conditioning
Hi There,
Do you condition an hour per week, or an hour per day- that makes a BIG difference.
If the girls are already training and in good shape, you should concentrate on maintaining while they are competing- can't get into anything heavy duty b/c focus is on competing.
Leg lifts, chin ups, levers, arch taps, front grip chin ups and arch taps, etc when on bars before they start training will help. We do a whole series of 5 to 6 exercises on the bar- 10 of each- but the girls do them in a row and can't get down until all are completed- a great way to condition quickly but a little more intensely. Cast handstands (spotted and unspotted are also great conditioning.)
I love circuit training, but is should only be done intensely in the off season, start w/ 30 seconds at each station and hit all the body parts, alternating, upper, core, legs w/ 10 sec rest as they rotate, another way to hit everything fairly quickly.
You can do lots of releves and handstand work on beam, legs/plyometrics on vault or floor. Also make sure you do core exercises for a portion of your time.
Do you have good club near you where you can go and watch the conditioning and get some ideas? gymnasticscoaching.com also has some good ideas. Its hard to be specific when I don't know how much training time you have, physical condition of the athletes, etc. I would stay away from ellipticals, etc as its a different motion/ movement than the girls are used to, and very minimal weight training.
Hope this helps!
