WAG is floor too easy compared to bars?

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K

katlinchen

I see many gymnasts in the gym and on INSTAGRAM (a social media app where people can post pics and vids, in case you don't know) I also follow many gymnast, mostly from L6 to L9.
Ok so what I noticed is that most of them have like amazing floor skills for their Level, but are not really good on bars. It is not that they are super bad, but compared to floor...like a different level!

It's common that I see people at L6 or 7 do half and full twists on floor, but they can't even cast do handstand and don't have free hip handstand.

Why is that? Is it a matter of strength? Is it just easier to progress on floor and the kids are not so afraid to just try twists? Is it a problem of the gyms not doing enough bar and strength work?

If I speak for me - I am definitely on the "strong" side for my level(7). I can do various leg lifts, pull-ups and a minute tuck planche, I have really strong standing back tucks, too. When I look at others, most of the gymnast from L4-L7/8 seem to be so good on floor, like they can do front aerials and stuff, which I just can't (ok I never trained them, but they look so hard!)
Somehow, the speed on the tumbling passes scare me. I prefer flipping out of a power hurdle round-off than a running round-off!

I am curious about your opinion and how this is forn you!
 
I think it really just depends on the gymnast. Floor and bars can use different muscles and the physics of swinging is much different than the physics of rebounding off a floor. Bars is the most different from every other event.
Personally when I was more consistently in gymnastics (mostly the late 90s) I was stronger on bars. Tumbling and vault were my weaknesses, I was able to do relatively advanced dance moves on beam but the tumbling held me back (you certainly can't do it on beam if you can't even do it on the floor!) and of course from a practical standpoint vault is a lot like tumbling. Bars was easier for me, I had a lot of strength in my shoulders and core. For a frame of reference, I had just learned a roundoff back handspring on floor and had back walkovers but not front. But on bars I was working on clear hip circles and baby giants and just starting to work on flyaways.
There's a lot of things that can lead to people being better on one event than another. Natural inclination. Differences in strength and flexibility between different muscle groups. Differences in training focus or coaching strengths. Differences in effectiveness of training aids- there's really nothing for bars quite like the multiple step sequence to learn a new tumbling skill starting on the springiest tumbling surface and softest landing surface and gradually moving to firmer surfaces. But I wouldn't say any of that means that floor is easier than bars.

~Katy
 
Individual differences, but also different gyms and coaching philosophies will create a diff type of gymnast. From a competitive pacing perspective, I'd think that it would be better to spend a bit more time on bars if a gymnast is lacking skills (rather than doing more uptraining on another event, like floor). Bars appears to be a bit of a gatekeeper the further along you get into optionals, so it may be a good idea to focus a bit more on it in the lower levels so the harder skills come a bit more quickly.
 
I am sure it's totally individualized. I only have two girls to base on with certainty, but even with just them, one is much stronger on floor and the other on bars. Shrug.
 
My dd is going to be a level 6 this season. She does very well on vault and floor. Her arch enemy is bars and has been for a few years. Its fear that holds her back. She has never taken a fall, but doesnt like to lean over the bar. Ultimately her casts arent very high. We dont push it and her coach feels it will come with time, but it definitely hurts her AA scores and lowers her confidence level which is never good. At the end of the day we just want a happy gymnast.
 
my DD was most certainly better on bars than any other event. She is more the long and lean body type but I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Bar skills always came easier for her but twisting .... not so much!!
 
in L6 and L7, the SR do not REQUIRE a cast HS (L6 is Horizontal and L7 is 45º below HS) ... although they ARE deducted for not reaching the HS.
A lot of gyms will allow the girls to move up to these levels if they have the required height plus just a little... they can continue working them... and it is better than keeping them in L5 compulsories.
This is no reason to prevent them from upgrading their floor skills to the maximum allowed for their level. We have a girl repeating L7 so she can continue working on her bars and she is upgrading her floor and beam while she is at it.
 
Depends upon the kid, but I would say that as you hit L7 bars, strength AND swing become important. DD was always significantly better at floor and beam until L7, then did great for 2 years, highest placements on bars...BUT....that's because she was strong with good form and had full cast HS consistently, bit free hips, etc....now trying L8 her lack of long lean swing is hitting hard because her giants are still inconsistent. The timing of the kip took her awhile as well, held her at old L5 for a while. No fear issues on bars, however, compared to about everything else now, but she's not doing release moves without a spot yet:( so that could change.

Bars is hard to swing well if you are built like the proverbial little teapot (short and stout)....but tumbling can be easy
 
in L6 and L7, the SR do not REQUIRE a cast HS (L6 is Horizontal and L7 is 45º below HS) ... although they ARE deducted for not reaching the HS.
A lot of gyms will allow the girls to move up to these levels if they have the required height plus just a little... they can continue working them... and it is better than keeping them in L5 compulsories.
This is no reason to prevent them from upgrading their floor skills to the maximum allowed for their level. We have a girl repeating L7 so she can continue working on her bars and she is upgrading her floor and beam while she is at it.

Because you don't need a cast handstand or free hip handstand in level 6 and 7 gymnasts won't get to handstand.
 
It depends on the gymnast. I was training fulls on floor by the time I finished competing old level 6 ( I skipped old 5 as well), but I didn't get my kip cast handstand until last summer before my 3rd year of level 9. I was always behind bars and beam, but ahead on floor and vault up until I was a level 9. Then I was on the weaker side of all the events except maybe vault, just weaker on bars (especially) and beam. Leaner gymnasts are typically stronger on bars and beam, and more muscle bound gymnasts are typically better on floor and vault, this isn't to say both have the same amount of muscle, their body types just assist better in getting skills on the different events. Moreover, bars takes a lot of timing regardless of what body type a gymnast has and as such frequently takes longer to get consistent at.
 
Because you don't need a cast handstand or free hip handstand in level 6 and 7 gymnasts won't get to handstand.
I have seen L6 and L7 girls hit HS on casts... at YMCA Nationals. Of course, some of them finished their competitive seasons by January and had 6 months to work on them before Nationals... and they were most likely girls that will be competing L8 this season (Some of the girls that competed L6 actually also competed L7 during the season, but submitted their qualifying scores from L6).
 
My DD casted nearly to HS a few times in old L4....the look on her face was pretty hilarious! :D

She certainly didn't have the capability to control it at that point, so it was a bit wild on the way down, but she always had that natural swing. Once she started kipping and doing some of the compulsory skills for (old) L5 and L6 bars, she seemed to develop more control and the cast to HS went away for a while. It did return during her L7 season, but I will always remember the wild days of L4.
 
My DD casted nearly to HS a few times in old L4....the look on her face was pretty hilarious! :D
One time in practice, we had a girl (old L4) cast to PAST handstand... and she was only casting for her shoot thru. She freaked a little, but the coach caught her and helped her down.
 
I see many gymnasts in the gym and on INSTAGRAM (a social media app where people can post pics and vids, in case you don't know) I also follow many gymnast, mostly from L6 to L9.
Ok so what I noticed is that most of them have like amazing floor skills for their Level, but are not really good on bars. It is not that they are super bad, but compared to floor...like a different level!

It's common that I see people at L6 or 7 do half and full twists on floor, but they can't even cast do handstand and don't have free hip handstand.

Why is that? Is it a matter of strength? Is it just easier to progress on floor and the kids are not so afraid to just try twists? Is it a problem of the gyms not doing enough bar and strength work?

If I speak for me - I am definitely on the "strong" side for my level(7). I can do various leg lifts, pull-ups and a minute tuck planche, I have really strong standing back tucks, too. When I look at others, most of the gymnast from L4-L7/8 seem to be so good on floor, like they can do front aerials and stuff, which I just can't (ok I never trained them, but they look so hard!)
Somehow, the speed on the tumbling passes scare me. I prefer flipping out of a power hurdle round-off than a running round-off!

I am curious about your opinion and how this is forn you!

bars is to women what pommel horse is to men. :)
 
No cast handstand equals up to 0.6 deduction on every routine. Absolutely KILLS your bar score. So while the SR is only 45 degrees in L7 if you don't have handstand it is darn near impossible to score in the 9s. Just went through an entire season of no cast handstands. DD best score was 8.9 and that was with giants, layout flyaway, decent free hip and nice form. You can score better without giants + cast handstands than giants and no cast handstand.
 
I know when dd went to compete in Florida last year she had to take lots of skills out of her beam and floor routines to compete level 8, but did not have the requirements for a 10 on bars. (She was missing a turn around on top of the bar). As our province and others are switching to the JO program kids are having a hard time keeping up with bars.

I guess it is a good thing, to be more advanced than we were on bars, But I'm afraid that if girls have to go back a level because of bars, there will be a lot who will just quit.
 
To me, and this is totally anecdotal with only three years of observation, but it seems like you have to score higher on floor to place well than any other event.

My DD has placed well with vault scores in the high 8 but that will never place at all on floor. Same thing to an extent for bars.

But she has also received low to mid 9s (9.1 to 9.3) and not even get to the podium on floor. It almost seems like if you aren't getting at least a 9.5 on floor, then you aren't going to medal at all.
 
You spend your life on your feet; it's natural. The "basics" of floor - running, jumping, leaping, etc are all normal and natural. The average fit person can learn to do a standing back tuck (it may be ugly). Even something as "simple" or "basic" as a front hip circle on bars is completely foreign to people, and not at all natural. The average fit person jumps into front support on bars, and then gets down, saying "yeah, not going to try anything".
 

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