WAG Straight legs in skill

[momof5]

Question for everyone. My DD is working on her bhs layout step out series on beam. She has had this series for a while now but hasn't consistently worked on it for a awhile. With the season about to end she is doing these more and more now. She is can land this on the beam but struggles to keep the 2nd leg on the layout stepout straight. She had the same problem on them in the fall too. Coaches just say keep your leg straight and she says that she thinks she is. Coach keeps taking the skill away and makes her do back pikes off the spring board. Every couple of days she gets to try a few layouts and she keeps bending that leg so they take away the skill again. When she gets to work on them she works on the springboard or the tumble trak on these. Any ideas to help her. She is getting frustrated that she can't work on these to improve these and they only correction she gets is straighten your leg. Any ideas to help her?

 

[CAGymmie]

I can't say I have done these before, as I am only a level four, but I know something that has helped me with other skills. What if you (or a coach) video taped the skill to show her where she is bending her leg? It might help because instead of her hearing "Your knee is bent", she can physically see it.

 

[iwannacoach]

Bent legs happen on step-outs for couple of reasons. The two that I first suspect........ Some kids split their legs a bit for the step out by actively opening their legs, one leg reaching into the step out and the trail leg slightly reaching back where it came from. When the step out is done this way, the back leg bends because the trail foot is trying to stay back even though the trail knee continues to advance into the layouts rotation.

The other reason the back knee bends is because the gymnast thinks she'd feel the bending of her knee, doesn't feel it, and assumes it's straight when it is, in fact, bent.

No matter the cause, there's a single simple solution that works for either. She first needs to realize that it's very hard to feel a bent leg because there's nothing really happening that she can feel. It's kinda like not feeling the bend in your legs while sitting in a chair. Sure, they're bent. You can see their bent, so you know their bent.

You know your sitting down, so they have to be bent, but I doubt you can really identify a bent leg sensation that differs from a somewhat bent leg, or a relatively straight leg. If you were to actively straighten your legs while sitting in the chair, you'd feel them as straight, because the muscles that create the motion to straighten and maintain straight legs are working, and that's something she can feel.

The solution for her is to straighten her trailing knee by extending it and "squeezing" her quadriceps muscles to create the straight leg sensation. She'll know they're straight when she feels those muscles working, and if in mid skill she doesn't feel them, she can always straighten them mid flight.

The bottom line is she has to make hr legs straighten as opposed to trying to not bend them.

 

[Flipomaniak]

This is the reason my coach took mine out... Now I'm working flick to layout 2 foot.