- Team USA senior men's
gymnast Yul Moldauer took us through his at-home workout routine. - He fit a pommel horse in his garage and an AirTrack mat in his backyard to train.
- Moldauer also installed hooks on his garage ceiling to attach different types of
gymnastics rings.
Following is a transcript of the
Yul Moldauer: Hey, guys. My name is Yul Moldauer. I'm on the US senior national team for men's gymnastics. Today I just wanna show you some of the exercises that I've been doing in my own house just because all the gyms are closed. The first thing that I do is always five presses on these two chairs.
We're gonna need some open space, and just for you guys, I wanna show you the gym I've kinda created in my own garage, so let's go check it out. And welcome to the garage! This is the workout space that I've been using to train. It consists of a horse, some rings, and the blue mat right there is an AirTrack that's super easy to pump up and tumble on. If you can keep up with horse and your endurance, you know, coming back on horse is way easier.
OK, guys. It's kinda hard to explain what I'm doing while I'm working out on the horse, but what I'm gonna be showing you guys is, you know, I'll be swinging my body around with my legs split, and those are called flares. And as soon as I start moving forward down the horse, that's called a travel. And then when I move downwards backwards, that's called a sivado. When I put my feet back together, those are called circles. I'm gonna be doing flares again, but instead of doing them this way on the horse, I'm gonna be doing them sideways, and what I'm gonna be doing is called a flare spindle. So, I'm actually gonna be circling one way, and then I'm gonna turn my body completely opposite.
OK, so, this next station I have, these are called rings, and I put them on hooks so I could easily adjust to whatever station I need. So, these are normal rings, and they probably stretch to about where, you know, almost the ground is, but these are nice if you actually wanna do upper-body strength. And then that right there is called a dream machine, and what it does is it helps use your body weight to hold you in certain positions. So, these black set of rings are really good for position holds, so I'll just show you what I've been doing on these types of rings. So, I've been doing a cross and cross pulls. So, you really go here, pull up. So, it's really nice to have, you know, higher rings for stuff like that. I came up with the hooks, and I knew that we'd have more ring strength. And I did that because it would be really easy to just come up, unhook these, grab these, and just be able to do different types of stations. So, there's that. [clanging] All right. So, this ring station is called a dream machine, and we call it the dream machine because it makes your strength feel so light, and you literally, like, dream of, like, being that strong. So, it's really easy. It's just a pulley system using your body weight, and all you have to do is pretty much strap in and literally just do positions. So, I'll do some cross pulls. Some Malteses. And that's that.
Most important muscles for a gymnast I would say is, as a general term, their upper body. The core is the most important muscle for gymnasts. The first
Gymnasts use a lot of shoulder strength, a lot of planche work, a lot of press work, almost on every single event. Your dismount, your floor sequence, like, transition sequences. You know, if I can tumble, you know, it'll keep my ligaments loose, my ankles, you know, strong for when I go back and tumble on the real floor.
A lot of people have asked me how my schedule has been changed, and it has been changed. Each week, you have to go into the mindset not knowing if you'll be back into the gym yet. You know, it's no one's fault, it's just the situation that we're in. My garage has been more than I could ask for. A lot of people have helped me get, you know, all the equipment here, my head coach, Mark, SideLine Scout for installing the replay video, AirTrack has provided me a tumbling strip, and GK's just been there, you know, throughout, providing me the clothes to work out in. Thank you to, you know, all the medical staff out there, from the bottom of my heart.