Gabby Douglas Returns to Training with Coach Liang Chow in Iowa

Gabby Douglas Returns to Training with Coach Liang Chow in Iowa

Apr 6, 2014 by Anne Phillips
Gabby Douglas Returns to Training with Coach Liang Chow in Iowa


The rumors are now confirmed. 2012 Olympic All Around and Team Champion Gabby Douglas will return to training at Chow's Gymnastics and Dance in Iowa under coaches Liang Chow and Liwen Zhuang. Chow confirmed her return on Sunday.
 
Eight months after her hasty departure to join her family at their new home in Los Angeles, Chow has agreed to take Douglas under his wing once again. Douglas is expected in the gym on Monday, according to USA Today Sports. 

However, Chow's reunion with his latest Olympic Champion will have to wait another week. He is currently in Canada guiding his next Olympic hopeful, Norah Flatley, through her biggest international competition to date, the 2014 Pacific Rim Championships. 

Chow shared the following with us: "We are welcoming Gabby to come back in our gym. We are all exited to see her next week. It is hard for me to make any detailed training plan at this point since I have not seeing her for a long time, but I know it will be a lot of challenges ahead of us, and the real test will be to see how tough Gabby can be to achieve her goals and to meet all of our training expectations." 



Douglas went through almost four months of training with Coach Chow in Iowa last summer. Her workouts mostly consisted of conditioning and basics training. During Gymnastike's visit to the famed Iowa gym last June, Chow told us, "I felt the hunger in her eyes of wanting to be back on the training floor and competition floor," Chow said when descirbing her first day back at the gym last May. "I was looking for that." 

Chow will certaintly be looking for this commitment once again as he resumes the challenging comeback journey with Douglas. When we visited Chow's gym last June, the mastermind coach was already laying out his plan for Douglas with a three year focus, peaking at the 2016 Olympic Games. He even had her 2016 bar routine worked out in his head. Now, the first question is whether or not Douglas will commit to a full training schedule. Next, will she have enough time to regain her skills and get back into competition? 

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