CAVEAT: I am not a coach. This is based on watching lots of girls with beam series issues and on living with a daughter who had two solid years of beam woes.
Take the series down to the highest point where you can do it, whether that's on a cranked up beam with a pad or all the way down to a line on the floor. Do the numbers (sets of five or ten) and then try moving it up one step to see if you have trouble. If you do, go back and do more numbers where you can be successful. Build the habit of going for it and succeeding every time. If you're patient enough, this technique will eventually work.
Edited to add -- the ideal way for this to work is to do so many at the lower level that you're not even really thinking about it and honestly, you're getting bored with the entire exercise. Eventually it will become so habitual and so easy that you might feel a little tickle in the back of your head telling you that you WANT to try something more challenging and you're excited to move it up. It's more or less a cognitively based approach where you step away from the fear and anxiety associated with putting the series on the high beam and reprogram your brain to anticipate success.
@profmom, I want to like this a thousand times! I wholeheartedly support and endorse your campaign.
This is undoubtedly the best way to go when dealing with this touchy situation. It works so well because it allows the gymnast to continually work towards the ultimate goal, with every training session being composed largely of successful repetitions; when you've worked on back handspring step-outs for ten minutes straight and 90% of your reps were successful, even if they were all done on just a low beam, it's hard to feel upset, unproductive, or stuck when it's time to move on to the next part of the workout. If a gymnast's practices are based largely on successes, it can really do wonders for their psyche. As a coach, I sometimes stand back and observe my girls training and ask myself, "are these girls successful on a majority of their turns? Is it 50/50? Is a good, clean rep the exception rather than the norm?" If the success rate is not comfortably above 50%, the particular progressions/drills/stations may be too hard for them at the moment. Often, there is a bit of a learning curve with each new drill, so that has to be taken into account also since it can take a good amount of tries before they start to "get" it and then the good turns start happening. There is a difference between not being ready, and just needing a bit more practice to understand what is being asked or what the goal is.
Some other things to do as a coach that can really help:
- Reduce all sources of stress as much as possible.
- Tell all your gymnasts that the event of losing an existing skill or feeling fear learning a new one is simply a part of gymnastics, and happens very frequently to almost every gymnast.
- Set some very reasonable guidelines, yet firmly enforce them, like setting a maximum number of attempts of a certain skill, or warm up effectively every day with some simple drills before getting started on the skill in question.
- Be understanding, and don't hesitate to move the gymnast on to some other work if it just isn't happening that day.
I'll tell you all a quick, personal, and very recent story.
All the Level 5s had back handspring step-outs when I started working at my new gym at the start of May. However, they were
butt ugly. Like, ew. They weren't very consistent with staying on the beam, and if they did manage to stay on, the horrible form would have them lose the same as a fall anyway. I brought them all back to basics (on a lot of their other skills, too) and really worked with them on how to correctly jump into their back handspring, how to visually spot the beam longer to prevent head throwing, how to squeeze their glutes to produce a nice hip lift during the jump, how to place their feet and hands, etc. Once their tech started looking better, I slowly started moving them to floor beams with panel mats stacked up and set specific numbers they had to hit successfully in a row to move some more of the mats away. This continued for a little more then two months, with some girls moving to the high beam with different mat settings underneath, until the first girl finally made it back up onto the competition setting beam. Shortly after, because the energy level between the girls was high, three others made it, too. And this time, they actually looked pretty clean. It was a great day!
Now, one of the 5s, Cameron, did two handsprings that day, but when she got up to do the third, she put her arms up, ready to go, then stopped, turned to me and looked nervous. I told her to jump down and not to worry about it, and we then moved on to the next event. The following day, we went back to beam and Cameron looked nervous when she was working her way up higher. There were extra amounts of fidgeting, rubbing off sweaty hands, etc. In my head, it seemed like she felt some perceived pressure from her teammates to do the handspring the day prior, and even though she did actually do it twice on the high beam, she possibly realized what she was doing and perhaps pushed herself a little too quickly. I told her not to worry about it, and to keep working at her own pace. I was always around giving corrections and gently pushing all the girls, including her.
A month later, Cameron hadn't really progressed too much further, and I scratched her from beam for the first three meets. I explained to her it was not a punishment, but simply a matter of my philosophy and team/gym image, etc. She understood, and quietly kept working towards getting it up on the high beam. We had our Christmas break, and the first day back in the gym we were all headed to vault, but I pulled her aside and said, "if you want, I will let you head to beam by yourself if you think working entirely independently will be helpful to you." She thought for a second, and said she wanted to try working on her own. I went to vault with the rest of the 5s, and about halfway through the rotation I hear my name, along with "I did it!" I look over and she's on the high beam in lunge position with nice presentation and a huge smile.
There were hugs everywhere and happiness in the air.
That happened last week. She is slated to compete beam, and therefore all around, this weekend at her fourth meet.
I'm not sure if the Christmas break away from the gym helped, or the independence I gave her, or a combination of both, or other things. She never looked sad, stressed, or depressed, though. Cameron kept her head up and just kept plugging away. I tried various different things with her too, but the fact is, ultimately it was always up to her. The back handspring came back, and I knew it would, so really there was nothing to stress about anyway.
@lindsaygymnast7, I hope my long winded story helped you! It can be very helpful to hear the experiences of others. You mentioned that your coach is open to if you have ideas. Perhaps you should share this method with her and try it. It certainly can't hurt!