Gymnastics Physical Therapy

What Can Physical Therapists Do For Gymnasts?

Gymnastics is a complex sport that combines strength, flexibility, and precision, placing strenuous demands on the body. The intense training and repetitive movements required can lead to various muscular and skeletal injuries, particularly in the upper body and back due to overuse.

Gymnasts often experience significant stress on their shoulders, wrists, and spine. Additionally, the high-impact nature of the sport, especially during landings, puts the lower body at risk for injuries, such as sprains, fractures, as well as knee and ankle ligament tears.

Common gymnastics injuries may include not only orthopedic overuse injuries, but also issues such as incontinence or pelvic pain. Early identification, injury evaluation and treatment can keep you in the gym, ensure a safe return to the sport, or prevent re-injury and pain persistence.

Physical therapy and gymnastics rehabilitation sessions can focus on addressing impairments, functional limitations, and/or sport-specific conditioning as needed.

How does Gymnastics Physical Therapy work?

We will start with a thorough evaluation by a physical therapist to review your past medical history, factors affecting recovery, current skill set, and goals.  From there, we will go through a functional screen/movement assessment to identify impairments that might contribute to current symptoms or risk for future injury.

We will work together to determine a specialized exercise program to address these impairments to help you recover from injury or meet your performance goals.

Benefits of Physical Therapy for Gymnasts

1. Injury Prevention – By identifying threat factors and correcting imbalances, physical therapy allows reduce the chance of common gymnast injuries, especially for younger gymnasts.
2. Faster Recovery – If you’re injured, our bespoke approach focuses on restoring mobility, reducing pain, and rebuilding strength, allowing you to go back to training safely and fast.
3. Enhanced Performance – Targeted physical therapy also improves helps to improve performance by means of addressing weaknesses, improving strength, endurance and flexibility
4. Personalized Care – An expert physical therapist will meet your specific needs, whether you’re recuperating from an injury or seeking to enhance specific athletic performance.