COMBINING WEIGHT TRAINING WITH PLYOMETRIC TRAINING IN WOMEN’S ARTISTIC GYMNASTICS

Women’s artistic gymnastics is supposed to be a sport of grace and beauty. The way gymnastics is practiced nowadays has made us change our perspective on how the training of female gymnasts should be regarded. Current exercises contain elements of great difficulty, which cannot be performed efficiently without appropriate physical training. This physical training has a dual role: on the one hand, it predisposes the body to high and very high efforts, and on the other hand, it prevents injuries that may occur during training or competitions. In the training methodology of gymnasts worldwide, weight training has been used for some time. Therefore, we decided to introduce high-load weight training combined with plyometric training in the workouts of Romanian female gymnasts. The research presents a 22-week program combining the two strength development methods, the results obtained before and after program implementation, how the loads were adapted during the experiment, and the way of applying the proposed program. The results of the experiment encourage us to continue applying this program as a training method for future competitions. It is worth mentioning that, when establishing training loads in this sport, the specifics of each apparatus should be taken into account, as their demands are different, and a proper understanding of the real training stimulus might require more than just the number of repetitions and training loads.