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

Grandma Knees

Gymnastics is a sport, therefore it comes with the terrible territory of injuries. They can be easy enough to heal with rest and ice, and they can be enough to put you out of the sport for good. My guess is that once a month one of the seventy team members of our gym has a serious injury that requires physical therapy and time off from the sport. Injuries are crushing, especially in the midst of meet season or when states is around the corner, it just is not fair. Do not be fooled however, as a coach you see injuries all the way at toddler level. All it takes is a four year old tumble bee not to tuck their head in a forward roll and BAM they have a sore neck. Basic ways to prevent injuries: Stretch! I’m sure you’ve heard this a million times but here’s it a million and one- if you come into practice late you MUST sit and stretch. A solid twenty minutes is best for team members and advanced tumbling, rec classes only need ten to fifteen minutes since they have shorter practices. Next: Strength, And I’m not trying to trick you into doing more pushups then necessary I promise. The stronger your muscles are, the more resilient they will be and the easier it will be to catch yourself.

My favorite story has to be during my first year of coaching, one of my little girls came up to me and claimed that her eyebrows were hurting. As a coach, determining if a gymnast is faking or not becomes a weekly task. My best advice is to talk to other coaches, talk to the parents, but give credibility to the gymnast and take all injuries seriously. I find knee injuries to be the most common, especially around the new USAG level five. This is the level that flipping is introduced, which entails hard landings from punch fronts and back tucks. Also, the handspring vault and the fly away dismount is an easy way to hyperextend either knee which is extremely painful and can put you out for a week or two. As a gymnast, my knees were always one of my weaknesses and to this day they crack often as if to remind me. My right one put  me on crutches when I was in seventh grade and my left one blew out my senior year and took me out of a promising meet season. What I found was that my patella, the circular knee cap held by cartilage was just not able to handle impact like it should have been. It was my senior year and I wanted to go out with a bang, so I got a knee brace and did not miss a single practice. It was difficult to walk and practices were mostly strength, but it was important for me to compete at states my last year. The DonJoy Lateral J Patella Knee Brace was my life savior. I was back doing my normal practices within a couple weeks. This is because the brace allows the patella to be completely secured while the gymnast does tricks. It straps the knee so tightly that even the hardest landing did not phase my grandma knees.

http://www.betterbraces.com/donjoy-lateral-j-patella-knee-brace

Handspring Machine

Every beginner comes into gymnastics with one goal in mind: to be able to do a back handspring. I can’t tell you how many cheerleaders come into the gym with the expectation that a back handspring will only take a few a weeks. They are so disappointed when it has been a couple months and they are still unable to do one by themselves. This is because the skill of a back handspring is not for the average person. There are so many factors that go into “getting” this skill. Furthermore, doing this skill correctly is even harder. This is a level three skill (according to the new level system by USAG, previously it was first competed at level four) and it carries on to every level of gymnastics and is needed to built on for every back tumbling pass out there. When I first got my back handspring, I remember that is was a Friday during an open workout and I was wearing a purple leotard. The fact that I remember that much detail can attest to the significance of this move. Now let’s talk about the logistics of being able to do a back handspring. These questions may help narrow down how close you are to doing it by yourself.

1. Can you perform a handstand properly? Yes, I said properly! The most fundamental skill in gymnastics, it is a level one skill and should be one of the first skills mastered. To briefly describe what I mean by properly, an ideal handstand includes a stacked body, meaning the weight is evenly distributed and the hips are directly stacked above the shoulder while the feet and toes are stacked about the hips. In simpler terms, everything is in a straight line. Okay, now you’re wondering what this has to do with a back handspring. If you are unable to hold your body weight up in the correct fashion, you have no chance of doing a back handspring. This results in bent arms. As soon as you bend your arms, you lose the shoulder block power that comes from the shoulders, which means the back handspring has no chance of gaining in acceleration throughout the tumbling pass. If you’re confused let me just give you the cure for this problem: Do more arm conditioning!
2. Are you able to do a bridge? Once again, PROPERLY! This means straight arms, feet shoulder with apart and head is no where near the ground. This is important because back flexibility has to be up to par. Without it, there is no way your hands are going to find the ground before your head does, resulting in the classic back headspring that I have seen to way to many times because of lack of flexibility. So my advice: Stretch often!
3. This is probably the easier variable of this trick to understand. The straight jump. Can you jump up and down? That should have been an easy yes. Can you do it with the proper arm swing and set though? If not, do not worry it takes a total of five minutes to correct this problem. This means that the set for the back handspring is all in sync. Without it, your power is going to be seriously lacking. Your coach can help you with this all you have to do is ask. Specifically ask if your getting the full range of motion in the arm swing, I see that problem more often then not.

Like every skill, your going to want to do drills. What better way to do this than use a mat and do it in slow motion? The Mancio Rotella Handspring machine allows for just that. These mats are circular and they are shaped like a pacman. The gymnast is able to train all the body positions I just talked about. It is nice because as a coach, back handsprings can be tiresome to spot. This “eyeball”, as we call it in my gym, is safe because there is plenty of time in between the take off and landing for the gymnast to put their hands down. Used for every type of gymnast, including rec classes, team, boys, and cheerleaders, this mat will have your gymnasts getting back handsprings left and right.

http://www.mancinomats.com/Gymnastics-Equipment-Octagons-Handspring-Trainers-Mats-s/55.htm