strength exercises for BHS

[mom2ab]

At the BHS clinic we attended yesterday they gave us some specific, safe , exercises you and yoru kids can do at home to improve strength.

1. Lay on your back , on a bed, with your head touching the edge, get a 5 or 10 lb weight (depending), hold with both hands, verticaly above head, then lower to slightly below horizontal, behind the head, raise and lower 10-15, build up to 30 or 40 reps a day.

2. Lay on the floor, on back, raise legs and arms slightly off the floor, shoulders off floor as well arms by your side. He was very strict on this part- keep legs tight, heels together, palms facing the floor, arms slighly elevated above hips, hold a minute, release, repeat. This is the correct position for your legs in the BHS in motion.

3. Lay on belly, heels together, legs tight, arms above your head, raise arms and legs into a "superman". Hold 30 secs, release, repeat. He even showed several girls doing this, their legs came apart immeadiately when they raised. This, he said, was clasic lack of stength to do a BHS correctly.

4. Handstands against the wall, hold for 10 secs at first, then build up. Do shoulder touches when succesful at holding a solid position.

He added at the end, if the girls would do these exercises every day for around three weeks, the improvement would be amazing. That he, as a coach, can tell right away girls that condition at home, and those that do not. He also said to not let your kids cheat, if they are doing it wrong, stop them, correct them, start over, if they are serious about improving, they will try again. Sounds a little tough, I know, but I liked his sternness. My DD likes a challenge, so this is right down her alley. Plus, we do the exercices together, its good for both of us!!!

[gym law mom]

Those are great exercises and will help with overall conditioning. The only one I would hold back on is the 1st. You said your dd is a small 7yo. For her you might want to try 2.5# weight and not do so many reps. Let her build up slowly. Also on that one, I would be "spotting" her to make sure she doesn't have any problems with the weight.

[TuesdayPillow]

I'd have to the see BHS to see the specific problem. If she is using her legs and reall pushing backwards, she shouldn't have a problem keeping straight arms. If she is reallybending at the knees when preparing to jump into her BHS and/or really bending at the waist, then she is basically jumping straight up and landing on her hands with much more force (and way less body tightness) than if she were to, let's say, bend her knees slightly and keep them behind her toes when preparing for the jump into the BHS.
If she is really jumping back and landing with her hands well behind where her feet jumped from, them it could be that she's not throwing her arms back hard enough. It could also be that she's just not harped on it enough, that she's not really putting the concentration on the arms because she might still be worried about making the skill (but she's landing on her head as an alternative, so that's probably not it).

[BlairBob]

I've never heard 16g's but rather 6g's and maybe a bit more from any of the big dismounts ( floor, bars, rings, vault ).

Basically if her handstand is weak or her shoulder position is poor and broken, she will fall on her head. As well if she lands the handstand position with really wide arms or bent arms.

This will also happen if her snapdown/through is too slow to turn her over in time.

[BlairBob]

Getting back to BHS conditioning:

Air squats or squat jumps

Handstand against wall for 30s, ears touching shoulder

Ability to do some sort of bridge kickover, walkover to show they have some ability to pass through the momentary handstand position and not collapse. A 3 second static handstand from kicking up on floor can be good enough.

Lots of leg lifts lying on your back or bar leg lifts. V-ups being a more advanced version before doing bar leg lift, toes to the bar.

Handstand shoulder shrugs or pushups against the wall. Definitely a must for the first and extra credit for the second exercise.

I prefer to have gymnasts be able to do a 15% vertical height jump of their height just as I prefer them do be able to do a 25% of the same for standing back flips.