Parents Looking for gymnastics bar

[Jayfaas]

We just bought my daughter a gymnastics bar for Christmas and it only goes up to 5 ft tall. When my 8 year old swings on it, she will have to pick up her feet to not hit them. I was thinking about custom making some side bars that are longer, and while im at it, I was thinking about maybe getting a better bar that is actually competition material instead of the one we have which is a 1.5” fiberglass bar with wood cover. I know it would be easier to just go out and buy one already made but oh my God they’re expensive. I already have a good base. I just want to get a replacement bar that is the same material as competition bars would be and if anybody has any experience making custom ones, I would love to hear what you did to secure it. I could just put a through bolt, but I’m sure there are better ways.

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I am not a parent, but here's my 2 cents as a coach: I think having an at-home bar set up for actual swinging is a bad idea, for three main reasons.

1. I don't have actual statistics onhand, but anecdotally if I were to list out every time I've seen a crash requiring an immediate ER visit for potential head/neck injury, at least 80% of them have been peeling off the back of a tap swing. Is that something you want your kid to have access to at home, potentially unsupervised?

2. Practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes permanent. At a gym, if there is some problem with her technique, a coach can potentially catch it and correct it before it gets coded into muscle memory. Not necessarily the case if she's practicing skills at home. As a coach, I'd much rather build correct technique from scratch than try to fix bad technique that's already in place.

3. Most swinging or circling skills are significantly affected by the way the bar flexes. The way the bar flexes is significantly affected by how it's set up. A somewhat flexible bar and uprights held in place by tension cables would be the way to go, since that's what they have at the gym; however, both the cost and the physical footprint of such a setup (if it's done safely) are generally not feasible at home.

If you're gonna have a bar at home, having one that can only realistically be used for simple, basic skills and conditioning is both the safest and the best for training. I would honestly recommend going out of your way to set it up in such a way that proper swings are not even possible.

 

[Coach Kate]

I am not a parent, but here's my 2 cents as a coach: I think having an at-home bar set up for actual swinging is a bad idea, for three main reasons.

1. I don't have actual statistics onhand, but anecdotally if I were to list out every time I've seen a crash requiring an immediate ER visit for potential head/neck injury, at least 80% of them have been peeling off the back of a tap swing. Is that something you want your kid to have access to at home, potentially unsupervised?

2. Practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes permanent. At a gym, if there is some problem with her technique, a coach can potentially catch it and correct it before it gets coded into muscle memory. Not necessarily the case if she's practicing skills at home. As a coach, I'd much rather build correct technique from scratch than try to fix bad technique that's already in place.

3. Most swinging or circling skills are significantly affected by the way the bar flexes. The way the bar flexes is significantly affected by how it's set up. A somewhat flexible bar and uprights held in place by tension cables would be the way to go, since that's what they have at the gym; however, both the cost and the physical footprint of such a setup (if it's done safely) are generally not feasible at home.

If you're gonna have a bar at home, having one that can only realistically be used for simple, basic skills and conditioning is both the safest and the best for training. I would honestly recommend going out of your way to set it up in such a way that proper swings are not even possible.

Yes and amen! I don't think there's a coach out there who wants kids swinging bars at home. As an athlete, our suggested boundary from our coach with home practice in general was to keep it to skills we could do on balance beam. Obviously doesn't directly apply to bars, but it's a good principle.