Advertise on podcast: The MedGym Podcast

Tiago Bessa competed for Portugal for a decade, then looked at a stress-strain graph in a university materials class and realized the high bar he had swung on since he was four is a spring. Now he engineers gymnastics equipment at SPIETH. Tiago is a mechanical and product engineer at SPIETH Gymnastics, the apparatus supplier for the 2026 World Championships in Rotterdam, and a former elite men's artistic gymnast who represented Portugal at European and World Championships. He speaks both languages: what an athlete feels on a piece of equipment, and what the physics says is actually happening. This bonus episode is the engineering companion to Episode 06. Gina brings the body half of every answer, from knee torsion to the Achilles, and Tiago turns the questions back on her: how should a skill be planned so the body can survive it, and for how long? In this episode: The moment in a materials science class when the high bar became a springWhy brand-new equipment is the slipperiest it will ever be, and why a new springboard is stiffer than a used oneSitting out the warm-up to watch: how the feel of the equipment changes routines at the last minute"We'll see how the day feels," the backup vault, and why that is the smartest answer an athlete can giveWhat is inside a landing mat: three layers, three jobs that pull against each otherWhy the closest mat in the gym is not always the right oneWhen a softer mat is not safer: twisting landings, a stuck foot and the kneeHow a spring floor stores a landing and gives it back, and what that means for the AchillesPossible and sustainable: twenty years of floors, and the skills they made possibleGina's three rules before adding a skill, and why heel raises are not enoughTiago Bessa is a mechanical and product engineer at SPIETH Gymnastics. The practitioner directory, the gymnastics sports medicine certification for healthcare practitioners, and every episode's show notes are at medgym.net. New episodes of The MedGym Podcast every other Thursday. If this one is useful, send it to a coach, a parent, an athlete or a practitioner who needs it. Chapters 0:00 Welcome: feel and physics 1:33 Three generations of gymnastics 2:47 The high bar is a spring 4:02 Between the coach and the engineer 6:05 Gina's own turning point 8:52 What athletes miss: load management and physics 11:22 By feel: when the equipment doesn't feel right 13:22 He sat out the warm-up to watch 14:16 Why brand-new equipment is slippery 15:22 The backup vault: "We'll see how the day feels" 17:43 Friction, the slider and testing to the standard 21:30 Every gymnast preps the beam their own way 23:49 What's inside a landing mat 27:48 The closest mat isn't the right mat 30:04 Three reasons to change the mat 32:26 From the drawing board to the drop test 39:12 What a landing is protecting 41:25 Softer isn't safer when you're twisting 43:02 The Achilles question 47:45 A spring floor gives it back 50:36 Possible and sustainable: twenty years of floors 53:21 Planning a skill two years out: Gina's three rules 57:25 Physics lessons: the shin, the ankle and the Achilles 59:44 Thirty degrees shy, over and over 1:01:55 Pain is pain 1:04:15 One thing to carry out of today

Every gymnast at Worlds lands on the same mats, swings on the same bars and punches off the same boards. Jan Stechmann and Jeanette Wörner of SPIETH, the company that built them, spend the hour on what nobody watching at home thinks about. SPIETH has been building gymnastics equipment since the 1950s. It made the tension springboard that debuted at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, has supplied twelve Olympic Games, and is the apparatus supplier for the 2026 World Championships in Rotterdam. Jan Stechmann is managing director of SPIETH America and runs the company's business across Germany, Canada and the US. Jeanette Wörner is head of sales and marketing at SPIETH Gymnastics in Germany. Gina recorded this two days before Rotterdam opens, as the trucks were arriving. It is a physical therapist's tour of the equipment: what "bouncy" actually means to a body, why foam wears out where everyone lands, how a floor is built so it never comes apart under a triple full, and what a gym can check tomorrow. In this episode: Fifteen to twenty trucks, two podia and seven sets of equipment: what it takes to load in a World ChampionshipsWhy nobody at Worlds competes on brand-new equipment, and who breaks it in firstWhat "bouncy" means as ground reaction force, and why 78% back versus 85% throws off a landingHow a new springboard gets dropped on a thousand times before an athlete ever touches itThe question every gym owner asks a supplier, "how long does it last?", and Jan's answer: what are you doing with it?When did you last lift the carpet? The safety check most gyms never doVorspannung, the German idea that the equipment works with the gymnast, not against herInside a competition floor, from the concrete up: a sandwich, and a puzzleCable tension on bars and rings, measured instead of guessed by whichever coach set the barWhy the podium feels different, and why the first few rounds of podium training are about over-rotationThe skill Jeanette still holds her breath forJan Stechmann and Jeanette Wörner are with SPIETH Gymnastics, the apparatus supplier for the 2026 World Championships in Rotterdam and the equipment supplier for the LA 2028 Olympics. The practitioner directory, the gymnastics sports medicine certification for healthcare practitioners, and every episode's show notes are at medgym.net. New episodes of The MedGym Podcast every other Thursday. If this one is useful, send it to a coach, a parent, an athlete or a practitioner who needs it. Chapters 0:00 What's under the chalk at Worlds 1:20 The load-in: trucks, technicians and two weeks in Rotterdam 6:17 Athletes, engineers and the rule book 9:41 What "bouncy" really means 11:34 From wood shop to foam: how the floor evolved 13:47 The bowling ball test, a thousand times in a row 15:39 Tires, WOGA and Level 5s: when foam wears out 17:01 Nobody competes on brand-new equipment 17:54 Why gymnasts love a SPIETH beam 21:40 How long does gym equipment last? 23:40 Service visits and the 120-pound athlete 25:57 When did you last lift the carpet? 27:13 Twice-a-day checks at Worlds 28:58 How equipment gets certified 32:23 Mats, cores and absorbing the triple back 36:07 Vorspannung: equipment that works with you 37:31 Achilles injuries and next-generation equipment 40:14 Inside a competition floor: a sandwich and a puzzle 44:09 Cable tension, measured 47:36 Why the podium feels different 50:35 Hopes for the future: beam dismounts, multi-mats and gym design 55:39 LA 2028 57:29 One thing to carry out of today

Simone Biles trained about twenty hours a week at fourteen. Aimee Boorman, the coach who set that number, explains why it was not forty. Aimee met Simone in 2003, when Simone was six years old, at Bannon's Gymnastix in Houston, and coached her for the next thirteen years: three world all-around titles, four Olympic gold medals in Rio, and never more than thirty-two hours a week in the gym. She is a four-time USA Gymnastics Coach of the Year, the 2016 U.S. Olympic Committee Coach of the Year, an FIG brevet judge, and the author of The Balance: My Years Coaching Simone Biles, with a foreword by Simone. Since Rio she has coached internationally, including with the Dutch team at the Tokyo Olympics, and she judges, coaches and mentors from Arizona. Gina and Aimee are friends, and this is a conversation between two people who have spent years on the same side of the same argument: that the way to get the most out of an athlete is not to use her up. It is the most practical hour the show has recorded, and it is full of numbers, every one of them smaller than you would guess. In this episode: What a training week looked like for Simone at fourteen, and why "she is superhuman" is the wrong explanationThe most hours she ever trained, all the way through Rio, and what the extra hours were actually forThree beam routines a session, four full floor routines a week, and the assignment with a ceiling: hit three in a row, or make five, or do seven and we are doneWhy Aimee thinks that if Simone had been old enough for the 2012 Olympics, there would not have been a 2016"Let them get out of it": the pet peeve she has with coaches, and the one situation where it turns into "look deeper"The teenager who shouted "I just have PMS" across the gym, and why her coach loved itThe one skill they decided was not worth the risk, and why the reason was a podium, not an abilityTokyo from the end of the vault runway: what she saw on Simone's first step, and what the people around her got rightThree things a coach should never say to a kid who is scared of a skillAm I going to be the coach who breaks her, and the line that answers it: there had been Simones before Simone Aimee Boorman judges, coaches, mentors and speaks from Arizona. The practitioner directory, the gymnastics sports medicine certification for healthcare practitioners, and every episode's show notes are at medgym.net. New episodes of The MedGym Podcast every other Thursday. If this one is useful, send it to a coach, a parent, an athlete or a practitioner who needs it. Chapters 0:00 The coach who kept Simone Biles at twenty hours a week 1:40 About twenty hours a week at fourteen 5:51 Beam numbers: three in a row, five total, seven and we're done 9:45 Lesson plans, diaries, and following the athlete 12:06 Twenty to thirty-two hours, and what the national staff saw 15:31 The Balance: the whole person, including the coach 20:35 Pacing a prodigy: 2012 would have been the end of her 27:39 Working backwards off the calendar 31:58 The shoulder, and "let them get out of it" 32:59 "I just have PMS" 37:24 The Yurchenko triple they walked away from 39:35 "There had been Simones" 40:11 Soreness or injury, and making the numbers safer 45:22 Hang, don't tap, and back up on the podium 47:19 Tokyo: the first step, and failing safely 52:32 Three things never to say to a scared kid 54:04 The state of the sport 59:44 Where to find Aimee

Dr. Brian Cole operates on professional athletes for a living. Four out of five people who walk into his office will never be operated on at all. He is an orthopedic sports medicine surgeon at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush, a professor at Rush University Medical Center, and team physician for the Chicago Bulls, the Chicago White Sox and the Joffrey Ballet. He has published more than a thousand articles, he has spent twenty five years building the evidence base for cartilage restoration, and in 2025 he won one of the biggest research awards in orthopedics for his work on joint preservation. He also trademarked the phrase "spare the scalpel," which is an unusual thing for a surgeon to build a practice around. Gina and Dr. Cole have worked together for more than twenty years, and this is a conversation between two people who send each other patients. It is less an interview than an argument they both already agree on: that the hardest part of this work is never the operation, and that most of what shows up on a scan was never the problem. In this episode: Why no more than twenty percent of the people in his office will ever have surgery, and what the other eighty percent get insteadThe first question he asks a patient, which is not where it hurtsWhy he says nobody has ever felt better or been cured by an MRI, and what a two page scan report actually tells youThe seven million people over sixty five walking around with a rotator cuff tear they will never know aboutWhat actually predicts whether physical therapy works, which is not the size of the tearWhy ACLs almost never tear in the first quarter, and what film of NFL knees showed when they went looking for different mechanismsWhat PRP and stem cell injections really do, from the surgeon who chairs the board that governs their ethical useGina on baseline testing, and why the only jump height that matters is the one you had beforeA Volkswagen body with a Ferrari engine, and the fourteen year old brains making adult decisionsWhy he thinks of himself as a waiter, and what he wants you to do before your next appointmentDr. Brian Cole practices at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush in Chicago. The practitioner directory, the gymnastics sports medicine certification for healthcare practitioners, and every episode's show notes are at medgym.net. New episodes of The MedGym Podcast every other Thursday. If this one is useful, send it to a coach, a parent, an athlete or a practitioner who needs it. Chapters 0:00 The surgeon who trademarked "spare the scalpel" 1:16 Why cartilage, and a field with no algorithms 7:28 A Volkswagen body with a Ferrari engine 11:04 ACL in young athletes and the downstream epidemic 15:33 Why ACLs tear in the fourth quarter 17:21 Baseline testing: you can't test the leg after it tears 20:55 Art and sport, and why dancers are the hardest 24:45 "The surgery is the easy part" 28:33 Spare the scalpel 32:56 Nobody has ever been cured by an MRI 39:11 What PRP and stem cells actually do 47:52 Masking pain: cortisone and symptom management 50:09 Treating elite athletes: timelines and stakeholders 57:43 The waiter at the restaurant 59:18 Hold your coaches accountable

Jaycie Phelps did not make a single routine in warm-ups at the Olympic Games. Then she led off for the Magnificent Seven. She was sixteen, first up on the night the United States won its first Olympic team gold in gymnastics. What her coach Mary Lee Tracy said to her in the seconds before she saluted is the title of this episode, and it is still the sentence she coaches from thirty years later. The rest of the conversation is what came after. Three knee surgeries, including a cadaver meniscus transplant no gymnast had ever had, and a doctor who told her she would never compete again before helping her map the comeback anyway. She finished on her own terms. Now she runs the Jaycie Phelps Athletic Center in Indiana, where every athlete is tested once a month and the whole program is built on the idea that confidence is a training effect rather than a personality trait. Leading off at the Olympic Games with zero warm-up hits, and the thing a coach says that makes a routine possible anywayThe comeback that was supposed to be impossible: three surgeries, a cadaver meniscus, and a doctor who mapped out how many punches she had leftHer actual assignment sheet, from fall preseason to the week before regionals, and how it flexes for the athlete having a rough dayWhy athletes hide pain, and what they are really protecting when they stay quietConfidence as a training effect: the numbers-to-consistency-to-swagger chain her gym runs onWhy skills get harder and more dangerous as an athlete gets weaker, and what monthly testing catchesThe year and a half after Atlanta when seven teenagers were rock stars, and what nobody prepared them forRepeating a level as a strategy rather than a setbackThe moment at thirteen when she nearly quitChapters 0:00 Intro 3:26 Nearly quitting at thirteen 4:13 Third surgery, and starting to coach 6:58 Mary Lee, Cincinnati, and training beside Amanda 12:19 Two bodies, same coach, similar assignments 17:33 Atlanta 1996, leading off with zero warm-up hits 20:57 "Do what you know how to do" 24:54 Building JPAC: the assignment sheet 31:09 Three surgeries and the cadaver meniscus transplant 35:25 Finishing on her own terms 37:20 Why athletes last longer now 41:35 Why athletes hide pain 44:44 Advice for parents: repeat years and the long game 47:08 Confidence as a training effect 48:18 Monthly testing, and why weak is dangerous 52:18 Off the floor in '96, and a year and a half as rock stars 55:29 Close 57:07 Gina's top takeaways

When a gymnast lands badly, the camera goes to her face. Dr. Mark Hutchinson is one of the people already moving. He has been one of them at six Olympic and Paralympic Games, three of those as head physician for all of Team USA. He is a distinguished professor of orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Illinois Chicago, head team physician for UIC Athletics, and his first Games was Atlanta in 1996, the same summer the Magnificent Seven won gold across town. He and Gina have shared patients for years, which is why this conversation moves fast and goes deep. Two clinicians who have worked the same Games, the same athletes and the same arguments, on what it actually takes to keep an athlete whole. In this episode: Why elite sports medicine is a communication job before it is a surgical one, and how you earn the right to say "they need water"What changed in thirty years, from coaches who trained without water breaks to a Team USA mental health program that leads the worldThe overtraining thread running through nearly every injury he sees, and the season his soccer program had six hip labral injuries instead of oneWhy "back in four months" is not an ACL plan, and what functional testing and mental readiness screening replaced it withWhat athletes tell him after he asks the coach to step out of the roomBiologics, honestly: PRP, stem cells, the $2,000 shot insurance will not cover, and why an injection is not caulkThe Achilles warning signs most people train straight through, and the antibiotic risk factor almost nobody hears aboutSpecialization, wearables, and the duty that comes with choosing one sportRio 2016, the Final Five, and the moment he remembers best, which has no medal in it Dr. Mark Hutchinson practices at the UIC Sports Medicine Center in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. The practitioner directory, the gymnastics sports medicine certification for healthcare practitioners, and every episode's show notes are at medgym.net. New episodes of The MedGym Podcast every other Thursday. If this one is useful, send it to a coach, a parent, an athlete or a practitioner who needs it. Chapters 0:00 Four seconds at the edge of the mat 3:00 What elite sports medicine actually is 9:48 Trust, honesty, and thirty years of change 12:50 Shared decision making: who has the final say 17:26 The mental health era 19:14 Overtraining: the common thread 26:05 Return to sport: testing over timelines 32:35 Do surgeons always pick surgery? 34:32 Biologics: the $2,000 shot 40:46 The Achilles nerd-out 51:41 Specialization and what to monitor 54:35 MedGym's baseline testing and load counting 58:14 Paris, Nathan Chen, and the Final Five 1:01:22 "Have a dream, be persistent"

A lot of people leave this sport when the sport is done with them. Amanda Borden never left. She was captain of the Magnificent Seven — the seven women who won the first Olympic team gold in American gymnastics history, in Atlanta in 1996. But this conversation is about everything that came after. She built her own gym. She has now spent far longer coaching this sport than competing in it. And she raised a Level 10 gymnast of her own — her daughter Kennedy, who competes for Alabama in the NCAA next season. Athlete, coach, gym owner, gym mom: four different seats in the same sport, and she’s still in love with it. Gina and Amanda talk about what a healthy gym actually looks and sounds like on an ordinary Tuesday night, how you keep a gym joyful and still get kids to a high level, and what coaching your own daughter teaches you about coaching everybody else’s. In this episode: The captain's vote she did not cast for herself, and who she wrote down insteadWhat Mary Lou Retton told the 1996 team about the press, and the sentence Amanda walked into the Georgia Dome repeatingWhy "why is it tight?" is a better question than another hamstring stretch, and what her own coach taught her about asking itHaving a voice as an athlete: being able to tell a coach yes or no, and not be in trouble for the answerWhat a healthy gym looks and sounds like on an ordinary Tuesday night, and why you watch the adults instead of the kidsThe gap between medically cleared and actually ready, and what "you're good to go" misses about a gymnastTwenty beam routines a day, or two: coaching athletes with completely different capacities in the same gymCoaching her daughter Kennedy from Level 8 to Alabama, and the rule she set before any of it startedTelescope goals, microscope goals, and the ladder goal in betweenAmanda Borden coaches at Gold Medal Gymnastics in Tempe and Chandler, Arizona. The practitioner directory, the gymnastics sports medicine certification for healthcare practitioners, and every episode's show notes are at medgym.net. New episodes of The MedGym Podcast every other Thursday. If this one is useful, send it to a coach, a parent, an athlete or a practitioner who needs it. Chapters 0:00 Cold open and introduction 1:15 Atlanta at thirty: "more magnificent women now" 3:13 The captain's vote 5:31 "I'm Amanda from Finneytown, Ohio" 7:48 Learning to have a voice 9:40 "Why is it tight?" What Mary Lee Tracy taught her 12:14 Why she opened a gym 16:37 What a healthy gym looks like on a Tuesday 20:44 "Good to go": cleared versus ready 27:45 Twenty beam routines, or two 30:44 Coaching Kennedy 35:38 Recruiting, from the mom's side 41:15 Telescope, microscope, ladder 49:58 Close

The athletes we love deserve better than we've given them. For 25+ years, physical therapist and sports-medicine specialist Gina Pongetti Angeletti has been the person athletes, coaches, and crying parents turn to on the competition floor when something hurts and no one can say why. After thousands of those conversations, she's opening them up to everyone. The MedGym Podcast is coffee talk with friends — the honest kind — about health in sport: why some athletes thrive while others quietly break down, and what it really takes to keep a body and a mind in the game. Across three pillars — mental, physical, and training — Gina gathers the best physicians, trainers, coaches, and clinicians in gymnastics, dance, and figure skating, plus the athletes who came out the other side whole, telling you how they did it. The why and the how behind it all, with a sprinkle of humor and a whole lot of heart. New episodes every other Thursday. One heart, one body, one child at a time.