BIOMECHANICS

What is this thing called biomechanics ?

Biomechanics is perhaps the most important of sport sciences a gymnastics coach must understand. A thorough grasp of the main biomechanical theories can allow the coach to look at any gymnastic skill and evaluate it.

This guide will take you step by step through the relevant theories, starting with the most fundamental, and building on them to demonstrate more complex areas. For some of these fundamental areas, there are certain terms for which we must learn biomechanical jargon. Such as centre of mass and parabola. This is to make discussion of connected topics easier to understand.

Why do I need to understand biomechanics ?

The nature of this sport that we call gymnastics means that we are constantly trying to analyse what we are seeing or have just seen. Trying to work out why our gymnast has over-rotated, under-rotated, fallen, is too low, is too high, is too far from the bar or has just plain collapsed.

If we can understand some basic biomechanics, we can start to understand why these things have happened and enhance our coaching and increase the success of our gymnasts.