I'm back! I know it has been a while, but I'm ready to crank out some more posts for you :)
That said, It's that time of year again! Yep, I'm talking about move-ups. Move-up week is a special time of a gymnasts year when she (or he) learns weather or not she moves up. It is the sweet release of all the stress of the weeks, months, and days before. Though some are thrilled in that they move up, others fall short and are left to wonder where they went wrong.
One way to better secure yourself in the next level up is to get your up-skills. These are the skills that you need in order to compete your routines in the next year. For example, if you would like to move up to level 5 you will need to be able to compete a flyaway on the bars (among other things), because you will have that in your routine.
This leads us to tip number one in a move-up how-to weekly blog guide, and that is to get all of your skills.
If you don't see your skill up here, leave a comment your skill and I'll share the tips with you via comment box ;)
Bars
Kip
- The gymnast should concentrate on kipping up late.
- Try to keep well extended until after the glide starts to swing back, then think about pulling your kip up hard.
- Think about the pull in the kip like pulling up your pants. You put your ankles near the bar, treat the bar as your belt and pretend that you are pulling up your pants. It's kind of silly sounding, but it helps.
- Pretend like something you really love is on the other side of the bar. Once you get to the top of the bar, after you pull, lean over the bar and try to reach with your head for whatever it is that you want.
Cast to Handstand
- Work a lot of casts. When you are working these casts, make sure to focus on having good form and trying to lower back to the bar slowly in order to strengthen your muscles. Strength is a very large part of being able to do a cast handstand, along with courage, so it may take a little bit of time.
- Do arm pulls. In this drill, you wrap a theraband around a sturdy pole or other object, grasp the ends of the theraband, and pull down as far as you can. Then let your arms slowly release until they are above your head. Like when you are slowly lowering from your cast, this will help with the strength of being able to push your shoulders open into the handstand position.
- Do punch straddle cast handstands. In this drill, place a floor bar in front of you and grab hold of the bar with hands about shoulder width apart, then kick up to handstand and lower down to the floor by planging (closing your shoulders). Once you get near the ground, punch with your feet and split your legs apart as if you were doing a straddle cast handstand. Repeat multiple times.
Giant
- Drills such as handstand hollow fall to a mat on floor bar help with falling aggressively into your tap. To create this drill, place an 8" mat on the floor and put a floor bar in front of it. Kick to handstand with your hands on the bar and fall in an extended hollow to the mat.
- Lots of back extension rolls will help with the top of the giant's swing. When doing these back extension rolls, make sure to watch your toes. This will develop a feel for leading with your toes to handstand as apposed to arching to it.
- Focus on tapping when you are under the bar and not before then. An early tap can cause the gymnast to throw their chest over the bar and arch. If you are having trouble with this, work on tap swings and focus on a late tap that goes up and not so much forward.
Beam
Cartwheel
- Try to look under your bad arm as you do your cartwheel and watch your foot reach the ground. This will cause a gymnast to square their hips, making it easier to land.
- Set up drills with mats right next to the beam. One of these is where you put two channel mats (really tall rectangular mats) up next to the beam and do cartwheels between those. This drill also helps with squareness because the gymnast is not able to move their legs to one side or the other without hitting the mats.
- Try doing the cartwheel a little faster. This will make it easier for your legs to go right over the top of your head and not around the side.
- Have a coach slowly spot you in order to drill the positions you need to be in into your head.
- If you continually are falling to one side, don't try to stick, but to fall onto the opposite side of the one you usually fall to.
Back Walkover
- Practice on floor lines A LOT. This won't help with your hands very much since there is no real danger in putting them wider than 4" apart when you are on the floor, but it is good for working on having square hips.
- If you can't get your hands together on the beam, try raising the height of the beam. This may sound scary, but removing the option of widening your hands helps a lot of gymnasts get their hands on. Remember, if you're scared, you can always ask a coach to spot you on your first one.
- If the previous suggestion didn't help, and you're still not getting your hands on, try holding a ping-pong ball or other small object in between your thumbs. Squish the ping-pong ball as much as you can with your thumbs while your hands are above your head as if you were about to do a back walkover. When you do your back walkover, think about the pressure that you put on the ping-pong ball in order to make your hands closer together.
- Try to think about stretching tall before your back walkover. If your hips move out to one side or another, the skill is extremely hard to land.
Back Handspring Step Out
- A lot of repetition is good for this skill as well. The better you are at the skill on a floor line, the better at it you will be once you build your confidence for the high beam.
- Work on handstands with the proper back handspring hands: bad hand in front of good with hands turned out and in a line on the beam. This will help you go right to the correct hand position when you do back handsprings on the beam.
- Work back handsprings up to a panel mat. Back handsprings on beam differ from the ones on the floor because they are supposed to be more of a jump to handstand than a traveling skill.
- When you want to start doing the back handsprings on a beam, create an action plan. This can be as simple as "today I'm going to do them on the floor beam, then the beam with a red mat, then the beam with the brown mat." Take slow steps, you don't want to jump into a back handspring that you are not physically or mentally ready for.
Floor
Front Handspring
- Blocking drills will help with the flight element of the skill from your hands to your feet. Handstand hops up to a panel mat is a great drill for this. As your strength increases, add more and more layers on the panel mat that you are hopping up to.
- Kick aggressively to handstand with your hands and shoulders away from a padded wall. This should allow only your heels to hit, practicing the heel drive to tight arch that is a big part of your front handspring. In this drill, really focus on keeping your hips forward and your arms and head back, since tucking forward is a very common mistake in this skill.
- Front limbers are also very helpful if you keep your head back while completing them. This will help the gymnast get a feel for leaving their head released throughout the skill.
- Starting from a bridge with hands near a wall, walk your hands up the wall to a stand. Make sure, again, to keep your head back the whole time. Like the front limber and the kick to handstands, this will help you work on head back and open hips.
Back Handspring Back Tuck
- Do lots of round off back handspring punch to candle on a resi mat. This will help with learning to set into your back tuck. The hardest part of this drill for most is figuring out spacing, so if you need to you can set down a marker of where to hurdle for your round off or something like that.
- As you do the drill above, have someone from your team stand at the opposite end of the resi mat and hold up a number on their hands while you do your set to candle. Afterwards, they will ask you what number they put up, and if you spotted your set correctly, you should be able to answer them correctly.
- Make sure you really focus on keeping your head in because the most common problem gymnasts have with this skill is throwing their head out and whipping their back tuck over.
- Have a coach spot you so that you can feel more comfortable with working on your set.
Switch Leap
- Lots of kicking will help strengthen your legs for a better "rip" in your leap. Try placing one of your feet on a mat that is just below hip height and lift your heel to tap your foot on the mat. You can also do this in an arabesque with your foot instead facing down on the mat, and your body facing away from it. Make sure to really focus on straight legs and pointed toes since bad form in this will appear in your switch leap on the floor later.
- Do switch leap to panels. In this drill have your good leg bent 90 degrees and out in front of you while you're in a knee-lunge. Kick your back leg up and once you are above the panel mat (in the air), switch your legs. this will help with work on altitude.
- Do TONS of regular leaps and switch leaps on a trampoline. With therabands, with weights, without anything, there are many different ways to do them. Again, make sure you really focus on straight legs and pointed toes.
- The last thing that you can do that will REALLY help with your leap is to stretch out. If you have both your good and bad split down evenly (preferably to the floor) you'll see some great improvements in your switch leap.
