ABSTRACT

First and foremost, gymnastics should be its own injury countermeasure. Gymnastics is injury prevention. "Medical gymnastics" was a form of both treatment and prevention of injury and health promotion through the use of calisthenics, breathing exercises and therapeutic activities. When gymnastics participation shifts from play to organized practice, many aspects of injury prevention principles come into play. Studies of monitoring and regulating training load among gymnasts are rare with many articles coming from a single author, and only a few on men's gymnastics. Landing "pit" areas have nearly revolutionized gymnastics training and find themselves used in Parkour training, extreme sports, aerial skiing, mogul skiing, snowboard half pipe, circus and even jumping motorcycles. Training plans and methods have been produced to assist coaches in providing their assistance and emergency personnel direction on how one might go about rescuing a gymnast in a foam pit.