Perhaps you’ve noticed that we’ve been programming quite a bit of gymnastics work lately. Perhaps you are wondering why. Perhaps you don’t consider yourself particularly good at gymnastics and find the experience challenging. Perhaps challenging sometimes verges on frustrating. Perhaps you look at the programmed workout and feel some dismay. Perhaps you decide to skip working out today in favor of tomorrow.

We understand all of these possible feelings about gymnastics. Gymnastics is HARD. But we say to you also, gymnastics is IMPORTANT.

So if you’re feeling frustrated, as though you’re not feeling what you’re meant to be feeling, or as though you’re not getting anything out of it, let your coach know and we’ll help you! But whatever you do, don’t be a cherry picker: come in and give it your best shot!

Here are the reasons why.

Gymnastics is literally the ability to control the movement of your own body through space. It trains your proprioception (ability to know where the various parts of your body are in space,) balance, flexibility, and coordination in addition to making you stronger. All of these abilities become more and more important the older you get.

Gymnastics reflects your strength-to-bodyweight ratio. Training gymnastics will improve that ratio. A high ratio will make you feel superhuman, not to mention increase the probability that you’ll be able to execute handstand party tricks, and/or scale large walls to rescue people, and/or survive the zombie apocalypse.

Gymnastics is sexy. There’s a reason so many of you chose pull-ups or muscle-ups or handstand push-ups as your 2016 goals. It might be a bit less sexy when you’re putting in the hard work day-to-day to reach those goals, but keep thinking long term!

Gymnastics makes you better at other things. It improves your ability to maintain body tension, which is super handy for lifting heavy weights. It strengthens a lot of little in-between muscles that can make you more resilient and resistant to injury. It improves your ability to recognize when you’re not achieving good positioning and your ability to correct that.

Gymnastics is very good at exposing the holes in your game! It requires strength in all directions and orientations. It requires good mobility. It will help you figure out where your weaknesses are, and help you to remedy them.

To summarize, we’re programming gymnastics because we love you and we want you to be as strong and healthy and awesome as possible for as long as possible… so help us out and come to those gymnastics days with clear eyes, and a full heart. ❤