WAG Leg speed

[munchkin3]

question to coaches, or anyone who may have knowledge. My dd has been told forever she has weak legs and that she needs a lot of work for her jumps and leaps. She’s level 8 and her leaps have worsened. She weighs about 70 pounds and is considered small for her team. Generally she’s behind the puberty development curve on the team and still passes for 9 or 10.
I just saw her do leg presses over 2x her weight. More than me or any other grown adult in the room....she easy pressed 145 lbs. Is it correct for me to assume it’s NOT leg strength that’s causing her issues? It seems like it’s SPEED.....she looks very slow, and her jumps, leaps, tucks always look like slow motion. Her muscles are always so sloooow, and her legs look heavy when she leaps and jumps! (Not size wise, really, she is a small gymnast)
Do you think Am I right,??? and is there a way to improve speed?

 

[2G1B]

I don't know; but what you describe sounds like my DD (though my DD is now about 100 lbs and 5'3"-5'4", so no longer small). Her tumbling just looks like it is soooo slow; but she can leg press quite a lot in pt.

 

[ayyyrial]

I'd guess your hunch is correct and it's about speed and/or active flexibility. There's often not much of a difference between "strength" and "speed" in gymnastics. But also what's considered "weak legs" for a gymnast might not be considered "weak legs" for a normal person.

 

[kecks]

not much to be done. in track there is a saying: a sprinter is born not made. this is very true and goes for jumpers and throwers as well. speed events - really anything depending on explosive strength - are like that. you can improve an individual's performance much by training after puberty (girls age 14-15 and up) through sprinting, jumping and especially specialised strength work (not by doing plyos without strength base, which can not be build without weights around at least bodyweight loading - this is very common in gymnastics and seen from the outside an invitation for overuse injuries galore) but you can not make someone with non-speed genetics as fast as a talented individual. not happening. before puberty ends the hormones are not there to develop this strength. in boys this process starts even later since puberty finishes later. before that you can only sprint and jump (no plyos, just jumping rope, long jump, jumping coordination work, lots of fun ways to train explosive strength) and do the beginnings of strength work but that's about it. specialised speed strength work (pulling weights while sprinting, overspeed sprints f.e. down a hill and the like) are not recommended in track for kids or young adults because it leaves you nothing to train aside from taking illegal drugs after that (you can not take intensity higher than that in speed work). given that in wag the top performance age is 16 up to 20 at best at the moment this might be different there.

what you can do: work on sprint coordination and jumping coordination every other day during warm up. you see an awful lot of gymnasts sprinting down the vault runway in a very ineffecient and untrained way which makes a track coach cringe. get a good track coach and have him/her work the gymnasts for around 30 minutes every other day. will make a huge difference. better mechanics means better biomechanical quality of movement means more effecient movement means more speed and height. get a weightlifting coach in and teach the kids how to squat with a barbell, when they reach age 12 to 13 how to clean and snatch or at least how to do clean or snatch pulls. keep all the bodyweight strength work. do not to plyos in the ammount wag usually does them. makes people just tired and not explosive and leads to overuse injuries. let them play lots of sprint and jumpijng games instead. sprint only when not tired and fresh but very well warmed up. most important: be focused and relaxed when working on any things speed. relaxed people are fast people. enjoy!

 

[kecks]

oh and do not settle for some cf coach, they most of the time do not know their way around a barbell (speaking from a weightlifting perspective). cf to weightlifting is like cheer to wag tumbling. technique is key. as every efficient training tool a barbell can do harm if used wrong. also do not do too much hypertrophy work, focus on a minimum and then switch to ik-work - there a tons of ways to do that - since you do want more strength but not more mass.

 

[munchkin3]

Thanks Kecks, so she will be limited....I have discussed with her coach at nauseum her limitations in kicks etc... her struggles are very noticeable in vault and we are hoping that once she switched to yurchenkos things will improve a Little.
Her tumbling is not bad and has improved a lot over the years......what’s really killing her are switches and straddle leaps etc. I feel that the coach should be having her just kick as fast as she can.....
I have done this with her for fun and I always kick faster than she, but at this point she leg presses more than me. I do get worried about over training the plyo excercises to death.....
Of course her strength events are bars and beam.
Please, I’m not trying to interfere with coaching, im just trying to present alternative ideas. My dd will never be a fast twitch athlete, however I think she can ‘get through’ the tough events.

 

[kecks]

i really would recommend sprint technique coaching for a while. this does not take much time and works wonders (just like ballets, but for athletic qualities). a 10 year old usually can already benefit from it (younger kids usually lack the necessary body awarness but that may be different with gymnasts since their coordination is usually very good as is their core strength).

 

[profmom]

I am not a coach, but rather someone who fell in love with running in middle age. I found that adding fartleks (short bursts of speed work) to my running dramatically improved my "kick." Like, really -- I was shocked. It's a different thing than plyometrics. I've noticed that our coaches occasionally incorporate drills that use this technique. Neither my son nor my daughter will ever be amazing vaulters, but both have improved. My son especially has finally achieved competence, in part because in order to flip his tsuk, he HAS to run faster. All of this is just a long-winded way of saying that kecks is right.

For leaps and jumps, does she ever do tramp work on them with a theraband?

 

[duyetanh]

I am not a coach, but rather someone who fell in love with running in middle age. I found that adding fartleks (short bursts of speed work) to my running dramatically improved my "kick." Like, really -- I was shocked. It's a different thing than plyometrics. I've noticed that our coaches occasionally incorporate drills that use this technique. Neither my son nor my daughter will ever be amazing vaulters, but both have improved. My son especially has finally achieved competence, in part because in order to flip his tsuk, he HAS to run faster. All of this is just a long-winded way of saying that kecks is right.

For leaps and jumps, does she ever do tramp work on them with a theraband?

I secomd this, it has really helped my dd!

 

[coachmolly]

I have a few girls who are very similar. Great gymnasts, leg strength is right up there with their teammates, they just aren't particularly explosive. It's almost like it just takes a little longer for their brains to tell their muscles what to do. They've all kept up just fine, it just takes a little more work on their part. I have found one of the benefits for this group is that while it does take them a little longer to learn a skill, they tend to learn it correctly because they don't have the benefit of brute strength and naturally explosive power to compensate for bad technique.

In the last few months we have added jump roping to our warm-ups almost daily and I've seen improvement in some of these kids, though a few have also had sizable growth spurts recently and are generally just getting stronger- so it could be any number of things.

 

[Seeker]

Definitely try the sprint training — it doesn’t take a lot of time, but will likely help her hone in on whatever explosiveness she can harness. Has been super helpful for several of our L10’s.

 

[mommyof1]

How do you find sprint training for kids? My kid is another who could benefit greatly from sprint training, but I don't know where to look.

 

[kecks]

track coach of local high school team?! nothing fancy or expensive.

 

[Seeker]

How do you find sprint training for kids? My kid is another who could benefit greatly from sprint training, but I don't know where to look.

Look for a Sports Performance facility — sometimes they have these sorts of classes as part of cross fit centers.

 

[tucktwisttumble]

Everyone has nailed it thus far. Your DD sounds like me - my tumbling would slow down instead of speed up ...

Muscles are built on slow-twitch and fast-twitch fibers. Sprinters (as the example used above) being able to harness the energy of their fast twitch fibers. Everybody has both - but someone may be built with more fast/slow twitch.
You can train muscles to be more explosive with weight lifting. I know there is controversy on how old/ how much weight/ etc. But my undergraduate research suggests more good than harm with weight training at any age (provided technique is used). For example, instead of doing 30 squats at a moderate weight at a moderate speed- have DD lift 75-80% of her 1 rep max (any weight lifting coach would be able to help determine this) - and have her go down slow, and explode to the top for 3-5 reps. She needs to train her explosive power.
Someone above mentioned plyo-workouts. HIGH box jumps are great for working explosive power.
I know gymnastics (at least in my day) was very anti-weightlifting. But there are proven added benefits to these workouts, beyond body weight training and definitely something to investigate if you are looking to see a change in her performance (i.e. speed of tumbling/run/jumps).

 

[cadybearsmommy]

Just going off my own experience here but this might be the one thing that puberty actually helps with in gymnastics. Dd has always been weak on leaps/Jumps. From day one. She was never the strongest tumbler either. She had an awesome bronze/L3 vault but her vaults over the table did not score well last year. This summer she had a huge growth spurt and grew several inches and gained 15-20 pounds. This year her tumbling is sky high and her vaults and leaps are much improved. Her vault and floor scores have soared! Ironically her beam scores have suffered some, despite being more solid on beam than last year. But nothing enough to be a huge deal. She finally hit 180 in her leap on at her last meet and I was so darn proud of her. Fingers crossed that it stays that way! Lol!

 

[Deleted member 18037]

Just going off my own experience here but this might be the one thing that puberty actually helps with in gymnastics. Dd has always been weak on leaps/Jumps. From day one. She was never the strongest tumbler either. She had an awesome bronze/L3 vault but her vaults over the table did not score well last year. This summer she had a huge growth spurt and grew several inches and gained 15-20 pounds. This year her tumbling is sky high and her vaults and leaps are much improved. Her vault and floor scores have soared! Ironically her beam scores have suffered some, despite being more solid on beam than last year. But nothing enough be a huge deal. She finally hit 180 in her leap on at her last meet and I was so darn proud of her. Fingers crossed that it stays that way! Lol!

So your sayin there is hope for mine

 

[UnoMas]

Dance really helped my daughter with leaps and jumps. However, she danced pretty seriously when she was L4/L5 so it was before things got super intense with optionals. It might be tougher to add dance in at the level your DD is.

 

[munchkin3]

Thanks all for your insights! I spoke to her coach to ask him what he thought. He said he does Plyo anyway and high box jumps and he will come up with some additional 'speed' conditioning for her. Since he does not do beam or floor, he wasnt aware that they were not doing any band work, and minimal leap and jump drills so he will take a look at whats going on in that department. He also said he would be happy to give her some more specific drills to address the switch leaps etc. There is a slight disconnect between coaching styles in our gym so sometimes things get lost from one event to another....
But mostly he said what everybody here said.