Trapezoids

The trapezoid is like the incline mat, it has uses for every single event. The great thing about the trapezoid is that it has velcro that can come apart. The mat can be used as a vault for beginners. It is soft, so the fear of the big vault is eliminated. For younger classes, you can take apart each mat from the trapezoid form and separate them. Next place them about a foot away from each other and have the little ones jump from each mat. This is fun for them and also helps them get comfortable with their bodies. Just like a lot of the other mats I have endorsed, this mat is colorful and fun for kids to play on. Its great for recreational classes and for team.

http://www.matsmatsmats.com/gymnastics/props/trapezoid.html

Add Some Fun

Gymnastics should always be kept fun. Sometimes us coaches get caught up in the competition and focus on skills and drills. It’s best to sometimes take a step back and remind yourself why these girls are in the sport: To have fun and learn the ways of the sport. The barrel is a great way to bring back the fun in gymnastics. It is basically a squishy mat that you can have the girls climb in and out. We usually use it for our preschool classes and the younger kids. They love climbing in and out of this mat. Sometimes the younger kids can get bored from doing the same drills, so spice up your obstacle course with a mat barrel from Mats Mats Mats. The link below will lead you to a colorful new mat that will excite gymnasts of almost all ages.

http://www.matsmatsmats.com/gymnastics/gymnastics-equipment.html

Parallete Skills

The parallel bars might seem daunting and confusing to girl gymnasts, but when used the right way they can be extremely beneficial to the women’s uneven bars. Many drills can be practiced and might I add that many different sets of conditioning. I find that handstand work especially is a great way to utilize the parallel bars. This is helpful for the hand placement of the cast handstand and even more helpful for switch hand giants. Every gymnast needs to feel comfortable with being in a handstand on top of the bar. This is a fear that many gymnasts have because as soon as you let your arms unlock its a possibility that you face plant. The other biggest fear that the girls have is that they will go right over the bar. What they need to be comfortable with is that their body knows how to bail out. The parallel bars are perfect for your girls to get used to getting all the way up to handstand and learning to conquer their fears. Many gyms have four or five sets of bars but a lot more girls in a class. With the parallel bars, side stations can be set up to eliminate the amount of time that girls are standing around doing nothing. The best type of parallel bar is from a company called Mats Mats Mats. The link is below, check them out for a reasonable priced parallel bar that will benefit your team.

http://www.matsmatsmats.com/gymnastics/bars/parallett-bar.html

The “Pin” Accomplishment

Pins were always a large part of the reward system in gymnastics. We always wanted to work toward new skills and have our coaches be proud and hand us another pin to put on our gymnastics bags. The pins come in a large variety of girls and boys in leotards doing skills. The most popular pins are for moving up levels. I think these are important for the kids to have because it symbolizes all the hard work they did. It also represents moving up and reaching goals. Skills pins are important as well because kids see those as an enticement to work hard. Kids do not always understand that they need the skills to move up or to progress to the next skill, but they understand the concept that if they do a good thing they will be able to gain a pin for their gymnastics bag. These pins can be found at many pro shops in almost every gym. They are sold at meets and will other gymnastics merchandise. The website below has many options including levels, skills, and meet accomplishment pins.

http://www.ten-o.com/Pins.html

Cheese/Incline Mats

The cheese mat is one of the best mats ever invented for the sport of gymnastics. It can be used on every single event and countless skills can be practiced on these incline mats. In this post, I am going to give an example of a drill for the bars, beam, vault and floor.

1. Floor: Forward rolls, backward rolls, back handsprings, back bends. There is so many skills to choose from especially on floor. The backward roll is ideal for this mat because most kids do not understand the concept of supporting their neck in the backward roll. The cheese mat allows for a soft landing for those who cannot quite push with their hands enough to get over. Also, because it an incline, the gymnast can get help with the momentum to get all the way over.
2. Bars: Back extension rolls from the skinny part of the cheese mat to the fat part of the cheese mat is a great way to get gymnast to feel what a clear hip is supposed to look like. Because they are going from the skinny part to the fat part, they have to really push hard and open their hips. Learning to be that aggressive in a drill will transfer nicely over to the bars.
3. Beam: Prop the chees mat up so that it is standing up and place it against the beam. Gymnasts can do handstand against the beam to get the feel of meeting the requirement of getting all the way up on a beam. This is great for the younger levels that need that vertical handstand.
4. Vault: Place the cheese in front of the vault. Having this obstacle there will force the gymnast to keep their chest up so that their vault is better. This is a drill I constantly do with my girls who have front handspring vaults.

Overall, get a few of these to go around! This mat is helpful in gymnastics and cheerleading as well.

http://www.greatmats.com/images/products/inclines/gymnastics-inclines.jpg

The Music

It was always a rite of passage in my gym to get the bag of music filled with countless CDs to pick what music you wanted for floor music. It meant that you had finally graduated out of the compulsory levels and moved up to the optional levels. I had two optional routines, my first was from Pirates of the Caribbean and the next one was from the movie Mulan Rouge. Both were extremely dramatic and had at least one tempo change. I think the floor music of a girl has so much to do with their personality in addition to their style of gymnastics. Gymnasts who thrive in ballet and whose movements flow should get music that they can show off their dance moves to. Younger girls especially should have fun music, the younger optionals in my gym normally prefer Disney movie theme music. They look cute doing their routine and the music is recognizable which the crowd will love. Those who are more powerful gymnasts and have less fluid movements should get fast and powerful music to build up to their dynamite tumbling passes. The website I found with the most options in the floor routine music world is https://www.floorexpressmusic.com/. This website has countless categories from 20s music to country music. I guarantee your entire optional team will successfully find a couple of songs that they cant wait to choreographer a routine to!

Beam Band Aid

Recently, my gym got a shipment of “beam band aids”. We call them band aids because they cover up the hard part of the beam and allow gymnastics more than four inches to do tricks. These things are great for skills like cartwheels, handstands, back walkovers, and back handsprings. The obvious reason is that gymnasts are less scared when the band aid is on the beam. Seeing the extra padding and the extra inch or two for their hands allows them to put fear aside and go for new tricks. As a coach, I really like these mats because they allow for gymnastics to get comfortable with their hand placement. Hand placement on beam is so important because it can make or break a trick. A back walkover and a cross handstand have ‘butterfly’ hand placement for a reason. The gymnasts weight is slowly distributed evenly through out the trick, so if one hand was to slip the other one would be able to support the body. A side handstand and cartwheel have the same hand placement for a similar reason, the weight needs to be distributed evenly. However, a back handspring has very different hand placement for a reason. One hand fits in front of the other in order to prevent the gymnast from face planting on the beam. If the butterfly had placement was to be used for the back handspring, the amount of lost teeth and black eyes would be very high because the probability of hands slipping in that fast of a trick is great. Beam band aids let the girls realize how close they are to skills as well. If they are consistently landing the tricks on the band aid, then they should gain confidence to go on the bare beam. This mat is great for older gymnasts who are working on harder skills as well because they’re doing tricks that are a lot faster and more nerve racking. The type of beam cover up that I prefer is from Cartwheel Factory. I find that these mats go on very tight and survive a lot of kids picking at them. Get a couple of these mats, because they are in high demand when the girls go to do their beam workout!

http://www.cartwheelfactory.com/gymnastic_equipment.html

Tiger Paws

Every gymnast that has been in the game long enough knows that injuries are a part of the sport. In fact, most gymnasts have probably experienced more than one in different areas of their body. For me, it was always my knees that gave me problems. To this day, they crack all the time and cause me pain periodically. In addition to my knee pain, my wrists often acted up as well. The older we got, the more tiger paws started showing up on my teammates hands. Whether you have wrist problems in the past or not, tiger paws are great for vault, floor, and beam because it lessens the strain on the muscles. Stretching your wrists before practice is so important because if you think about it, they take a lot of the blow in the sport of gymnastics. Almost every skill requires your wrists to hold weight. With tiger paws, the risk of injury lowers. Also, I find my gymnasts more confident when they are wearing the tiger paws because they know their wrists are supported. These wrist supports come in fun colors and designs that help my girls tell them apart. The can be worn in completion as well. Your gymnast should be properly fitted for these guards and it should be made sure that they are not too tight and or to lose. I strongly recommend these guards because you cannot predict future injuries you can only plan for them.

http://www.tigerpawwristsupports.com/

Wood vs. Metal

This is actually quite a popular topic in my gym, which do you prefer to vault on, a wood or metal springboard? Personally, I prefer wood. As a gymnast, I just liked the sound a solid underset made when I pounded the board. I suppose that’s an immature way to debate the wood vs. metal argument, but I actually like wood better as a coach too. When my girls accidently “balk” I find it is so much more painless for them when its a wood board. Often times toes get stubbed on the metal and things get ugly. While we’re discussing vault, no matter what board you use, a proper underset it ESSENTIAL to any vault whether it be a squad on or a yurchenko. I could spend days describing the details of an underset, instead I’m going to share the best vault advice that I can give. Chest up on the board. This is so important for heel drive and fuels your vault in the right direction, whatever it may be. One other tip, because I can’t help myself with my pet peeves, make sure you jump on the right part of the board! This would be at the top of the board but not too far up, pretty much directly above the first row of springs. Coaches, put duct tape as a guideline for the gymnasts so they know exactly where they are aiming for. The type of board can play a large role in how comfortable a gymnast is in vaulting. My thing is, when you go to a meet, you don’t get a choice, so get used to vaulting on any springboard. However, when training, comfort is key. I recommend the Gibson springboard, my gym has a few of these carpeted springboards and they’re loved by all. In fact, when one of our girls when to nationals, she took the board with her! These boards make it hard to slip because of the carpeting and furthermore, getting springs in and out is not a huge hassle so as little time as possible is wasted.

http://www.gibsonathletic.com/inventory.asp?CatId=%7BB084FF25-D971-47D6-AC8F-1B7B269B8717%7D

Practice Panels

The panel mat is an institution at a gymnastics center. Hands down, we have more panel mats than any other type of mat at our gym. It can be used for every event and so many purposes. I would say the most common purpose would be for floor drills. I especially like to use this mat for beginner classes to practice cartwheels.The cartwheel is one of my favorite skills to teach because its so easy to figure out what the gymnast needs to do in order to improve. The skill can be seen as scary for a beginner, you are literally diving onto your hands and expecting your arms to hold you up while simultaneously keeping the motion going and hoping to land on your feet. I find that using the panels can be so helpful because gymnasts can place their hands on the top of the mat and just kick their legs over. Once they get the hang of this action, the coach can open up the panel and make the hand placement part lower, which gets the gymnast going closer to the ground. And eventually, the motions will all come together and the gymnast will be able to cartwheel perfectly. My pet peeve about cartwheels would be the bad habit of starting out in a poor lunge. If I was to give a crash course on how to do proper lunge here would be the main tips:

• Lean forward. This gives momentum for the skill, there should be a straight line from the top of your middle finger to your heel.
• Turn your front foot out. Not just for beam, this will help you tumble straight and keep those ankles safe from injury.
• Arms in tight! Your arms should be glued to your ears before and after the skill, this way you are prepared for the next skill, also it looks cleaner.
• Hips square. This again helps the direction of your tricks, and is a good habit to get into in order to take new skills to the beam.
• Feet apart enough. Not too wide, not too narrow, think about fourth position in ballet.

Combine all those tips and you’ll have a great set up for a cartwheel. When teaching beginners, insist that before they place their hands on that panel mat, they must show a lung the right way. This is a good habit to get into, and while using the panel mat, your gymnast is on their way to a great cartwheel. A panel mat that I find stores great and folds easily is the ten 0 panel mat.

http://www.ten-o.com/Gymnastics-Folding-Panel-and-Tumbling-Mats.html