Parents How to apply upper body strength to handsprings?

[Izumi]

My daughter seems to have great upper body strength--she happily does tons of pull-ups, flies up the climbing rope all the way to the ceiling, can rock climb using only her arms as her body just hangs, bar is her best event with early/easy pullovers, etc. Yet when she goes to do a handspring her arms just collapse under her. She also has trouble getting enough power to push off on slow things like walkovers. Does she need more or different arm strength? Any ideas? Thanks!

 

[raenndrops]

Let the coaches sort it out.

 

[sce]

How are her handstands? How is her shoulder flexibility?

 

[Lilou]

I was going to ask about her shoulder flexibility too because from what the coach told me is that they need to get their arms back behind their ears quickly as they take off (just repeating the coaches words, not mine since I don't know about gymnastics technique). No matter how strong they are, if their shoulders aren't flexible to get their arms back it can cause the kids to collapse their arms. Hopefully this makes sense to other parent/coaches in this group because that's how I interpreted what the coach told us after she mentioned the arms need to get back behind the ears. My daughter's been working on shoulder flexibility since she's very strong, but was not as flexible in her shoulders as she needed to be. Stretching helps a lot though so if this is your daughter's issue, stretch, stretch!

 

[Izumi]

She's in Rec level 3, not team yet (trying to get this so she can move over to team, last thing she doesn't have in 3) and the coach has never given her anything to work on to help it. It's been a very relaxed class so far. She and the other kids had to beg to work on handsprings at all. So waiting for the coach to work it out may take a while. Once on team the coaching is better but she has to get there first!

Her handstands are lovely but she only holds them for a second or two at most. She can clasp her hands behind her back and swing them up all the way in front of her without letting go so I think her shoulder flexibility is decent.... She doesn't stretch them very much besides that, though. Hmm.....

 

[CoachTodd]

Bridge kick overs take more strength that a back handspring. If proper technique is used, only core strength and the ability to do a handstand are really needed for the BHS.
Most of the strength activity you listed are pulling type exercises. The skills listed involve pushing. Push ups and handstands are always a good start.

 

[EGPtriumph]

Izumi- you just described my daughter too!

 

[e'smum]

maybe look around for some BHS clinics. there are gyms in our area that just do BHS classes or clinics. she's only in rec so i wouldn't think it would be an issue if she went to another gym for a clinic. our gym has also had BHS clinics and i'm sure we've had other gymnasts in there.