercises.
How many sets and reps to do for each exercise.
How much weight/time to use for each exercise.

Ordering Abilities

Fortunately, it is easy to order ability training in a workout. You should always train abilities in the following order.

Warm-Up	General Warm-Up	Joint rotations and a short activity that elevates your heart rate.
	Dynamic Mobility	Arm, leg, and torso swings (not ballistic).

Main Workout	Specific Warm-Up	Warm-ups specific to the ability/skill you are about to train. Repeat as needed for each ability/skill in the workout.
	New Technique	Learning new skills.
	Known Technique	Drilling known skills.
	Speed	Reaction time, rate of movement, frequency of movement.
	Strength	Dynamic and static.
	Endurance	Anaerobic and aerobic.
Cool Down	Static Active Stretching	Stretches requiring muscle tension such as straddle L holds.
	Isometric Stretching	Stretches involving a repeating “squeeze, relax, deepen” cycle.
	Static Passive Stretching	Stretches with minimal muscular tension.

All of your workouts should start with a good warm-up and end with a good cool down. None of your workouts should include every ability listed in the main workout section. If you train more than one of these in a single workout, however, they should proceed in the order listed in the table (ex. New technique before known technique).

Finally, there is one exception to the order in the table above. Gymnasts may do static stretching in their skill-specific warm-up if the technique they are training requires demonstrating mobility. For example, warming up straddle splits is appropriate before practicing straddle presses.

In my case,
I start each workout with joint rotations and dance to warm up. I then perform kicks, torso twists, and arm swings. After completing this 15 minute warm up, I move on to the main part of my workout which involves work on specific goals. Finally, I finish with 20 to 30 minutes of stretching to cool down.

Day	Saturday	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
Time	3 Hours	3 Hours	2 hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	2 Hours	Up to 1 Hour
Trained Abilities	Technique, Coordination, Mobility	Upper Strength, Mobility	Lower Strength, Mobility	Technique, Coordination, Mobility	Upper Strength, Mobility	Lower Strength, Mobility	Rest/Mobility
Warm Up	Joint Rotations, Dancing, Dynamic Mobility	Joint Rotations, Dancing, Dynamic Mobility	Joint Rotations, Dancing, Dynamic Mobility	Joint Rotations, Dancing, Dynamic Mobility	Joint Rotations, Dancing, Dynamic Mobility	Joint Rotations, Dancing, Dynamic Mobility
Main Part Target Skills	Ring Handstand, Jumps, Leaps	L-Cross, Press Handstand, Back-uprise strength, One arm Pullup	Hip Hinge	1 Arm Handstand, Manna, Jumps, Turns, Scales	Planche, Levers, L-Support	Squat
Stretching Cool Down	Isometric Stretching, Static Passive Stretching	Isometric Stretching, Static Passive Stretching	Isometric Stretching, Static Passive Stretching	Isometric Stretching, Static Passive Stretching	Isometric Stretching, Static Passive Stretching	Isometric Stretching, Static Passive Stretching

Selecting Exercises

There are a few points you will want to consider while selecting exercises for the main part of your workout.

You should train movements, not muscles.
You should start by training general skills and increase specificity as you plateau.
You should train each movement with 5 to 10 sets per workout.

Train Movements, not Muscles

Many gymnasts make the mistake of training like bodybuilders, isolating muscles needlessly. Bodybuilders isolate muscles because it is the most effective way to build muscle. Gymnastics, however, is not bodybuilding and the goal is to precisely execute specific movements. Therefore, you should train movements, not muscles. That means no bicep curls, no tricep extensions, and limited use of weights in general. There are three exceptions to these rules:

Prehab exercises that isolate weak stabilizer muscles are important for improving joint stability.
Rehab exercises that isolate injured “large muscles” (ex. Hamstrings, biceps, etc) are important for recovery.
Weights are necessary for loading compound leg exercises such as squats and deadlifts.

Exercise Specificity

Ability and skill development are highly specific. That means that if you train one ability (ex. Endurance) you will see little or no carryover to other abilities (ex. Strength). Likewise, if you train one skill (ex. Handstand pushup) you will see little improvement in another (ex. Press Handstand). Taken even further, if you train a skill at one angle (ex. 30-degree front lever) you will not see perfect carry over to another angle (ex. Horizontal front lever).

This means that the fastest way to improve an ability or skill is to directly train that skill. However, there are a few caveats that may guide you to select a more general exercise.

You have to be capable of a skill to train it directly. In other words, if you can’t do a press handstand, you can’t train it directly.
If you train a skill with poor form you can “lock-in” that form, making it difficult to improve your form later.
If you train a skill too early (before you have developed a solid base from which to learn it), you may inadvertently cap how well you can perform the skill. It is hard to learn a skill, improve a “pre-requisite ability” for that skill, and successfully transfer that “pre-requisite” improvement into the already learned skill.

Taken altogether, it is preferable to train with the most general exercise which still improves your targeted skill or ability. If, for example, wall presses still improve your press, you should use those instead of training the press directly. In summary, start with general exercises then progress to more specific exercises as your improvement plateaus or your competition season approaches.

Number of Exercises

The number of exercises you work on per target skill per workout depends on your baseline fitness, available time, and exercise intensity. As a general rule, you should use 5-10 medium to high-intensity sets per trained movement. Time and energy permitting, you can add a few low to medium intensity accessory exercises per target movement.

Reminder: Remember that you need to recover and periodize exercise. Don’t take the above statement to mean you can do 10 high-intensity sets for 4 different movements every day. Similarly, if you work one movement a lot for one month, ease up the next month and work hard on something else.

If you’re having trouble coming up with exercises for the skill you are targeting, search online for “<skill> progression”. I’m also building out a list here.

In my case,
I target one ability but several skills each day and select a few exercises per skill. In the following table, I list the skills I target each day and the exercises I’m practicing to target that skill. Note that I have not ordered the exercises in each workout yet (that’s next). Some things to make note of.
1. I target one ability (ex. Strength) per workout but target several skills.
2. I target every skill with only a few exercises.
3. I limit isolation exercises, using them only for rehab and prehab.
4. I target skills with exercises that closely resemble my target skill and often just train the skill directly.
5. I train 6-10 primary exercises per workout and pick isometric mobility exercises that match the muscle groups trained in the workout.

	Target Skill	Exercises
Saturday	Ring Handstand	Warm up: handstands and holding weights in “handstand position” Ring Handstand
	Parallel Bar Handstand	Arch to hollow on parallel bars
	Swing Handstand	Swing handstand motion with light weights
	Leaps	Warm up: lunges and front split and leg swings Switch leaps
	Landing practice	Jump down and back from a box
	Straddle L	Warm up: Standing straddle L rotations Static Straddle L on Pbars Seated Straddle L leg lifts
	Mobility-Isometrics	Standing Wrist Tricep Overhead Tricep behind back Up Cactus Frog Seated Hamstring

Sunday	Seated Press Handstand	Warm Up: Handstands and standing straddle rotations Standing Press Handstand Straddle Back Arch Ups
	L-Cross	Warm Up: Band Cross Assisted L-Cross Heavy Band Cross’s
	Back Uprise Strength	Deep Pbar Handstand Pushups
	One Arm Pullup	One Arm Pullups – some assisted
	Ring Support Swing Handstands	Supported RTO “Swing” Hand on Rings
	Manna	Hanging Leg Lifts
	Mobility-Isometrics	Corico Brachialis Broom Lats Seated Trap Broom External Rotation

Monday	Straddle Strength	Horse Stance Floor Straddle L Lying Straddle Compression
	Hip Hinging	Warm Up: Wall Hinge + Dumbell Deadlift Dumbell Swings “Hamstring Curl” of the body – lay down, lift your hips by pulling your calves to your butt
	Calf strength	Calf Raises
	Lateral Movement	Glute Med Leg Raises
	Mobility-Isometrics	Straddle Knee Across Hip Calf Prone Quad

Tuesday	One Arm Handstands	Warm Up: Handstands One Arm Handstands Shoulder Rotations in “Handstand Position” but with feet on the ground
	Pbar Handstand Pirouette	Pbar Handstand Pirouette attempts
	Manna	Warm Up: Seated Compression + Hands Behind Press Up Pbar Vsit/Manna Attempts Wall Manna Press Ups Hands Behind Bridges
	Jumps	Broad Jumps
	Turns	Full Turns
	Balance	Scales
	Mobility-Static Active	Hands Clasped Behind Back
	Mobility-Isometrics	Seated Hands Behind Back Hands Above Head Wall Quad Broom Over Head

Wednesday	Planche	Warm Up: Planche leans Straddle Planche Ring Planche Leans Arch Ups Band Planche Press
	Back Lever	Warm Up: Skin the cat Back Lever Back Lever “Pull Out’s” on TRX Hollow Ups
	Ring L Sit	Warm Up: Compressions Ring L Sit
	Ring Swing Mobility	Shoulder Opener Band “Swings”
	Straddle	Lying Straddle Compressions
	Mobility-Isometrics	Floor wrists Corico Brachialis Head Neck Down Cactus

Thursday	Straddle Strength	Horse Stance
	Squat	Warm Up: Bodyweight squat Pistol Squat Box Squat Band Quad Extensions for my bad leg Lying Quad Extensions
	Calf strength	Calf Raises
	Lateral Movement	Glute Med Leg Raises
	Mobility-Isometrics	Straddle Knee Across Hip Wall Quad Outer Calf

Ordering Exercises

On top of ordering your workout by ability (discussed earlier), you should order individual exercises as follows:

Train the skills you want to improve the fastest first.
Train the most difficult skills, requiring you to be rested, first.

When these two rules conflict, just pick one and go with it.

Supersets

A superset is when you overlap exercises so that, instead of training all the sets for a single exercise in a row, you alternate exercises every set. For example, instead of doing 4 sets of pullups followed by 4 sets of handstand pushups, you do one set of pull-ups then one set of handstand pushups 4 times.

You can use supersets in many ways but my preferred pattern is to combine 2 or 3 exercises with little overlap (ex. Push, pull, core) into a superset and rest 90-120 seconds between each exercise. You can follow this pattern to give each movement a longer rest between sets without extending your workout.

In my case,
I use supersets in most of my strength workouts. As an example, I superset Press Handstands and Assisted L-Cross with 2 minutes of rest between each, working each 4 times. If I was not using a superset, I would need 2.5 to 3 minutes of rest per set and would significantly extend my workout. Furthermore, I get a few “fresh” sets for both exercises which would not be the case if I did 4 full sets of one before starting the other.
Note: For the sake of brevity, I have not relisted my program with ordered exercises here. I’ve ordered my selected exercises in the final listing of my program after the next section.

Sets, Reps/Time, Weight/Progression, Rest

The final step in completing your workout plan is deciding the number of sets, reps/hold time, weight/progression, and rest for each exercise. As you consider this section, keep in mind that the numbers below are not hard and fast rules but general guidelines. For example, nothing magical happens at 5 reps that eliminates strength gains and converts them to muscle mass gains.

Sets

You should train between 3 and 8 sets per exercise per workout, depending on both the total number of exercises in that workout and the intensity of the workout. Use fewer sets for high-intensity exercises or for movements that are trained multiple times in the workout. Use more sets for easier exercises, skills you are stabilizing, and endurance training.

Reps

You should select the number of reps per exercise based on the goals of that exercise. Generally: 1-4 reps improves strength, 5-25 reps taken to failure builds muscle, 25+ reps builds stability and endurance. A moderate number of reps (6-12) is great for stabilizing skills.

Time

You can think of time as the static equivalent of reps. Short holds build strength (if they are maximal), moderate holds build muscle, and long holds build stability/endurance.

Weight/Progression

You should use a weight or exercise progression that lets you complete the number of sets and reps you are targeting with the intensity you intended. If it is too easy, increase the difficulty/weight in your next workout. If it is too hard, decrease the difficulty/weight.

Rest

You should select the amount of rest between sets based on the goals of your workout.

For aerobic endurance workouts, you probably won’t rest at all. In contrast, for speed workouts (ex. Sprints) you may require 5-8 minutes of rest between sets.

When deciding how much to rest, keep its purpose in mind: you rest between sets so that you can perform the next exercise with the intended level of intensity, volume, or precision. If you are too tired for the next set, rest more. If you start to cool down, rest less. If you can’t recover without cooling down, reduce intensity.

You rest to let different forms of fatigue recover, depending on the ability you are training. For some activities (anaerobic) you need to let your heart rate drop and allow for your oxygen deficit to be eliminated before the starting the next set. For other abilities (strength) you need to let your muscles eliminate fatigue and regenerate energy stores before starting the next set. For still others (new skills) you need to let your central nervous system process the last skill and reduce its overall level of excitation before starting the next set.

In summary, let the goals of the workout dictate what to rest and how much to rest it.

In my case,
My finalized program is in the table below. Some things to note:
1. I arrange exercises using the guidelines I mentioned earlier with difficult/important skills earlier in the workout.
2. I use 3 to 8 sets per exercise, depending on the number of exercises targeting the same skill.
3. I use 2-100 reps and 3 second to max holds, depending on the goal of the exercise.
4. I don’t use many weights, except for prehab and leg exercise.
5. I rest from 0 seconds to 2 minutes depending on the intensity of the exercises.
6. I use supersets in several locations (highlighted).
As a reminder, I start each workout with a standard warm up of joint rotations, dancing, and dynamic mobility but I’ve left that out for brevity.

	Exercises	Sets	Reps	Time	Weight	Rest
Saturday	Warm up: handstands and holding weights in “handstand position”	2-3				20-30s
	Ring Handstand	8		Max Hold		120s
	Arch to hollow on parallel bars	6	4-6			120s
	Swing handstand motion with light weights	3	30		3lb/hand	None
	Warm Up: Lunges and front split and leg swings	3				None
	Switch leaps	5	2			60s
	Just down and back from a box	5	3			60s
	Warm up: Standing straddle L rotations	2				20s
	Static Straddle L on Pbars	3		Max		60s
	Seated Straddle L leg lifts	3	20			60s
	Standing Wrist Tricep Overhead Tricep behind back Up Cactus Frog Seated Hamstring

Sunday	Warm Up: Handstands and standing straddle rotations and band cross	2-3				20-30s
	Standing Press Handstand	4	5			2m
	Assisted L-Cross	4	5	3s		2m
	Deep Pbar Handstand Pushups	4	4			2m
	One Arm Pullups	4	3		Partial Assist	2m
	Straddle Back Arch Ups	4	12		2lb/leg	2m
	Supported RTO “Swing” Hand on Rings	4	10			1m
	Band Cross	4	15		Red + Grey Band	1m
	Hanging Leg Lifts	4	10		2lb/leg	1m
	Dumbell Shoulder Prehab	2	12		8lb	1m
	Corico Brachialis Broom Lats Seated Trap Broom External Rotation

Monday	Warm Up: Wall Hinge + Dumbell Deadlift	2				20-30s
	Horse Stance	4		35s		90s
	Dumbell Swings	4	15		41lb	90s
	“Hamstring Curl” of my body – lay down, lift your hips by pulling your calves to your butt	4	10			90s
	Floor Straddle L	3		Max		60s
	Calf Raises	4	15			None
	Glute Med Leg Raises	4	35			None
	Lying Straddle Compression	4	30			None
	Straddle Knee Across Hip Calf Prone Quad

Tuesday	Warm Up: Handstands	2-3				20-30s
	One Arm Handstands	6 per side		Max		90s
	Pbar Handstand Pirouette attempts	6	2			90s
	Shoulder Rotations in “Handstand Position” but with feet on the ground	1	50			None
	Warm Up: Seated Compression + Hands Behind Press Up	2				None
	Pbar Vsit/Manna Attempts	4				90s
	Wall Manna Press Ups	4	4			90s
	Hands Behind Bridges	1	50			None
	Broad Jumps	4	1			45s
	Full Turns	1	4			None
	Scales	4	1			20s
	Hands Clasped Behind Back	1		20s		None
	Seated Hands Behind Back Hands Above Head Wall Quad Broom Over Head

Wednesday	Warm Up: Planche leans and skin the cat and compression	2-3				20-30s
	Straddle Planche	4		Max		90s
	Ring L Sit	4		20s		90s
	Back Lever	4		10s		90s
	Ring Planche Leans	4	5	2s		90s
	Back Lever “Pull Out’s” on TRX	4	12			90s
	Arch Ups	4	30			90s
	Band Planche Press	4	12		Red Band	None
	Band “Swings”	4	12		Red Band	None
	Hollow Ups	4	30			None
	Shoulder Opener	1	50		3lb/hand	None
	Lying Straddle Compressions	1	100			None
	Floor wrists Corico Brachialis Head Neck Down Cactus

Thursday	Warm Up: Bodyweight squat	2	10			20-30s
	Horse Stance	4		35s		90s
	Pistol Squat	4	10/leg			90s
	Box Squat	4	10/leg			90s
	Calf Raises	4	15			None
	Glute Med Leg Raises	4	35			None
	Band Quad Extensions for bad leg	4	10		Red Band	None
	Lying Quad Extensions	1	50			None
	Straddle Knee Across Hip Wall Quad Outer Calf

Conclusion

That’s it. If you take everything above into account, you should be able to construct a solid gymnastics program. I hope you learned something. If you have questions, critiques, or just want to show appreciation, I’d be happy to hear from you in a comment.

This Post Has 2 Comments

Zoe 2021-05-24 Reply

This is a fantastic guide for someone starting out training gymnastics (me!), and the exercise list is awesome too. Thanks for this!
Shmo 2021-06-16 Reply

Thanks so much for sharing you learning’s. Really appreciate it & I hope training is going well for you!

Creating a Gymnastics Exercise Program

Takeaways

Resources

Goals, Resources, and Constraints

Program Structure