Kinsella does not want to put a timestamp on her return but hopes to be “back fully” by the end of 2026, with the World Championships taking place in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in October.
Next year’s Worlds in China are qualifiers for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics and follow a busy summer for the sport with European Championships and Commonwealth Games within weeks of one another.
“I am taking it day by day at the moment, but it is all going in the right direction,” Kinsella said. “I am feeling very positive about it.
“If I am back before then [Worlds], that is great, but if not then I won’t be too stressed.”
Senior conditioning coach Young said “the biggest challenge we have at the moment is actually holding her back a little bit”.
He added: “She is making huge gains. Faster than we probably anticipated, but that is probably a tribute to the elite athlete that she is.”
Young hopes Kinsella “can be a pioneer to other gymnasts to return back to elite sport, or any other physical sport” after childbirth.
Trampoline gymnast Laura Gallagher, with whom Young also worked, is the only other Briton to return to gymnastics after childbirth.
There are a handful of women worldwide who returned to the sport before the 2000s and Russian Aliya Mustafina achieved it post-Millennium – although she never competed at another Olympics after suffering several injuries.
British Gymnastics is working closely with Dr Julie Gooderick, who is leading the research at the University of Kent for a paper titled ‘Returning to sport postpartum: a case study of an elite gymnast’.
Dr Gooderick told BBC Sport: “For athletes, mid-career maternity leave is still not normalised, and there is a real lack of research around best practice for returning to sport postpartum.
“The research team from Kent will be tracking Kinsella’s data as she builds back towards returning to competition, with the aim to present a successful example of a holistic approach to a return to elite sport.
“We will track physical testing data, including jump tests, trunk capacities and force production, as well as tracking changes over time in other aspects such as sleep, hormonal profiles via blood tests, and psychological factors.
“This holistic approach may allow us to present key time points in the return to sport process to firstly ensure Kinsella receives the best support possible throughout this process, and secondly, to help guide other practitioners through this process in the future.”
