A few high school gymnastics questions? NEW GYMNAST HELP!

[aliwisnieski]

Hi. I'm a tenth grader who is looking in to high school gymnastics as a third sport and to serve as cross-training for soccer and fastpitch softball (im a pitcher and I'm hoping this will strengthen my muscles). I also used to take gymnastics when I was in third grade. I was a level three if I remember correctly. I still have a pretty good cartwheel, back walkover, bridge, handstand, handstand-forwards roll, and backwards roll extension, and front walkover. I don't know what I'd be able to do on bars and beam and vault yet. the season starts tomorrow. Three questions:

1. what should I expect out of this? I live in Cleveland, Ohio if it makes any difference.
2. What skills will they teach me? Will they teach me how to do a back tuck or back handspring again?
3. How hard will this be for me? I am 5 foot 4, and I weigh 115 pounds, most of it is muscle. I am pretty average-skinny weight for my grade. Should I lose some weight to help me do more skills? I also am fearless, lol. Like We have a trampoline, and I'll do backtucks and front tucks on it. The problem will be translating it to the floor.

Thanksfor any insight you can give me into this. Oh, and does it strengthen your wrists? I had chronic tendonitis in my right wrist. I'm hoping this can help strengthen the muscles there so it won't happen again.

 

[Tumblequeensmom]

Please, please, please tell me that you didn't ask if you should lose weight?!?!? NO NO NO!!!!

O.K.... First things first.... in my area, the winter sports season is fast and intense. First meet beginning of December, meet season wrapping up the first week or so of February. The bottom line is that you probably WILL NOT gain any new skills unless you have been working on them on your own time. If you coudl do a back tuck and BHS in the past, they may be able to ehlp you get them back. You probably have about a month to practice before your first meet, right? Also, sometimes the HS gymnastics coaches may not even have a lot of gymnastics experience... maybe they are the school's cheer coaches, someone who has coached rec classes at a gymnastics facility, well, you get the idea. Also, tumbling on the HS "floor" can actually cause wrist, ankle and knee problems... you see.... in my state, there is no spring floor... it's only the foam pad that covers a "real" spring floor. So a lot of the girls really water down their tumbling routines for high school. B U T . . .

My DD really loves her HS gymnastics experience. This will be her third year on the team. It's completely different from Club gymnastics. HS gym really is all about the whole team aspect of the sport. Individual placements are completely secondary to that all important TEAM score!!! And there can't be enough said about the "team spirit" that is involved in HS gymnastics. So... go for it, and have fun. At the very least, it will probably increase your flexibility, which is helpful w/any sport you do. And who knows, you may gain some old skills back and have lots of fun too!

 

[aliwisnieski]

Thanks for the help; we started yesterday! It was so much fun. It's a lot of hard work (the conditioning part) but I know it's making me stronger and it will end up paying off. Also, there are a lot of girls there who have never even done gymnastics before, so I'm kind of in the middle. There are others that do a lot of skills, as well.

Thanks for the information!

 

[my4buffaloes]

Just wanted to say that my son has been taking gymnastics in order to get stronger for other sports. He has a ton of fun with it and it really is making him stronger. Good luck!

edited to add that he is 13, so old to be starting, but he doesn't have long term goals.