The Mandate Map

Research compiled 26 August 2026. Sources are official federation documents and peer-reviewed literature; see the verification notes at the end.

Five findings that shape everything

1. No federation requires injury-prevention training of the coaches who need it most. The US requires none at all (concussion sign-off is the only health item). Canada has a real “Prevention and Recovery” module — but only at Competition 3, a level most club coaches never reach. Australia’s syllabus mentions injury prevention in passing inside documents dated 2014. Britain comes closest, with one flexibility-and-maturation course made essential in February 2025. The gap is real, and it is documented in the federations’ own course catalogs.

2. Gymnastics has no FIFA 11+. Nobody owns this space. No federation anywhere has a branded, evidence-based injury-prevention program. FIG runs no injury surveillance at its own World Championships. A 2025 systematic review of artistic gymnastics injuries explicitly notes the absence of trial-level prevention evidence. The field is open.

3. The one trial that exists failed — and that failure is the strongest argument. The only completed gymnastics-specific prevention trial (Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, rhythmic gymnastics, published 2025) added a 12–15 minute exercise routine to warm-ups and found no effect on overuse injuries (Gram, Fagerland & Bø). In a sport already training 20+ hours a week, a bolt-on exercise routine doesn’t move the needle. The implication: prevention has to change how coaches manage load, growth, and skill progression — which is coach education, which is exactly the program the consortium exists to build. The null trial clears the warm-up-program lane and points directly at this one.

4. Every federation already adopts externally built programs — there is a door in each wall. USA Gymnastics sells courses built by the Positive Coaching Alliance and lets CDC courses satisfy a mandatory requirement. British Gymnastics lists UK Coaching’s safeguarding course in its own catalog. Gymnastics Australia embedded a government-built course as step one of its coach pathway. Gymnastics Canada mandates Respect in Sport, built by a private company. Nobody would be asking any of them to do something they haven’t done before.

5. Several policy windows are open right now, with dates attached. Britain is rewriting its entire entry-level coach curriculum through 2026 and building a coach licence whose required competencies are being defined now. Canada launched a “Safer & Stronger” wellbeing strategy in January 2026 under a brand-new CEO. Australia’s leadership just turned over (interim CEO from 31 August 2026) amid a concussion-protocol investigation. And the IOC’s next world injury-prevention conference is Monaco, December 2027 — abstracts open December 2026, due 1 August 2027. A pilot study finished by mid-2027 lands on that stage.

What each country requires of a club-level competitive coach

Simplified to the requirements a typical coach of competitive children faces. “Injury-prevention required” means any mandated training on physical injury beyond concussion.

That bottom row is the headline: no country requires any training on growth, maturation, or training-load management — the three things overuse injury in child athletes actually turns on. Meanwhile USA Gymnastics’ own website states that over 40% of gymnastics injuries are overuse injuries which are “almost always preventable.”

Britain: the mandate machine already exists — ranked #1 opening

The only federation with a proven mechanism for making a course mandatory — and it used that mechanism eighteen months ago on a course that looks like a small sibling of the consortium’s.

The mechanism

British Gymnastics’ membership rules (rule 12.3.11.4) oblige every club to ensure its coaches hold “any mandatory continuous professional development accreditations… as required by British Gymnastics from time to time.” That single sentence is a standing lever: BG can designate any course as mandatory without changing its qualification structure. It has used it twice — the Positive Coaching course, and, from 3 February 2025, “Best Practice in Flexibility Training”: a £9, 3–7 hour online course covering maturation and injury-risk reduction, made essential for every Level 2+ coach. Over 8,000 coaches have taken it. This is the closest thing in the world to a precedent for the consortium’s program — an online, maturation-aware, injury-focused course pushed to essentially all qualified coaches of a national federation.

Why the moment is now

Open policy window. BG is replacing its Level 1–2 qualifications with a new “Foundation Coach” credential from April 2026, with the final assessment pieces launching through mid-2026 — the entry-level syllabus is actively being written. Separately, the post-Whyte-Review commitment to rework the coach framework around “athlete development, health & wellbeing and sports psychology” is one of the few Reform ‘25 items still officially marked Ongoing, and BG’s own independent evaluation (Prof. Chris Wagstaff, July 2025) found the coaching community wants more on child development — “areas that have historically received less focus.” BG has publicly acknowledged the gap, in writing.

Bigger still: BG is building a coach licence with UK Sport, Sport England, and CIMSPA, with national coach-registration implementation from 2026. Licence competency requirements are being defined now. Injury-prevention competency written into the licence would be a mandate at birth.

Who decides

• Jay Roper — Director of Education and Workforce Development (came from CIMSPA and UK Sport; owns the curriculum rebuild)
• Geraldine Costello — Director of Welfare and Safe Sport (owns the mandatory Safe Sport policies, including the June 2024 “Pain, Injury & Illness” policy — a policy that exists with no training course behind it)
• Sarah Powell — CEO; the Coach Development Team (five regional coach developers) commissions bespoke workshops — a direct delivery channel
• A BG–UK Sports Institute research group on training loads and competition age limits already exists — natural allies
• Contact route: coaching@british-gymnastics.org

Context that gives leverage

The Whyte Review (2022) found coaches of a mostly-under-12 membership had virtually no continuing education. UK Sport and Sport England attach funding conditions to welfare reform and formally endorsed BG’s education strategy — government funding leverage is live in Britain in a way it isn’t in the US. The 159-course BG catalog contains no dedicated injury-prevention, load-management, or growth-and-maturation course. The shelf is empty and the mandate lever is proven.

Australia: a plug-in this year — ranked #2 opening

The lowest barrier to entry of any country — an existing channel lets an external sports-medicine course count toward coaches’ mandatory annual points, today, with a state association’s sign-off.

The mechanism

Australian coaches must earn annual “updating points” (3–18 depending on level) to keep their accreditation active — no points, no membership, no insurance, no floor access. The Updating Policy explicitly awards points for external “seminars e.g. sports medicine” at 1 point per hour, once a State Association verifies the content. That means a clinician-built injury-prevention course can enter the Australian system without Gymnastics Australia changing a single policy — it takes one state association (Victoria and NSW run annual coach conferences) to sanction it, and coaches then have a built-in reason to take it.

Standing policy cover

The Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2021 review (“Change the Routine”) — Recommendation 1 — directs GA to shift from “educating” to “upskilling” coaches in holistic, athlete-centred practice, “designed with input from relevant experts, including those outside of gymnastics.” When GA needed eating-disorder content, it followed exactly that playbook and named outside clinical bodies to design it. Outside clinical experts designing coach upskilling isn’t a pitch GA has to be sold on; it’s what their own review told them to do.

Open policy window. GA is in visible flux: the CEO resigned in July 2026 (interim CEO David Pryles starts 31 August 2026), an independent investigation into elite trampoline coaching and concussion-protocol failures is running through 2026, and the core curriculum documents are stale — Intermediate course content dated 2014, the Updating Policy dated 2019. Both are overdue for refresh cycles, and athlete-health coach education is a live board-level issue.

One structural bonus

Australia’s top two accreditation levels (Advanced Silver and High Performance) are the FIG Academy Levels 2–3. Content that reaches FIG’s international curriculum automatically reaches Australia’s elite coach pathway — the international layer and the Australian layer are the same door at the top.

United States: a PT is already in the building — ranked #3 opening

The biggest market, a clinician ally in the right chair, and a proven template — third-party courses already satisfy a mandatory USAG requirement. The path is longer but the ceiling is highest.

What’s required now

An adult competitive coach needs: SafeSport annually, a background check every two years, a one-time 3-hour fundamentals course (U100), a safety and risk-management certificate every four years (U101 — which is about liability, not athlete health), an emotional-abuse course, and an annual concussion acknowledgment. That’s it, forever — no continuing education requirement exists. The only sports-science course (U200: nutrition, psychology, biomechanics, injury prevention — all of it, in three hours, for $15) is optional.

The template to copy

The mandatory concussion requirement can be satisfied by third-party courses — the CDC’s free HEADS UP course or the NFHS course. That’s the exact structural precedent for the endgame in the US: a required “overuse injury & growth” acknowledgment satisfiable by an approved external course. USAG also has an “approved provider” mechanism for certificate credit and a history of adopting outside curricula wholesale (Positive Coaching Alliance built three courses in the USAG catalog; Stanford-born nonprofit TeachAids supplies concussion content).

Who decides

• Kim Kranz, PT, DScPT, SCS — Chief of Athlete Wellness. A physical therapist runs athlete health at USA Gymnastics. She built the Health & Wellness hub whose injury-prevention resources currently carry no authorship and no course behind them. The single most important contact in any country.
• Athlete Health and Wellness Council — meets every two months; includes the medical director, team physicians, and athlete reps. This is the clinical governance route.
• Erica Koven — Chief Membership Officer; the education arm (USA Gymnastics University) sits under her.
• National Congress — ~2,000 attendees, 300+ presenters including PTs and MDs (clinician-presenters are normal), held every August alongside the U.S. Championships. No public call-for-proposals; the route is submissions@usagymcongress.com. Target the 2027 edition, or a 2027 Regional Congress (five of them, June–July) as a lower-stakes first stage.

The tension to be ready for

USAG publishes the statistic that over 40% of injuries are preventable overuse injuries — while requiring zero training on it. That contradiction, stated respectfully, is the one-slide pitch. But note: US reform has always come from external pressure (Congress, SafeSport law), and USAG has no government funding lever like the UK, Australia, and Canada do. Expect the US to be a follower once Britain or Australia moves — plant seeds now, expect harvest later.

Canada: the module exists — it’s just locked at the wrong level — ranked #4 opening

The system is the most layered (national certification program + federation + provinces), which slows change — but a proven pathway exists for health-protection eLearning to spread, and a wellbeing strategy launched in January 2026 is looking for content.

The absurdity worth quoting

Canada’s national coaching program includes a real “Prevention and Recovery of Injury” module — but gymnastics requires it only at Competition 3, the level for coaches taking athletes to national championships. The Foundations, Comp 1, and Comp 2 coaches — the people coaching growing children through their peak overuse-injury years — never take it. Concussion training is merely “recommended.” Nothing on growth, maturation, or load exists at any required level.

How content spreads in Canada

The Coaching Association of Canada (CAC) owns the multi-sport curriculum and has a model for exactly this kind of course: “Making Head Way” (concussion eLearning) was built by CAC, offered to all sports, then progressively mandated sport-by-sport. Certified coaches also must earn professional-development points on a 5-year cycle — approved content has built-in demand. And provinces layer their own requirements freely (BC and Ontario both add rules), so a province can adopt before the nation does. External precedent is strong: Respect in Sport, built by a private company, is mandatory for every gymnastics coach in Canada aged 15+.

Open policy window. GymCan launched its “Safer & Stronger” strategy in January 2026 — pillar one is literally “Protect and Prevent,” framed around embedding wellbeing “into every level” — and a new CEO (Debra Armstrong, from Skate Canada) started March 2026. Every reform to date has been maltreatment-focused; physical-health prevention is the unclaimed half of “Safer & Stronger.” The federal funding lever is also the sharpest in the world here: Ottawa froze GymCan’s funding in 2022 and conditions it on safe-sport compliance — precedent that funding conditions move this federation fast.

Who decides

• Tracy Bradley — Manager, Coach & Judge Development at GymCan; oversees the coaching program and leads the coach education council
• Kacey Neely — Director, Safe Sport (owns the Safer & Stronger strategy)
• The CAC partnership route for a multi-sport module; the Petro-Canada Sport Leadership conference is the national coach-education stage; Gymnastics Ontario runs the biggest provincial coaching congress

FIG, the IOC, and the FIFA 11+ playbook

FIG: the third-certificate opening

FIG already requires every coach registering for any FIG event or Academy to hold two online certificates: the WADA anti-doping certificate and the FIG Safeguarding certificate — “without [them], a coach’s profile will not be valid.” The mechanism for a third mandatory online certificate exists and is proven. FIG’s Academy curriculum includes sessions on “Growth & Aging” and safety, but FIG has no injury-prevention program and — remarkably — no published injury surveillance at its own World Championships. FIG also licenses its curriculum to national federations (the “Licensed Academy” model), so content adopted at FIG level cascades. Education department contacts: Olivia Bille Peña and Anis Saoud (fig-gymnastics.org). FIG’s medical commission bridges directly to the IOC: its long-time president co-authored the IOC’s youth athletic development consensus statement.

IOC: the anointing venues, with deadlines

• 8th IOC World Conference (“Protecting the Health of the Athlete”), Monaco, 1–3 December 2027. Abstracts open 1 December 2026, due 1 August 2027. Workshop proposals due 1 March 2027. This is the room where FIFA 11+-class programs get legitimized; a completed pilot presented here changes the program’s status from practitioner project to recognized program.
• IOC Research Centres — eleven centres worldwide recognized for injury prevention (including the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Center and Amsterdam). Partnering with one is the established credibility route for a sport-specific program.
• The citable canon: IOC consensus statements on youth athletic development (2015, updated 2024), REDs (2023), and injury-surveillance methodology (2020). Building the curriculum explicitly on these makes it “IOC-aligned” by construction.

FIFA 11+: what the playbook actually says

The arc: efficacy trials first (cluster-randomized, 32–46% injury reductions across Norway, Canada, Nigeria, US college soccer) → a countrywide campaign with healthcare-cost data (Switzerland) → federation-mandated coach education → global dissemination through member associations. But the sobering half: even in Switzerland, where it was embedded in coach education with national support, fewer than 22% of coaches actually used it; coaches modified it heavily and cited time and buy-in as barriers. Two lessons: (1) the mandate is the midpoint, not the finish line — implementation support decides whether injuries actually drop; (2) the program must live inside what coaches already do (planning, progressions, load decisions) rather than adding minutes to practice — which the null Norwegian trial confirms from the other direction.

The evidence toolkit for a pilot

A club pilot becomes publishable — and comparable to the world literature — if it borrows these validated pieces:

• Injury surveillance: the OSTRC overuse-injury questionnaire is the standard weekly instrument; a youth-specific adaptation (2024) now exists — directly suited to pediatric gymnastics. Weekly SMS-based reporting was proven feasible in a 474-gymnast Danish TeamGym study. Report using the IOC 2020 surveillance-consensus definitions (STROBE-SIIS) and the study slots straight into the international literature.
• Academic allies to approach: the Oslo group (Kari Bø and Marte Gram — they ran the null rhythmic trial and know exactly why warm-up programs fail; a coach-education trial is the natural next study they haven’t done), the Copenhagen TeamGym surveillance group, Dennis Caine (the career gymnastics-injury epidemiologist), and Emily Sweeney (US pediatric gymnastics medicine). In the US, the Gymnastics Medicine society symposium (with Boston Children’s) is the clinical community’s gathering.
• Journals, in order of strategic value: British Journal of Sports Medicine (where federation medical committees read, and where every IOC consensus lives), Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports, and the Science of Gymnastics Journal (the only gymnastics-specific journal, University of Ljubljana) for reaching the sport itself.

The sequenced plan

Now → mid-2027: build and prove

• Write the curriculum as a defensible, citation-anchored program about coach decisions — load management, growth and maturation, skill progression, early-specialization — explicitly not a warm-up program (the null trial is the justification).
• Recruit 3–5 clubs for a pilot with weekly youth-OSTRC surveillance; design it with an academic partner so it’s publishable from day one.
• Australia now: approach one state association (Victoria’s annual coach conference is the natural stage) to sanction the course for updating points — first federation-system foothold, no national approval needed.
• 1 December 2026: IOC Monaco abstract window opens.

2027: publish and appear

• 1 August 2027: IOC Monaco abstract deadline — the pilot’s results (even interim implementation results) go here.
• Pitch a session for USA Gymnastics Regional Congresses / National Congress 2027 (submissions@usagymcongress.com) and Gymnastics Ontario’s coaching congress.
• Submit the pilot to BJSM or the Science of Gymnastics Journal.
• 1–3 December 2027: Monaco. The room where the program’s international identity gets made.

2028 onward: the mandate campaigns

• Britain: pitch the flexibility-CPD playbook, round two — an online injury-prevention CPD designated essential under rule 12.3.11.4, and injury-prevention competency written into the emerging coach licence.
• USA: through the Athlete Health & Wellness Council — approved-provider status first, then the concussion-requirement template: a required acknowledgment satisfiable by the course.
• Canada: a CAC-partnered eLearning module on the Making Head Way model, plus provincial adoption to force the national question.
• FIG: the third-certificate campaign — the long game that makes it global.

Structure decision to make early

House the program in a nonprofit or institute, keep it free or near-free to federations, and keep any clinical business separate. Every precedent that reached mandate status — SafeSport, Respect in Sport, FIFA 11+, the CDC course — was structurally neutral. Federations adopt what makes them look good and costs them little; they don’t adopt someone’s business funnel.

Verification notes. All requirements reflect official federation documents current for the 2025–26 season, checked 26 August 2026. Known gaps: USA Gymnastics’ Congress speaker-selection process and approved-provider application process are not published (email routes only); Gymnastics Canada’s national requirements page was offline during a website rebuild (provincial documents used); Gymnastics Australia’s competition-floor first-aid rule and Britain’s promised standalone training-load policy could not be fully confirmed; FIG’s 2025–2028 medical commission membership is not publicly verifiable. Verify named personnel before outreach — several federations changed leadership in 2025–26.