Parents Flexibility

[Elle2004]

Hi, my daughter has just turned 8 and started gymnastics a year and a half ago. Starting in rec she then soon got moved through 2 squad. During her recent review it was explained to me that next year when she turns 9 they would like to start sending her the Elite (National) pathway. My daughter is very excited by the prospect but has to work on shoulder flexibility.
This has been mentioned a few times in the past. She can do bridges throughout (but it just looks a bit harder work than others for her) flicks fine, tick tocks and just started to learn back walk overs on the beam. However I wonder if this is something that can be improved over time or will she always suffer with tight shoulders? Shes does 4 sessions a week now at gym so will this make a difference?

 

[Coach Kate]

It is something that can be improved but it will require daily work outside of practice. Most gyms devote at most 15-20 minutes a day to flexibility training and it's mostly split and pike work. Doing bridges, rocking shoulders, pushing into a wall, that should really be done daily at home if she needs help in that area.

In an extreme example, I trained contortion and it took me a minimum of an hour every single day just to maintain the flexibility I had, not even to make any progress. That's about how long our warm up took before we got into any real progress, building, and focus for the day.

 

[Dahlialover]