Olympic gold medalist Paul Hamm is back doing what he does best.

Hamm tumbled on floor and did some work on pommel horse and high bar today after an X-ray showed the broken bone in his right hand had healed enough to withstand doing gymnastics again. He has a little over five weeks to get ready for the Beijing Games.

"I'm very, very encouraged today," coach Miles Avery said. "I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. Wow, I'm finally seeing him do real gymnastics, and it feels good."

Hamm was a little tentative at first as he tried skills and maneuvers he hadn't done since breaking the hand May 22 in the closing seconds of his parallel bars routine at the national championships.

But his confidence grew the longer the workout went on, Avery said.

"You just don't know what you're going to be able to do," Avery said. "He was tremendously encouraged by time he left the gym. Much more relaxed."

Dr. Lawrence Lubbers, the hand specialist who operated on Hamm, is also going to be in the gym Friday to go through every skill in every routine, letting Hamm know which ones he can do now and which ones he still needs to hold off on.

"We don't want him doing a lot of grasp-and-release type of things, where he has to go free in the air and grab with the hand. There's a few things like that I don't want him to do yet," Lubbers said.

But the break has healed enough that the risk of reinjury is small, Lubbers said.

Lubbers used a titanium plate and nine small screws to repair the break during a May 27 operation, and Hamm did intensive physical therapy to help reduce swelling and maintain his flexibility and range of motion.

"You can still see the haze of the fracture line, but the healing has definitely improved and it definitely looks stable to take the force needed" for gymnastics, Lubbers said.

"You can undo it, and it is possible with some of these maneuvers he's doing or the amount of force," Lubbers added. "But I think it's a very, very low probability."

The bigger concern now, Lubbers said, is getting Hamm back to the shape he was in when he broke the hand.

Hamm is the only American man to win the world (2003) and Olympic (2004) all-around titles. Despite a 2 1/2-year layoff after Athens — unheard of in elite gymnastics — he had firmly established himself as a contender for gold again in Beijing. He won every competition he entered and, even with the injury, finished the first day of nationals with an almost four-point lead.

Hamm has 2› weeks before the July 19 training camp where he — and the other five members of the team — must show they are physically ready to compete in Beijing. Hamm was diligent in conditioning work, and he has said he hopes that will make it easier for him to get back into competitive shape.

He had been a week to 10 days ahead of schedule in his recovery from surgery. But this is a new phase of recovery, Lubbers said.

"We have to almost start the clock over now," he said. "We have to get in the gym and try to progress rapidly."

Still, just being able to do gymnastics again is a huge step forward.

"You could just kind of see him light up when he was looking at the X-ray," Lubbers said. "His hand therapist said he looked like a thoroughbred bursting out of the gate to get back to the gym."