More than half of the Pre-teams practice is strength and conditioning based gymnastics, yet we have so much fun. Earlier in the term, I made bingo cards for each of the girls. One for each event; vault, bars, beam, floor. I asked them to take it home and color them however they liked and bring them back. Then I laminated them and keep them for the girls. As I do my lesson plans, I make sure there is at least 1 or 2 sticker opportunities for our events for the day. They are totally motivated & for me its fun to see them working so hard to get conditioning with good form. I'm pretty tough on these little ones when it comes to good form for a couple weeks it seemed like we couldn't get it right!
Week 12 seemed to be the magic number when we started to get BINGO!
I'm happy to see the girls getting so strong and excited about body shapes, conditioning and flexibility. It's easy for all of us to track our progress in a fun way. They are even starting to cheer each other on and show great sportsmanship by congratulating each other for good efforts. They are learning so much more than just gymnastics skills here in the gym and it is such a joy to be apart of it!
With the new season comes new skills which often seems super scary at first. My goal as a coach is to follow skill progressions correctly to ease this fear, while promoting confidence in learning the skill. Each breakdown of skills is a chance for a gymnast to succeed.
Take our Level 4 vault, for example, which is a front handspring flat back off the vault table. This is a major step for the girls as it is the first time they will be going over the vault table in the Australian Gymnastics system. How are we as coaches to tell them to run as fast as you can towards this huge metal and leather thing and expect them not to be scared?! It's like telling them to run as fast as they can towards a truck without slowing down. One way I've been successful in breaking though the fear AND reinforce proper form is with this following lead--up drill.
In the two videos, Margi and Asia have never gone over on the vault table before. When I recorded, they had about 5 tries each before. We are doing this drill off a mini-tramp to start off and gain confidence while keeping it easy on our ankles. They thought it was really cool!
Asia and Margi both had problems finding the correct body position (hollow) in the pre-flight and were always piked. This barrel makes it impossible for them to make the handstand with a pike. It also gives that little heel-drive at the end automatically. Most coaches say, "drive your heels" but this would promote an arched back which is opposite of what we want to happen. The heel drive should be just at the very last portion of the pre-flight. Don't even get me started on when I hear, "block" from a coach. It makes no sense to the kids, and really when the vault is done properly like they are, it automatically happens.
One week later, we tried doing the vault as we will be competing. It was a happy day for all of us. Their confidence brought on by the barrel drill made it an easy transition AND they were done with good form. I think I was more excited than they were. After all, they have been going over the vault with the barrel for a week already so it wasn't such a big deal. :P
I was actually inspired for this lead-up drill from messing around in Open Gym with a cute little aspiring gymnast named Ruby. She had been at our Open Gym for almost 3 hrs at this point and is kind of tired. Her first 30 were with great form!
- a Gymnastics Coach and also gym mama to one funky girl. I share from a point of view from the coach and parent to help all of us make sense of this amazing sport.
