Oh wow! Thats really good! And you're on to giants and stuff in just 2 years - thats impressive! Hope your injuries get better soon!
Thanks! Honestly, I'm on to giants because a year ago I said "I want to learn giants" and they just said swing on the strap bar and said swing a lot and it got better over time. The one I'm proudest of is actually my kip and my toe shoot to high bar, though. When I started learning kip was a few months after I started gymnastics and I kind of thought I was crazy for trying. But I wanted a challenge and it was the most achievable challenge I could think of. Took me a few months (honestly it took me until I happened to have a different coach and they gave me a tip for my glide and bam it clicked and I had it). But since then I'd lost it several times (every time I accidentally lost weight I lose my kip - duh, kips need energy). Now it's quite consistent usually, and I can even do a decently high cast and skill out of it. wow I went on a kip rant there, woops. (PS. My bars is an outlier, I train 1.5hr a week and I often spend at least 0.5-1 hr of that on bars lol. my vault is far behind)
what i would start with is some shoulder strength drills and when you feel ready, do a pike cast where you try to get your hips on top of the bar in a pike position. This helps reinforce the idea of hips up first then straddle to get to handstand. Do you get what I mean?
Yeah, I get what you mean. Thanks so much for the advise. By the way, why pike and not straddle with the hips over the bar? I actually did a similar drill a bit ago with straddle to feet just above bar - fall forward. But I think honestly my hips were still kinda low in that so I am definitely gonna focus on the hips next time, thanks! I was also thinking of practising straddle to handstand from elevated plank position as well.
That makes sense. I tried it on pit bar (a high bar over pit) with a coach once and the only thing I struggled with was the wrist shift (which resulted to me closing my shoulder angle)... so I guess that will help you! (I know you probably can't just try it with a coach without having it down on ur own on strap but b/c im light and a kid my coach helped me haha)
Actually, my coach can spot me. He teaches adults and mixed gender, so he spots people a lot heavier than me, lol. However, first of all he prefers I get over the bar on my own strength at least for strap bar. But also I don't like being spotted as much. The first time I actually managed my flyaway was when I was allowed to a resi pit(?)
without spot, because being spotted just made it feel all crowded. But anyway, we don't have a pit bar, we only have uneven bars above a massive resi mat/pit thing. This gym is new and I think they went for more resi-mats and less foam pits (we have 1 foam block pit) because foam pits bring their own risks too.
On a completely different note, how do people do acro into foam pits? We have a trampoline track into the foam pit and a big trampoline next to it, and I'm terrified to do saltos
into the pit rather than land on teh trampoline. I'm scared I'll hit the edge.
omg this is why I don't start my giant in a handstand - I'm scared of falling over even though I know im strapped in with straps..
Would it maybe help to actually go over once, if that's safe? (Idk if thats safe but your coach would know). Then you may be less scared of it. I do think starting near handstand would help you get over because you have more momentum. I don't start from handstand cause I cant handstand, haha. Part of me is wondering though if I'd be better off learnign giants the other direction because it's feeling like I'm gonna go over on the backswing so much. But that may require a different grip.
Lol not at all, I enjoy reading these
Glad to hear it because I'm not putting much effort into keeping things short tbh. I find it a lot easier to type too much than too little.