First Day Front Handsprings over Vault

I've been quite busy lately in the gym preparing a couple teams for the Singapore Open Championships in a couple of weeks. A few upgrades from Singapore Nationals in March and an in-house this past weekend, I'm excited to see my girls making great improvements.

One of my teams will not be competing and the girls have had quite a bit of fun working on new skills for the next season. Layout flyaways and giants on bars and front handsprings on my new found favorite event to coach, vault!

For the past month or so I've been practicing shaping from a Sweet Spot on floor and going over blocks. They love it and I like that they will do about 20 reps each in 15 mins. They tend to fix their shapes almost immediately after correction and they find the confidence to go over obstacles at a really high speed. I do some return station drills including; hollowed heel lifts, handstand shoulder shrugs & front support shoulder shrugs with some pre


I took them to vault over the table for the first time last week. Here's what came of it:


Less than 6 months for the next competition. Hopefully I can get these girls to soar!

What are your favorite drills for a front handspring vault?

Quick Tip to Improve your Gymnasts Speed

Lately, I’ve been taking into consideration the main points of Mr. Takashi Kobayashi from our sharing session when creating lesson plans. A co-worker always reminds me, first they need the speed and power…and he says it in his awesome Chinese accent that gets me fired up. After going over my resources, I’ve come up terribly short when it comes to training speed, agility and quickness. 

I believe if we really want to learn how to train powerful runners, we need to learn from other sports professionals instead of staying within our gymnastics comfort zone. Makes sense, right?

After scouring the internet, I found a great digital product for any youth athlete coach trying to Developing Youth Speed.  A PDF e-book, Easy To Follow Manual With A 9-week Program. 

Instantly, I had a golden ticket to improve my gymnasts performances and I’ve been implementing their ideas within my training. Here’s a little bit of what I’ve got my girls doing. 

As you can see, this would be much more effective if we had a bigger facility. ;)

Nonetheless, I can tell these drills help my kids put in more effort with a fun twist. They are starting to transform their abilities where my co-workers are starting to notice the differences.

I highly suggest taking a look at what they have to offer at Developing Youth Speed. From the author:

youth speed training agility quickness strength speed coach workouts 

• Lean how to incorporate balance, stretching, and movement that will have your athletes warmed up, breathing, sweating, and prepared to play at game speeds in less than 10 minutes.
• Learn why progression is king for athletic development and how performing advanced exercises too soon will result in your athletes peaking too soon.
• Do your athletes have a tryout coming up soon where being faster and quicker may mean the difference between making the team or not?
• Learn how to properly and safely develop explosive power based on the athlete’s age and maturity using only a medicine ball. 
• Learn how to use the agility ladder drills properly.  What 99% of coaches don’t know that could be hurting your development.

Sign up for their email list for FREE speed training tips and get your gymnasts FASTER! 

Tip to Motivate More Turns

Tired of yelling, "GO" down the vault runway? Here's a little voice-saving tip to get those lines moving fast.


To help me gauge how many successful vaults we did today, each gymnast was allowed to draw a part of a smiley face on a mat. Thinking we might get someone to complete a full face, I was totally surprised to see how fast these ladies were taking their turns. In 20 mins, we had all girls working on stuck landings because our shapes in the air were corrected and repeated over and over. I think each girl had over 20 turns!!

 

Some days we just have to be a little creative, just like them.