2025 Artistic Gymnastics World Championships: Carlos Yulo is the guiding light for Brits Jarman and Whitehouse

Jake Jarman and Luke Whitehouse on what they learned after training with Carlos Yulo

With just five months to go until Paris 2024, Yulo split with his long-time coach with whom he trained in Japan, and headed back to the Philippines before being invited to training centres around the world to prepare for his second Olympic Games.

British Gymnastics was one of the governing bodies that invited Yulo to train at the national training centre, Lilleshall.

Here, Yulo shared chalk dust with the likes of Jarman, Whitehouse and Harry Hepworth, three of the squad headed to Indonesia for the championships that solely features individual events (the men’s and women’s all-around final, plus individual apparatus finals).

“It was really cool,” said Jarman, when talking to Olympics.com at the national championships in March, of training alongside Yulo.

“It’s nice because obviously to train with someone who’s that high of a level, you can learn something from him, he can learn something from me, hopefully, and it’s nice because the Philippines is the other side of the world, and it brings that friendship a bit closer,” said the bronze medallist on floor in Paris.

So, what specifically did he learn?

“It was interesting seeing how he prepared his body before a training session,” said Jarman, who has Filipino heritage himself. “I think a lot of his warm-up wasn’t stretching, it was more muscle activation, working on core strength. You can actually see how it impacts his training because he is one of the tidiest gymnasts I’ve ever seen and it’s something I can learn from.

“If you look at my parallel bars for example, I’m getting tidier, but my back is still everywhere, which is weird because when I’m actually training, it doesn’t happen but at competitions it always just seems to be the main thing that impacts my results.

“I looked at how he trains and, the repetitions he does, the preps he does and how he focuses on his style and stuff like that, it’s quite insightful,” concluded Jarman, who will be defending his vault title from Antwerp in Southeast Asia.

Whitehouse, a three-time European floor champion who competed in the floor final in Paris, also learned from the week-long training period with Yulo, who also competed as a guest in the season-opening English Championships in 2024.

“Carlos is so talented on floor, the different techniques, he’s so small and bouncy. Carlos is absolutely unbelievable,” he said.

That’s quite the comment from one of few men to compete the incredibly difficult triple back somersault on floor, but the gymnastics community is renowned for its camaraderie between nations, particularly during the hotbed of Olympic competition.

Despite an error that left Whitehouse out of the medals at the Bercy Arena in France, he was happy for not only team-mate Jarman, but his former training partner, Yulo.

“You’re pleased for everyone who competes with you, you train with, and if they medal, then yeah, you’re absolutely buzzing for them,” he said.

And what did Whitehouse learn from Yulo?

“He’s just so chilled out, he doesn’t let anything stress him out, so maybe that side.”