Parents Grips while learning kip

[raenndrops]

Kips before grips unless getting bloody rips!

We had a girl get grips in her 2nd year of Level 8.

 

[Gymnastics15]

I wouldn't worry too much, I've seen a very successful level 6, who competed without grips. Her routine was Kip, cast on, high bar kip, free hip hand, Giant, Giant, Layout fly way

 

[Ajoy]

For those with more experience, what are your thoughts on getting grips before or after girls get their kip? Last fall, my daughter’s training group were told they could get grips and my daughter chose not to. She was barely 7 and has small hands. She only competed level 2 so really didn’t need them. Now, she’s in upgrade season and very close to getting her kip. She is the only girl in her group not using grips. Do you think this helps or hurts her? She is not in a hurry to get them because she saw friends struggle to adjust to them.

Grips are to help grasp on to the bar. Not to get too nerdy with you but the force pulling you away from the bar increases with your weight and velocity and at some point it will outpace grip strength. Typically no one needs grips until they are around 80lbs and swinging giants. My daughter and most girls couldn’t wait to have them to be like the older girls but it’s probably best to wait as long as possible.

 

[gymcoach34]

No grips until the athlete has a strong straight arm kip.

 

[gymcoach34]

Georgia "No GRIPS" Dabritz

 

[Gymnast_13]

I got my grip before my kip. At my gym it depends on the girl because my coach only let some girls get grips before kip (me) but other girls had to have consistant kips first. For me he thought that it would be easier for me to learn my kip with grips so I didn't have to relearn everything and I also ripped alot. The grips have made things alot easier.

 

[Dahlialover]

Our coaches take the gymnast’s age and weight into consideration when deciding about when to start them on grips. They believe that the older bigger boys need the dowel earlier than the little boys. This makes sense to me. The older boys tend to get grips when they are working on their kips and the little boys don’t get them until after.

 

[charsgymnastics]

my gym starts training kips after level 3 state and focuses on them most of the summer when practicing bars aside from working on future level five skills, our rule is that you need 100 kips to be able to get your grips. We have a whiteboard next to our bar sets with the girls names written usually silvers or level 3s and once you reach 100 you get a sticker/certificate and grips. most of our girls that deal with rips use ripguards or tape grips to manage them or they get pairs of those cheap grips with no dowels to manage them because training kips usually leads to lots of rips

 

[StephensMom]

Oh, hey. I haven’t checked this thread in quite awhile! For anyone also interested in this topic, I can give an update on my daughter. Not too long after I posted this, our gym did its summer training group shuffle. My daughter was moved to a new, younger group. She had been the youngest in her group by a good bit and was moved to a group that is more her age. Anyway, in the new group no one was wearing grips and no one had kips. Some were fairly new to gymnastics but moving quickly and some had a couple years of experience like my daughter. After a few months, my daughter still didn’t have her kip but I was told she was close. One day, I got an email that I needed to buy my daughter grips (plus all the information about which type to get, etc). I bought them and my daughter didn’t have a huge struggle with using them on her established skills but definitely didn’t seem as close on her kip for awhile. She does have her kip now. For reasons I have absolutely no idea about, only my daughter and one other girl were told to get grips. They are currently the only two to have their kip but I think that would be true regardless of whether or not they wore grips based on my observations of the group.