Gymnastics, when approached as a mode of exercise, takes no longer than any other conditioning program...

Two to three workouts a week of 30 to 60 minutes each would be enough to develop an impressive level of strength, balance, agility and flexibility, as well as learn an enormous variety of basic skills, should you be so inclined as to want to learn actual skills. In my opinion, nothing will build more functional strength, agility, coordination, balance and flexibility than a correctly designed gymnastics conditioning program.

As an older athlete, you’re probably not going to learn a triple back flip. But, who cares? Remember, you're not training for the Olympics, you are interested in health and fitness. You can still build an enormous amount of strength, learn an iron cross, press handstands, planches, levers, basic tumbling, basic swings etc. and be stronger, more agile and healthier than almost anyone else you are likely to meet. Not bad for a few workouts a week.

Enjoy the journey and the process of training. Each new skill learned or strength element achieved is a noteworthy milestone; celebrate them. Simply try to make the most of whatever talent fate has dealt you. As long as you have given every thing you have in doing your best and are making consistent progress, who cares what technical level you ultimately achieve?

I recommend spend the vast majority of your time focusing on physical preparation and perfecting basics. Patient, consistent work with an emphasis on exceptional quality in the basics and physical preparation builds the foundation from which all else if possible.

Yours in Fitness,
Coach Sommer

The commercial emphasis in recent years of Olympic Level competition has led to the belief that gymnastics is only for the young rather than of benefit for all.

Historically, gymnastics was pursued primarily for health and strength reasons, not simply as a forum for a few select elite athletes to showcase incredible technical elements. In the past, the opportunity to learn and train gymnastics skills for adults was considered an essential part of any physical training facility.

Functional strength/athletic ability is functional strength/athletic ability can be developed at any age and is quite separate from whatever level of technical expertise may be achieved with it. One former world champion gymnast from the early 1900’s commented that he had not started training until he was thirty years old. Consider the phenomenal physiques of many of the great Japanese competitors from the 50s, 60s and early 70s. They were supremely strong, agile and powerful; yet their level of technical gymnastics, by today’s standards, was low to intermediate at best.

It is also quite possible to maintain quite a strong level of gymnastics strength and ability well past what is commonly believed today. In the past many men competed into their late 30s and beyond; at the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, Masao Takemoto won the gold team medal and the silver medal on the horizontal bar, while finishing 5th in the All-Around -- all at the age of 41.

Mr. John Gill, rock climbing legend and the first man to integrate gymnastics conditioning into climbing, remembers seeing a photo of an older man, in the early 1960s, at a competition in Europe performing an iron cross and simply being listed as the oldest competitor - at 60 years of age. Imagine, at that time in Europe, competition at such an age was so commonplace that it merited no more than a casual footnote.

I also recently saw this video of a ?? year old Japanese man competing at a gymastics meet. While he is not the most technically proficient of athletes, I still find it incredible and inspiring that he continues to train and improve at his age. Insert video link here

I was once at an awards banquet where one of the guests of honor was George Nissen (inventor of the trampoline). At the time, George was about 80 years old and looked a little older than God himself. I had never been to a banquet for George before and had no idea what was coming. Suddenly the crowd around me starts chanting "George ... George" and this little, seemingly frail, old man steps up to the main table in the front of the room, does a press handstand and holds the handstand while the crowd continues to chant his name. I couldn't believe it.

Another and even stronger example is Mako Sakamoto. Coach Sakamoto is a former US National Champion form the late 60s. He is also the former coach of 1984 US Olympic Gold Medalist Peter Vidmar. Unlike his contemporaries, he has continued to maintain a reasonable level of conditioning over the years. He is now nearly sixty years old and while many of his old higher level skills are now beyond him, he can still do 75 free standing handstand pushups (on bars, lowering shoulders to hands) and a 7 minute free balancing static handstand among other things. In fact, in the not too distant past, he regularly humbled members of the U.S. Men’s National Team in handstand contests. There's nothing like getting your rear end whooped by a grandfather to motivate you to train harder.

Jack LaLanne, as you may or not know, was a gymnast - in particular a very fine hand balancer. I have always found it interesting to note that Mr. LaLanne didn't begin setting his records until he was 42 and continued setting them into his seventies.

I myself made the mistake of setting aside gymnastics conditioning for more conventional training. Now after many years of fruitless searching for something "just as good" as gymnastics training, I have returned to my roots. Much of my material comes from taking my programs for training National Team level
athletes and applying them to myself. I am certainly enjoying the journey.

In my opinion, it is not so much that gymnastics cannot be pursued as a healthy lifelong endeavor, but that our societies' collective opinion of what constitutes health and fitness has become skewed. Clearly age is not such a severe issue as it might seem. Most physical problems stem from disuse, abuse, improper training and a lack of motivation. We can accept the defeat of time or rise to the challenge. The choice is ours.

Yours in Fitness,
Coach Sommer

Most adults will find that they are substantially less flexible than in their youth.

There are a variety of reasons for this, however the primary one is simply that, compared to our younger days, we greatly restrict both our range and variety of movement during our daily activities. We lack spontaneity, agility and explosiveness; tending to endlessly repeat the same movement patterns (treadmill anyone?)

This situation is further compounded by the fact that traditional passive stretching protocols are relatively ineffective for most adults. Then what little progress is made often results in weakened joint integrity, which further degrades our already age diminished athletic capacity. In the long run, traditional flexibility training produces more aggravation than actual gains in flexibility for most adults.

The solution? Active flexibility and dynamic stretching movements, interspersed with passive stretching, result in much greater and faster results without bringing about a decrease in the efficiency of athletic movement. Focusing on active flexibility ensures that the joint's level of strength increases right along with its flexibility. For athletic purposes, I would rather have a "strong" beginning athlete with tight joints than one who is naturally "loose". With correct training, I can develop the required flexibility in the "tight" athlete. (Note: my entire active flexibility protocol is available in the Gymnastic Bodies volume, Liquid Steel).

In my opinion, the body performs best from a foundation of strength and this seems to apply to flexibility training as well. Without question, most adults are rigid, stiff, weak and relatively graceless. This however is mostly due to disuse rather than a matter of age. The body thrives on movement; great improvements and physical accomplishments are possible at almost any age.

Yours in Fitness,
Coach Sommer