Parents level 5 bars vs. level 4 bars: how hard or long to learn?

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anothergymmom

Proud Parent
This is a question for all those experienced gym parents. I've read many posts about the agony of the kip and the kip as a kind of threshhold skill. But I haven't seen the same kind of posts about the level 5 skills (clear hip, long hang pullover, esp.) Have I just been missing those? I'm really just curious. My daughter didn't have a lot of trouble getting her kip but has had more trouble with other level 4 skills: i.e. the VAULT. But when I see our girls who just finished level 5 do their bars it looks like they have really made a huge leap forward--it seems like these skills are much more challenging than the kip. But then again, what do I know!
 
I'd like to see the answers to your question, too! My L4 gymmie got her kip in the space of a week, but I watch the level 5 girls and think their routines look really hard!
 
Our girls went up in hours considerably while training for L5. L5 bars are no joke! DD got her kip quickly, but it just took more hours for a good free hip, flyaway, and baby giant.
 
My YG got a long hang pullover on her first attempt (after her 2nd season of Old L4)... she has never missed one (some are uglier than others, but many are beautiful)... but she STILL doesn't have her kip.
 
  • I'm not an experienced mom per se. This is dd's 2nd year competing. But dd will be competing L5 this season. I wanna say back in May when they did their evaluations, coach had them do several skills to see where they'd place. I don't have video of dd w/ a clear hip. But I do have long hang pullover, kip cast kip, kip cast clear hip circle kip cast (tongue twister) and the then, at the time, the DREADED flyaway (she had a hard time getting this skill early on. But she LOVES it now. Well she loves Giants, but that's for another thread :p). Her team also did a L4 score out meet recently. And from observation, I think L5 bars is going to be a little bit more challenging than L4. Not necessarily hard, but I guess it depends on the gymnast. And I heard the judges are more strict w/ the scoring on L5. Guess I'll find out come January.

  • Anywho, I've included the vids (long hang pullover, kip cast kip, kip cast clear hip circle kip cast (tongue twister), flyaway - this was back in May during evaluations and she did her L5 bars routine today but I didn't record it :eek: and L4 bars).




 
I have to say that the level 5 routine is pretty challenging compared to 4. My dd scored out of 4 in late August and is set to test out of 5 this weekend. She still struggles with the fly away layout. She has been working many of those skills since the summer like doing giants on strap bars and long hang pullovers. Keep your fingers crossed she lands her dismount Saturday.
 
I am not experienced, but DD got her long hang pullover in about a day, kip in about a week, and had no trouble with baby giants. Free hips haven't been to hard to learn either. No flyaway though. No flyaway has ever been attempted or initiated as of yet. It seems the jump of 4 to 5 has held back a number of DDs friends, but almost exclusively due to either kips or flyaway problems.
 
It's so fascinating to me to hear what different gymnasts find challenging!!
My own gymmie is NOT a great bar worker. For her, the flyaway took very little time for her to get, and she went to layout flyaways very quickly. Baby giants, no problem, don't think it even registered to her or anyone else in her group that they might be challenging. Now clear hips and cast to handstands.... Ugly, ugly and ugly!! Her clear hips are just not attractive. She can do them, just not well (and her coach is great working on them). She hasn't been working giants much yet, not even on strap bar, because she's having such issues on her clear hip. She can do a straddle cast to handstand, but barely. She can do flyaways all day long though without any problems..! ;)
 
If they have a good L4 bar routine (consistently scoring 9.4+), L5 bars are pretty easy to move up to. Our 4s and 5s train together. Beginning the summer before their first L4 meet, the L4s warm up with the L4 routine and spend the rest of the workout on L5 and above.
 
Once they have their kip their understanding of swing and timing and their strength tend to click quite a bit and the other skills usually come faster. So,e kids struggle with the flyaway due to fear issues but it's technically no where near as difficult as the kip to obtain.

Clear hip can cause problems but kids find a bit easier to cheat it around and still at least have it count with some deductions than they would with a kip.
 
L4 and L5 bars are different because with L4, there's the one skill that many gymnasts struggle with: the kip. So you'll hear it almost as a synonym for what's giving people trouble with L4 bars. With L5, there are more varied places for the difficulty. Some kids pick up the flyaway easily but have trouble doing a good free hip. Some kids get both of those skills well but then get dinged repeatedly on cast angles. Some kids take a while to learn to do a nice looking 3/4 giant. (L6 boys' team, I'm looking at you!) And some kids, weirdly enough, have decent casts and flyaways free hips but continue to take deductions on their bent-arm kips. So what you hear is "Wow, scoring on L5 bars is awful!" rather than "my kid is never going to get her/his kip!"
 
Flyaway fears here ....all the way. DD got her kip easily and never had issues, clear-hip, no problem, baby giant, check. They gym really focused on getting strong over the summer and I wonder if that is paying off for them on a whole.

For DD Flyaway, not even going to try it without the belt. Bars went from favorite event to least favorite.

Three weeks until the first meet and everything else is looking great.
 
Can someone tell me the difference between long hang pullover and baby giant? I was thinking they were the same thing?
 
DD's group started working the L5 bar skills last December. 3/4 of them had all the new L5 skills by May (baby giant, flyaway, clear-hip). The others had two of the three and struggled on either flyaway or clear-hip. My DD was last in the group to have all skills - she got her flyaway in early September. Early in the competition season all the girls who were doing the skills consistently since May were the high scorers for the team. The dynamic has changed in our most two meets and length of time since mastering skill is no longer a predictor of who will score highest.
 
I too am confused about the long hang pull over. I thought that what was in the level 5 routine was a baby giant. I thought a long hang pullover was just a pull over on the high bar...
 

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