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We've taken six of the world's top athletes
to find out what it takes to make a true Olympian.
Now we're working, come on!
- Testing, analysing. - Dig deep, come on!
Getting under the skin of an elite athlete...
..as we push their bodies to the max.
(ANATOMY OF A GYMNAST)
Artistic gymnastics
really does require a range of skills physiologically,
psychologically, technically across a broad
range of different disciplines.
When we look at gymnasts, what we're really looking for
is an all-round package.
Vanessa Ferrari is 25 years old and Italy's most decorated
female gymnast — a former world
and European all-round title holder.
The Olympic Games Rio 2016
was Vanessa's third appearance at a Games.
She placed 4th in the Floor Exercise
and proved once again why she is
one of the world's elite performers.
And few sports put a human body through
the levels of punishment that gymnasts experience.
(VANESSA FERRARI, ARTISTIC GYMNAST)
It's been a very difficult year for me.
First, I contracted glandular fever and then
I've had a problem with my tendon, which I haven't
fully recovered from yet, but thankfully I'm still able
to train and I'm sure I'll give my best.
Vanessa Ferrari!
We've brought Vanessa
to one of the world's leading human performance labs
to see what makes a gymnast's physiology so totally unique.
Vanessa's anatomy packs massive amounts of strength
and explosive power into a very compact body type.
The average female Olympic gymnast is smaller than 80%
of the adult population and Vanessa is even 10cm shorter
than most of her fellow competitors.
In general, female gymnasts tend to be petite -
they are short, they are light, and why is that?
Because the biomechanics of tumbling
require shorter individuals
in order to get the rotational speeds required.
But, at the same time, they have to be incredibly strong
and incredibly powerful in order to give them
the time to jump high to execute some of these
really complex moves.
We're going to do the DEXA scan first.
So, it's a test that measures your body composition
and bone mineral density, it's very quick.
A gymnast is not an endurance athlete, so we don't expect
Vanessa to show the same breakdown
between lean tissue and fat.
But the high impacts and rapid transitions of movement
that gymnastics require need a muscular physique,
so how will Vanessa measure up?
Your fat percentage is around 14,
quite below the average, as you suspected.
An Olympic rower has an average body fat percentage of 15.5,
Vanessa's 14.6 compares really well for an essentially
anaerobic athlete and, surprisingly,
not much more than the 13.7% of a track cyclist.
She is petite, perfect for gymnastics,
perfect for tumbling.
She's also incredibly lean, 14.6% body fat,
which tells you that the vast majority of her weight
is muscle mass and that is absolutely fundamental
to power production.
(DYNO)
The dynamometer test really is a measure of strength,
but we're also looking at the balance
between quadriceps and hamstrings.
Why does that matter? It matters for performance,
but it also matters for injury prevention,
particularly for gymnasts who are repeating moves,
over and over again.
The dyno test will quantify just how powerful
the muscles are that Vanessa needs
to complete the complex manoeuvres that form
the artistic gymnastics routine.
This is where we'll really see the strength behind the stats.
When we start the assessment in just a second,
I want you to push, push, push, push
and then pull back your leg as hard as you can as well.
OK? So, when you're ready,
Three, two, one, go!
Push, push, push. Good!
Vanessa may not be at full power output
due to her tendon injury,
but she is still pushing loads which are remarkable
for an athlete of her size.
Artistic gymnasts need this phenomenal power
to rotate their bodies
through as much as 900 degrees of movement
in less than a second,
and to gain heights approaching five metres
during the vault exercise.
Good, push, push, push!
Excellent! One more to go, push, push, push!
Pull it right back, well done.
Excellent, well done. As hard as you can.
Well done. Push, push push. Excellent, well done.
Vanessa's dyno test results show just
how powerful she really is,
her quadricep strength coming in at a higher rating
than elite football players.
And even with a debilitating tendon injury,
the force generated by her hamstrings gives her
an excellent power-to-weight ratio.
What we do know about Vanessa is that she is a former
all-round world champion.
She's had an incredible career from 2006
all the way through to 2016.
And one of the reasons for that is her physicality.
And her physicality is exceptional and what we see
from this test in particular,
the thing that surprised me the most,
was the balance between hamstring and quadricep,
and really underpins why she is able to perform
the incredible complex manoeuvres
that she can in gymnastics.
Vanessa's results are impressive,
but how does she measure up
against the other elite female athletes we've tested?
Jolanda Neff, the Swiss cycling sensation,
showed us her ability to deliver maximal power output
consistently over long periods of time.
Her superb dyno results demonstrating
a peak performance that more than compensates
for Jolanda's size advantage over the average gymnast.
Monika Hojnisz, the Polish Biathlon national champion,
excels in a sport based around the need
for exceptional endurance, but her leg strength produced
some truly surprising results.
Her raw output figures were good, but when normalised
for her body mass they were breathtaking.
This all gives her an unbeatable
power-to-weight ratio,
a physiological advantage that she could transfer
to the elite level of many other sports.
Recent studies have shown female athletes
are six times more likely to suffer leg injury
than their male counterparts and a key indicator
of resilience to leg injury is the ratio
of hamstring to quadricep strength.
A ratio between 50% and 80% is average
for a professional female athlete.
Gymnast Vanessa rates outstandingly at 89%,
cyclist Jolanda better still at 98%,
and biathlete Monika's stunning 132% tops the chart.
(UP CLOSE)
I started doing gymnastics when I was seven years old.
When I was little, I saw a beam gymnastics
competition on TV.
I can't remember which competition it was
or even who the gymnast was,
but I remember being so impressed
with what I saw that I begged my mother
to let me do this incredible sport.
I felt the pressure to do well when I was younger
and especially after becoming world all-around champion.
But now I'm older and have had to overcome
many difficulties throughout my career,
with the help of the people closest to me,
my coach and my family,
I know that I can only do my best.
That's why I don't feel any pressure,
except for that special tension before a competition.
Doing gymnastics involves a lot of sacrifice,
especially because we start at such a young age.
At first, you think it's all just a game
but then the expectation of success increases.
A lot of young athletes find these demands
difficult to handle.
To compete at the highest level
requires a lot of concentration.
As gymnastics is essentially an individual sport,
there's no-one to keep you calm,
especially at the Olympics
which is the most nerve-racking
of all competitions.
It's all about finding the right level of concentration
and isolating yourself from what's going on
around you to be able to perform to your best.
(FLEX)
The functional movement screen is going to tell us
a number of things about Vanessa.
Firstly, it's going to tell us about the range
of motion which is critical for gymnastic performance.
But what's key to that is actually stability
under that range of motion,
the ability to control those movements.
So, really, what we are looking at here is
fundamentally what gymnastics is all about -
it's about range of motion under control.
My best disciplines are the beam and the floor exercise.
They showcase my speed and explosive power
and, combined, with my flexibility
are my greatest strengths.
Artistic gymnastics works more muscle groups in the body
than almost any other Olympic discipline.
The flex test uses functional movement screening
to assess how close to optimum level Vanessa
can operate and how much her current injury
might be holding her back.
What we are looking at here is your mobility
and your stability, and this test
has been shown to have an ability to predict a person's
risk of injury and also their ability
to maintain or improve performance.
Over, touch your heel on the floor
and back to where you are with your left foot, please.
Artistic gymnastics requires Vanessa's body
to absorb massive impacts on landing.
She also has to sustain rapid shifts
in momentum during the extreme acceleration
and deceleration phases of her routines.
And, after 18 years in training, it takes a huge toll
on the body and its range of movement.
Push up so your hips stay on the floor,
extending your back.
The beam exercise demands the ultimate in flexibility
and precision of movement from a gymnast,
as they rotate their body at speeds of up to 20kmph
to land on an apparatus no wider
than the average smartphone.
Very slowly, keeping this leg very still
and making sure not to bend this one.
Pain in Vanessa's tendon and her reduced
thoracic spine mobility
are the results of recent training injuries
but her test results prove
she's still a world-class Olympian.
The results are excellent particularly in the areas
of core stability and hip stability, which is effectively
what we expect from a former world champion
in artistic gymnastics.
What that means is that not only is she able to move
through incredible ranges of motion but she's able
to do that under control.
So what she's able to do is not only perform these
complex skills but also present the aesthetic
which is required in that crucial marking system
in artistic gymnastics.
In a 12-year career, Vanessa Ferrari
has reached the heights of her sport,
with a collection of titles few can match.
For an artistic gymnast, injury is a part of everyday
life and Vanessa's performance in our tests
show her remarkable ability to overcome this.
It is the commitment, poise and power that this sport
demands that makes the anatomy
of a gymnast truly unique.
Overall, Vanessa is outstanding,
she is Italy's greatest ever
artistic gymnast and I think the results
really demonstrate that.
She has, as we would expect, incredible mobility.
In other words, she can move through incredible
ranges of motion, but she has stability,
she is able to control that, which is critical.
She is incredibly strong, she's very well balanced,
so she has exactly what is required
to be one of the world's best gymnasts.
Vanessa Ferrari!
It's very important to me to always give my best.
Of course, it all depends on my physical condition
and what shape I'm in.
But the most important thing for any athlete
is to have always tried your best
and to have given everything.