Presses vs ropes

[DND]

My daughter is 7yrs old and she can do press to hands stands with ease. She can make at least 5 consecutive presses without her bum touching the groupnd and over 12 with a couple of slight touch downs.

Having said that she cannot climb the rope without using her legs.

Is there a proper technique that may help her or can anyone shed light as to how to help her improve.

She gets very frustrated and then has to climb the rope at least five times, but I still am not seeing any change.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[B Gymnast]

I can't climb the rope with no legs either.. It takes A LOT of arm strength so your DD probably just needs to build that up. Even though presses take a lot of strength, they don't use your arm muscles as much as you do when climbing the rope.

 

[gymnastbeth]

Is she supposed to climb with her legs in an L shape? Because, for whatever reason it is, it's marginally easier to climb the rope with your legs in an L, but straddling the rope. To get the strength to go from climbing with her feet, and climbing with only arms, she could try that. There's also another way to climb the rope, you put your legs straddling the rope, and then closing them like scissors. It's almost like climbing the rope with your arms and thighs.

ETA: Bgymnast is right about the presses. That takes an INCREDIBLE amount of strength. Unfortunately, it doesn't target all of the right muscles.

 

[ryantroop]

To expand on what the two posts above are saying - not all arm strength is equal. Presses rely heavily on shoulders and triceps, where rope climb relies on bicep strength and endurance.

Best exercise for this - pull ups, then one arm pull ups, and then rope.

 

[nicci1999]

One thing I found helped immensely for me was to sit at the bottom of the rope with my legs out, grab the rope, and just pull myself up as high as I could, then go back down, and lift myself back up, so on and so forth. But to just continuously do that until even one hand position is changed and go from there

 

[BlairBob]

Dedicated pull up work. Treat it as strength work. 3-5 reps, 3-5 minutes of rest between sets. 3-5 sets.

pullup in undergrip, overgrip, in L hang, then wide arm, etc. You can also start doing weighted pullups.

I would not do more than 2 heavy strength pullup workouts a week. 2 as in the low rep range and perhaps a 3rd or 4th in a much higher rep range using an easier progression. Simple rope climbing would suffice for this as well.

 

[wandrewsjr]

I am willing to bet your daughter is fairly flexible. I often have little ones in my tops class who can do presses but not the rope climb yet. Presses use a combination of flexibility and strength, while the rope climb is almost exclusively strength.

I have the ones who can't climb yet work pullups on the rope(reach above head, lift legs above horizontal, pullup) and L-hold while holding the rope tight to their chest(working up to 30 secs at a time). When they can do the L hold easily they also work switching one hand from below to above the other while holding the L so they are developing the strength to hold themselves up on one arm.

 

[Valentin]

If you wanna get strong at rope climbing, do lots of rope climbing. Just like you train skills over and over again, strength needs to be trained specifically.
Lots of exercises that she can do and mimic rope climbing, and use similar muscles. Eg, chin-ups, wrist curls, (of course holding the L-hold/pike requires separate practice like L-sits, L-hangs). How much you might ask? well that also depends on what is available, however the standard 3 sets of 10-20sec holds and and 3-5 sets of 10 reps for (chin-up for example) or 10 rope climbs at day is the general recommendation, however it will be up to the coach to know for sure.

 

[gymmutti]

My daughter has the opposite problem - she can climb all the way up and down now using only arms but still has not been able to do a press to handstand (although she can do a standing straddle press to handstand - so she is making progress!).

 

[hawaii_gymnast]

At my gym for conditioning we either have the choice to do 1 with no legs to the top, or 7 (10 starting in December!) with legs consecutively. Even doing 2 or 3 in a row should create more strength. Also try climbing up with legs then down with no legs, it helps with the specific strength required to climb.
P.S. I can climb all the way to the top with no legs, but I still can't do a press (they are getting closer though?)