cadybearsmommy
Proud Parent
It seems that gymmies either love them or hate them! My dd falls into the latter lol. She is very flexible, has all of her splits all of the way down, etc, but those leaps just won't come up. I'm fairly certain that she is getting decent sized deductions on her leaps at meets, her leaps aren't the worse I've seen, but they don't get up nearly as far as some. She does better leaps with her left leg, at the beginning of the year her coach made her switch to her right leg since she does everything else on the right. Then a month or so ago, they had a dance teacher come in and the dance teacher told her to go back to doing them with the left leg since they were so much better. (They are Xcel, so I've been told there's no deduction for using the "wrong" leg for a leap.) They do look better but still a little low. Is this usually a strength or flexibility issue? Or something entirely different? I'm sure a lot of it is just that is takes time. Can anyone suggest any exercises at home that might help? Not sure if her practicing the actual leaps at home is the safest thing for her or my living room furniture but she already does daily conditioning and flexibility exercises so if anyone has any good additions, I'm all ears! Right now she stretches her legs every day by pulling them one at a time up towards her head while lying down (don't know the technical name of the stretch) and she also sits in her right, left and middle splits and stretches that way. She does push ups and sit ups, but not really any leg "conditioning". Any advice is welcome! =)