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

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

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

Chalk Time

Other athletes may recognize the term “chalk time” as going over plays on a board while sitting in a room. Gymnasts, on the other time see chalk time as a whole different thing. Chalk time is sacred and not to be misused. That’s probably one of the things that I miss the most about practices, gathering around the chalk bucket and gossiping or complaining about our coaches. Often we would take way more time then needed, especially if I was at a station I hated, lazy me would take my sweet time getting chalk. I also remember the investigation that took place when one of us would “crush the block”. I can admit now, that it was always me, I was the weirdo that preferred the powder to the blocks. As casual as it is, chalking is an art. The perfect combination of water and chalk is needed, and the chalk can’t be too grainy. Some gyms even go as far as bringing their own lucky chalk to meets. The chalk that my girls prefer is Cramer chalk, it’s cheap and it sticks well to grips. This is their favorite kind of chalk, so they actually try to keep it in the bucket and not make a mess. I recommend this type of chalk because as a gymnast, the texture was good, it stuck well, and it worked for both beam and bars.

https://www.cramersportsmed.com/products/team-supplies/gym-chalk

Can I Borrow Some Tape?

RIPS: One of the most unforgettable, inevitable, and painful part of the sport of gymnastics. We normally compared our rips to coins: the baby dime sized rip to the gaping quarter sized rip, and everything in between. Like I mentioned earlier, rips are going to happen whether you like it or not, they are simply unavoidable. Especially when you’re working high bar skills such as tap swings, dismounts, and giants. One thing that I learned from my coaches was to actually praise my gymnast for getting a rip, the bloodier the better. It makes sense when you think about it, a rip symbolizes hard work and dedication. During the off-season, for example during summer workouts, it’s best for the gymnast to let the hand rest and relax. I’ve gotten in the habit of just giving them strength for the rest of the workout or having them do drills that don’t involve much stress on the hand in order to give the ripped hand a break. However, things are a lot different when one of the girls rips the day before a meet. Unfortunately, as painful as it may be, your gymnast has to rally, tighten those grips, and crank out one last routine before the meet. The process can be a lot less painful if the rip is taped properly!  Tape is a necessity and should be carried by every coach and gymnast. My advice is to get creative with the taping process, poke holes for fingers, wrap around the wrist and twist it if you must. The show must go on, with or without bloody hands. The tape that is easier to maneuver and stays the longest is definitely Mueller sport tape. This tape is found in many gym’s pro-shops, and if not can be found  at any athletic store. An added plus, it comes in many fun colors, but I recommend white for meets to look the most professional. This tape lasts as long as you need it and is useful for injuries too.

http://www.muellersportsmed.com/archive/tape.htm

Kips Kips Kips

I titled this post “Kips, Kips, Kips” because in order to get a kip you need to do a million of them. One of my favorite traditions in my gym was that when a girl was close to her kip, the entire gym would stop what they were doing and watch her try to get up to a front support. Usually, the girl got the skill just because of the pressure! A kip is such an involved skill, in order for it to be performed right it requires a perfect glide swing and a strong front support. The glide swing is so essential to this skill, the form, extension, and aggressiveness are the components that make a kip. Speaking of form, if one of my girls who is working on a kip does the glide swing with bent legs or drags her feet I immediately forfeit the spot. I encourage all coaches to practice this way, bad habits like that WILL stick and are completely unacceptable. Getting a kip is a defining moment in gymnastics. It represents so much hard work and so many corrections. Gymnasts make a kip look like the easiest thing in the world but those in the gymnastics world know the truth. This has to be one of my favorite skills to coach just because the corrections are mostly black and white. Most common corrections: extend the glide, switch your wrists, and throw your shoulders. Stride circles, also called mill circles in some other gyms, are a great preparation for this skill because it allows the gymnast to feel the wrist switch. Another great way to train is by using the kip machine. It does not allow for proper glide swing work but it does let the gymnast feel her/his wrist switch enough for them to land in a front support. I recommend spotting this drill at first, that way the gymnast doesn’t have to worry about getting enough power the first couple of tries, only what his/her hands are doing.This drill should be incorporated into every “new kippers” bar workout. In addition, this drill can be beneficial to those working on a straight arm kip…which should be everyone!

http://www.american-gymnast.com/shop/Assets/ProductImages/kip-trainer.jpg

Graduation from the velcro to buckle

Every gymnast remembers when they first graduated from the little Velcro grips to the big buckle grips. Most likely, the leather part was hanging on by a thread as you did your tap swings on the high bar and finally your coach says ” Okay, it’s time”. Gymnasts don’t have a lot of equipment, just their body and the apparatuses. That’s why our leotards, our gym shoes, our grips, hold so much sentimental value to us. Without grips especially, the whole bar workout is pointless. That’s why every gymnast knows, if you don’t want to get stuck doing drills on the side, or even worse, conditioning, BRING YOUR GRIPS TO PRACTICE! Getting new grips is one of the bittersweet parts of gymnastics. Your grips are formed perfectly to fit your hand, and your personal sweat and blood cover every inch of them. Saying goodbye to your old grips is like losing a year long friend, and most people hang onto them so long that it becomes a safety issue. When you get the new grips a feeling of frustration is common. They don’t know you like your old ones did, and it’ll take at least a month to get aquainted with the new ones. However, I found that using the ten.0 grips can help make the transition period easier. When I switched to the ten.0 brand, I was more excited than sorrowful over tossing an old pair of grips. These grips have a variety of colors, which can mean you stick with your lucky color or venture out and get a new one. The piece of metal is firm and the pocket forms within a couple practices unlike most other grips. These grips are honestly made for the biggest swingers, the fastest circlers, and the most aggressive routines. As a coach, I am constantly recommending them.

http://www.ten-o.com/Girls-Grips.html