Parents Leaps?

[Ariekannairb]

I have asked about leaps before but last night I was talking to DD's coach and she said she believed the issue was just that DD had not connected how to make her legs do what they need to do. She believes she CAN do it, she just hasn't figured out how to do it. It is frustrating DD to no end. Her leaps look...silly. Like crazy small. Are there suggestions on something she can work on at home that will help her "feel" how she needs to be moving her legs to get them up? They are planning on working with her at the gym specifically on this, but she works on it at home and I would rather she be doing it right or not be doing it at all without the coach.

 

[profmom]

Like so many other things in gymnastics, it comes with time and repetition in the gym. For optional girls, sometimes they practice with therabands to increase resistance, but the foundation has to be solid before that's introduced. When I look back at DD's L5 videos, I can't believe how tiny her beam leaps and jumps were!

 

[Ariekannairb]

Like so many other things in gymnastics, it comes with time and repetition in the gym. For optional girls, sometimes they practice with therabands to increase resistance, but the foundation has to be solid before that's introduced. When I look back at DD's L5 videos, I can't believe how tiny her beam leaps and jumps were!

totally get that. My point is not really to force her to get it now, but just to make sure that if she is practicing it at home, she isn't negating what they are trying to do with her in the gym.

 

[profmom]

She could practice static stretching. I guess my impulse would be just to leave it alone and figure that for most kids, practicing leaps is likely to become pretty boring pretty quickly and they're unlikely to teach themselves any significant bad habits.

With a lot of the practice-at-home stuff, my impression is that some of how well it works depends on how well a child remembers corrections delivered in the gym. Some kids are really good at remembering corrections very specifically and will apply them when they are doing things at home, but for some of them, whatever the coach says floats out of their heads the minute they leave the gym if not before.