Vault & Lower Leg power training

[BeamPrincess]

My level 5s are having trouble doing good vaults in competition and they are a bit hit and miss in training. The girls score highly on every other event and need to pick up vaulting for better overall results.

1. Drills/Strength to help improve leg power and run/hurdle speed.

2. When there is too much arch onto the vault and not a good repulsion DRILLS. We do heaps of drills and they are great at them but put it to vault and it's hard.

Any help to improve power and vaulting would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[CoachTodd]

Punch layouts into a pit or onto a mat.
turn the level 4 vault mat sideways and let them vault over it.
handspring to flat back over the table onto a stack of mats.
focus on shapes even if you have to spot quite a bit. They need to get used to feeling themselves bounce off the table.

I personally don't care much for repulsion drills. If you do everything correctly, you bounce. I'd just focus on tight front hand springs.

 

[BlairBob]

I am with Coach Todd on repulsion. If you stay tight, you effectively rebound off the table.

1.

Single Leg squats and Jumping Single Leg squats for height and distance. You can use partial ROM so they only do half squats into a stand or jump as well. You can roll back to a candlestick and do a squat or jump out of it for assistance.

This is all moot unless you can do the single leg squat in the first place. Some gymnasts may not be able to flex at the knees or ankles enough or if they have knock-knees. If they try to lift the heel, they most likely fall.

a. as well working single leg hops and single leg runs (basically a hop/jump forward). the focus on single leg run is to maximize distance of the hop horizontally. the single leg hop is just to work on the ankle being able to hop on it.

b. some gymnasts have too weak of ankles to properly run on the forefoot. a lot of heel and toe raises, with weights perhaps besides lots of releve work especially if they have weak releve strength.

2. you can work tractor pulls or block pushes where a gymnast pulls or pushes an object.

Arching off the table is a result of being too weak to bounce off the table. More speed in the run, more power in the hurdle.