strength exercises for BHS

[momof5]

My daughter has been headlanding her BHS for months. While her form and techinique have improved the only area that she has made no progress is the head landing. The class she is in does very little conditioning. What can she work on at home to strengthen her arms? Is this probelm usually a strength issue?

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I'd have to see it for sure to say whether it's a strength issue, but I suspect it's not; a BHS doesn't take much more strength than, say, a handstand. If she can hold a handstand, she probably has all the strength necessary for a BHS.

It could be a lack of shoulder flexibility; often, kids who can't get sufficient extension through the shoulders have to bend their arms to get their hands back more -- and if the arms are already bent when they contact the floor, the result will be (unless the kid has a very powerful roundoff) a headlanding.

[hammy]

The force that the body places on the arms during a bhs is six times that of the body weight, so having appropriate strength is important. Try having her do lots of handstands and work on holding them for as long as possible. I also agree with what GT said--he made some excellent points.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Quote:
Originally Posted by hammy The force that the body places on the arms during a bhs is six times that of the body weight, so having appropriate strength is important. Try having her do lots of handstands and work on holding them for as long as possible. I also agree with what GT said--he made some excellent points.

Six times? Never really occurred to me that it could be that much. I guess that makes sense, though.

[gymgymgymnast08]

Hm I heard when you land its 16 x your body weight? So maybe that goes for dismounts and tucks and layouts and stuff?

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Well it depends on the nature of the landing (and especially on how high you're landing from)

[gymgymgymnast08]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey Taucer Well it depends on the nature of the landing (and especially on how high you're landing from)

ok i understand lol

[gymmomntc2e6]

Quote:
Originally Posted by momof5 My daughter has been headlanding her BHS for months. While her form and techinique have improved the only area that she has made no progress is the head landing. The class she is in does very little conditioning. What can she work on at home to strengthen her arms? Is this probelm usually a strength issue?

If it makes you feel any better my dd did back-headsprings for MONTHS. Then one day - she did one, then two and well, hasn't done a headspring again.

[hammy]

I'm not sure if it is actually 6 times, I think that's what I read in the safety certification manual. I believe you're right that when you land dismounts and flips and that sort of thing that it is 16x. Landing on your head happens to a lot of gymnasts, and it could take some time to fix completely. Don't give up!

[MoonKid]

I landed on my head in my BHS for almost a year. What stopped me from landing on my head was when my summer coach (different from my usual coach), getting sick of watching me land on my head, started giving me pike-ups everytime my head and/or knees touched the mat (I'm VERY motivated by the threat of pike-ups).

Now, years later, I still don't have a good standing BHS but I don't land on my head. (A couple of times a coach has told me that they were amazed that I didn't let my head touch). I'm prety sure that my problem is mostly leg strength and somewhat shoulder felxibility.

Edit: The reason my BHS is still not very good is that I havn't been doing that much conditioning and I havn't had coaches who were great at diagnosing what was wrong with my BHS and giving me appropriate (sp?) conditioning.

Also, this is somewhat unrelated, but are your dd's legs straight in the BHS? If they're not, then that could be part of the problem (she would not be getting all of the power out of her legs to get her into a landing position that would make it easier to not bend her arms).