Gymnastics
training program
Own your bodyweight — explosive tumbling power, rock-solid shoulders and wrists, and a core that never quits.
Your first month is free, with nothing to pay today. Then A$24.99/month, cancel any time. On the App Store and Google Play.
Train Smart’s gymnastics program is a complete weekly strength and conditioning plan periodised around your camp or competition block rather than a month of the year. It trains power-to-weight strength, explosive tumbling power and shoulder and wrist robustness, fits around your technical training, prescribes a weight in kilos for every working set, and retests you every four weeks on Weighted chin-up 3RM and Standing broad jump, plus the conditioning benchmark your running plan is built around.
Why this program exists
Everything is relative strength, so anything that adds mass without adding strength makes you worse — which rules out most of what a gym program tells you to do.
Power-to-weight is the only currency. The battery measures weighted pull-up, a press-to-handstand hold, broad jump and single-leg hop — and the prehab is built for shoulders and wrists that spend their life loaded overhead and inverted.
A default gymnastics week
This is the sport’s own template — the starting point before it is fitted to your days, your equipment and your season. Team nights and game day are protected; everything else moves to the days you are free.
What gymnastics is won with
These are the qualities the program is built to develop, in priority order. They come from the sport, not from a generic template.
- Power-to-weight strength
- Explosive tumbling power
- Shoulder + wrist robustness
- Core control + compression
- Active mobility
| Session | Type | Duration | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Power-to-Weight Strength | Gym | 55–65 min | Relative strength + explosive tumbling |
| Tumbling Conditioning | Conditioning | 30–40 min | Repeat explosive efforts without fading |
| Shoulders + Core | Gym | 50–60 min | Pressing robustness + compression strength |
| Apparatus Training | Skills | — | Skill practice |
The season changes the program
- Pre-season
- Between competitions — set volume ×1.2. Build the engine and the strength base.
- In-season
- Competition block — set volume ×0.7, prescribed weights hold. Maintain, don’t drain.
- Off-season
- Off-period — baseline volume. Rebuild general strength and fix the niggles.
- Block structure
- Four-week blocks: three weeks accumulating, one week deload. The block’s character changes across the year rather than repeating.
- Game day
- Protected. The day before gets a 20-minute explosive primer with no running, no heavy legs and no prehab block bolted on.
The gymnastics testing battery
Five numbers, re-run every four weeks. Chosen to match what gymnastics programs actually measure — and the results re-price your training weights and reset your conditioning paces.
| Test | Measures | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| 2km time trial | The aerobic benchmark your program is built around. | mm:ss |
| Weighted chin-up 3RM | Pulling strength once bodyweight has stopped being a challenge. | kg added |
| Handstand / pike press hold | Overhead pressing robustness at your own bodyweight. | s |
| Standing broad jump | Horizontal power — the direction you actually accelerate in. | cm |
| Single-leg hop for distance | One-leg power and the left-right gap that predicts injury better than either leg alone. | cm |
What is actually in a gymnastics program
Every movement below appears in the sessions above, with the coaching cues the app shows you, the sets and reps it is prescribed at, and ranked alternatives if you cannot do it. The weight is calculated from your own last top set.
| Movement | Appears in | Why it is there | Trains |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad Jump | Power-to-Weight Strength | Horizontal shot power on the double-leg | Quads · Glutes · Calves |
| Bulgarian Split Squat | Power-to-Weight Strength | Single-leg power + change of direction | Quads · Glutes |
| Depth Drop → Rebound | Power-to-Weight Strength | Reactive power off the floor | Quads · Glutes · Calves |
| Front Squat | Power-to-Weight Strength | Quad and trunk strength in the upright posture sport actually loads | Quads · Glutes |
| Jefferson Curl (light KB) | Power-to-Weight Strength | Loads spinal flexion and hamstring length together, then holds there — the range you land and bend in, owned rather than avoided | Hamstrings · Glutes · Back |
| Nordic Curl | Power-to-Weight Strength | Hamstring injury prevention — the #1 AFL injury | Hamstrings |
| Overhead Squat Hold | Power-to-Weight Strength | Ankle, hip and shoulder range in one chain, held long enough to expose and then change the limiting one | Quads · Glutes · Shoulders |
| Trap Bar Jump | Power-to-Weight Strength | A loaded jump — peak power output with no barbell skill to learn first | Quads · Glutes · Calves |
| Weighted Pull-Up | Power-to-Weight Strength | Wrestle + grip strength | Back · Biceps |
| Wrist Extensor Eccentric — end-range hold | Power-to-Weight Strength | The wrist and forearm loaded eccentrically — the only thing shown to fix a stubborn tennis elbow, and the joint every hand-plant and stick sport punishes | Forearms |
| Incline DB Press | Shoulders + Core | Upper strength for shielding the ball | Chest · Triceps |
| Pike Push-Up | Shoulders + Core | Overhead pressing strength for handstands | Shoulders · Triceps |
| Scapular Pull-Up — bottom hold | Shoulders + Core | Strength at the very bottom of the hang, which is where a shoulder is most exposed and where nothing else in the program loads it | Shoulders |
| Weighted Chin-Up | Shoulders + Core | Contested marking + tackle strength | Back · Biceps |
| Weighted Dead Hang | Shoulders + Core | Decompresses the spine and loads the shoulder at full overhead range — the cheapest overhead flexibility work there is | Back · Biceps |
Staying available
The prehab block is matched to the region of the session it sits in and to the tissue this sport actually punishes — not a generic mobility flow bolted to the front.
Prehab only works if it happens, and the reason it usually does not is that it has nothing to do with the session it is attached to. Rotating a pool by session number puts shoulder work before a squat day and Copenhagen planks before a bench press. Technically covered; nobody does it.
In Train Smart each movement is classified by the region it protects and matched to the session, and the pool rotates across the week so you cover all of it rather than doing the same three moves three times.
More on prehab that people actually do →
What the free month covers, and what comes after
The first month is one complete four-week block — three building weeks and a deload. The first retest comes after that block, and it is the first time the program measures what your training did.
- Week 1
- Testing session on the gymnastics battery. Your starting weights and paces come from it.
- Weeks 1–3
- The first block builds. Hit your reps and the weight goes up on its own.
- Week 4
- Deload — the week the previous three become fitness.
- Week 5
- Retest. The results re-price your weights and reset your conditioning paces.
- Weeks 5–8
- Block two changes shape, priced from the top sets you just did and the numbers you just tested.
Gymnastics training questions
What does the Train Smart gymnastics program include?
When is gymnastics pre-season?
Can I follow this program if I only train twice a week?
What tests does the gymnastics program use?
Do I need a full gym?
Get your gymnastics program
Pick gymnastics, answer eight questions, and your week is built — around your team nights, your game and the days you can actually train.
Your first month is free, with nothing to pay today. Then A$24.99/month, cancel any time. On the App Store and Google Play.
- Install itFree to download on iPhone and Android.
- Tell it how you playYour sport, your season, the nights you train and the kit you have. No account needed.
- See your week, then start freeYour program is built before you pay anything. Start the free month to unlock it, and cancel any time in your store settings.