Coaches "slow" gymnast advice

[eucoach]

I have the following "problem":

I have a gymnast who just turned 11, is barely over 4 feet tall and has a "heavy" body type. She is not too heavy at all, she is well-proportioned, just very small and compact - definitely not a light gymnast. She's not powerful at all...actually she can barely leave the floor ;-). She's a very hard worker and practices until she gets everything perfect. She has good technique and actually has nice tumbling (ro-bhs-layout). Vault is a big problem but getting better. Beam is fine....she's very flexible and has nice walkovers and bhs. Her jumps and leaps finally clicked about 1/2 a year ago....before she just couldn't get close to a split position because she was so slow off the ground. Now she has nice 180° splits in split leaps and switch leaps (floor and beam).

However, a big problem is bars. She has very good front and back giants and free hip handstands on the strap bar and she's getting there on the real bars. But she can barely kip at all or cast above horizontal. We work on bars a lot and I make her work kips and casts with the younger girls a lot so she gets more time on bars. She has great technique on her glide but everything that requires a quick movement (getting the feet to the bar quickly and closing the shoulder angle) seems impossible for her. We've been working on that kip (consistently) for about 2.5 years but it just isn't happening. She can make 1 out of 10 by herself (bent arms of course!) but it seems she just isn't progressing from there.

It shouldn't be a strength issue either...she is the strongest of the group...she can do up to 5 press handstands in a row, lots of pull ups, pull overs, leg lifts, every core exercise in the book, etc. She is very slow with everything though....it takes her forever to climp the rope (without legs), her pull-ups are slow, etc.

So...have any of you coached that type of gymnast? And if yes, how far were they able to go? Did some skills just click at some point or did it just get worse as they grew/got older?

 

[gymdog]

Not very fast twitch, sure. Though I've never heard of anything like what you describe, a gymnast who can't do a kip but can do a free hip handstand, even in strap bar. However, in the US most likely a gymnast without a kip wouldn't be attempting free hip handstand.

 

[iwannacoach]

I've had two kids that could be this child's identical twin...... well maybe they had better kips, but everything else matches. Neither ended up doing spectacular work, but over time were able to fit in and have some success in competitions. The one redeeming quality of both these kids was they almost never missed a skill or fell off beam.

I think the only thing I did that worked on speeding them up, and slightly at best, was to teach them to anticipate the individual steps of a skill's sequential movements and convince them to begin the next motion before they'd "finished" the previous movement.

For example, it just seemed they'd linger at the end of their glide, and the only way to get them moving at the right time was to have them start their feet to the bar as soon as they began elevating their hips at the end of the glide. The thing is, they'd transition from the extension so slowly that they were kinda in the right position by the time they'd pike to get their feet to the bar.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

Not very fast twitch, sure. Though I've never heard of anything like what you describe, a gymnast who can't do a kip but can do a free hip handstand, even in strap bar. However, in the US most likely a gymnast without a kip wouldn't be attempting free hip handstand.

spot on. and maybe it's time for real time on the bars and not in straps.

 

[Deleted member 14190]

Do longer sets of whatever you are doing (kip casts, drop kips). Yep,,,, sometimes it's that simple. LONG sets.