Coaches Quickest time for getting kip

[coachinkal]

I decided to start teaching my new level 5 boys kip drills last night.

I told them it might take them up to 18 months to get their kip. Would be lots and lots of practising the drills, before they got it.

So in 25 mins I taught:

Glide swings (they had never done these before)
leg lifts
leg lifts and hold
Glide toes to the bar
kip machine
and then try a kip on their own.

My DS 14 yo goes and does a kip on his third try of the kip. First try almost on top of the bar, 2nd try on top of bar using lots of strength, and by the third one he had straight arms. I was absolutely dumbstruck!

25 minutes to get a kip. Hope it is still there at next training session!

His 9yo brother has been training to kip for a year now and still does not have it, but is very close. Boy was he peaved when 14yo DS came home so excited that he had his kip.

 

[bogwoppit]

WOw that is awesome. MY DD had been working on hers for a year, always incredible close with the one finger spot, a new girl to her group tried it for two weeks and got it! DD was thrilled for her, but couldn't work out how she did it. All in the timing eh?

Great job to both of you.

 

[emacmommy]

Yes, the bitter and the sweet of it all. Way to go for your DS and tell younger DS it will work itself out!

I have an older gymmie who's been working her kip for near two years now, not missing hardly a practice until this September. She's a freshman in HS and took some time off to do volleyball, coming in for the last hour of practice each practice day, usually missing bars. First full practice back is an ankle weight practice on bars. And Low and Behold, she makes her first kip ever by herself!!! It was highly exciting! Took weights off and the timing just isn't quite there... but it's so close! What was neat was it wasn't just a bent arms, throw the chest over the bar kip... it was beautiful and with near straight arms!

 

[coachmolly]

That's incredible! I had a little girl come in who saw her older sister do kips and just started trying them by herself. She managed to make a few with really no formal kip training, but she missed more often than not. I was still amazed that this kid who had maybe a few months of recreational gym could just pull a kip out of nowhere!

 

[marie83]

Wow, I've never had anyone learn one that fast!

My best is 2 months I think! We started learning them in April and she had it by June - I told them that anyone who could get their kip before Christmas got a prize. Of course they all thought they would get it easily! Only one prize was given, however! (This was 2009) Even now I still have 2 gymnasts waiting to get their kips from that same bunch of girls! I had one session this summer where 3 of them got it one after another - I must have been doing something right that day!

 

[coachinkal]

My DS is very well developed physically for his age. Looks more like a 16 yo. Has a lot of muscle strength and body tension. He only does two hours a week gymnastics (by choice) but does other sports, bmx, Australian rules football, touch football. He has also started work as a trolley boy at one of the supermarkets. All of these sports/activities have developed upper body strength and core strength.

I have always known that there is a lot of strength involved in doing a kip and this has just reinforced this. I think also it is much easier to teach an older gymnast the mechanics of a kip. Teaching a proper glide swing could take weeks for an 8yo but 14 yo with enough stomach muscles and core strength could do straight away.

 

[Adelei]

I know this post is a bit old, but since I just discovered it, I thought I'd chime in.

I've coached two different girls who both learned a kip their very first time trying it - without ever having seen it before / knowing what it was.

The first girl was 9 at the time. She was one of the most talented kids I have ever taught. At a TINY gym, she was the highest level, so she didn't even have older kids to watch. Never seen a kip before, never done any drills for it, got it first try. Every skill I ever taught her, she was able to get reasonably well by herself within 3 tries (kips, flyaways, cast handstand, back tucks, back layouts, front & back aerials, BHS on beam, etc.) All I'd have to do was describe it to her and she could do it. She competed level 5 her first year of gymnastics and level 6/7 while training level 8 her second. She made TOPs national testing the summer after she started gymnastics (between levels 5 and 6/7), flew out to the Karolyi's, but didn't quite make the team. She wound up dropping out of gymnastics after 2 years because of a messy parental divorce. It was such a shame.

The second kid was just recently, at the gym I coach at now. She's 8, level 4 and while I'm sure she's seen kids kip before (it's a large gym with a big team) I don't know that she ever really payed attention to what it was. Got it her first try. Then we told her what a drop kip was and she did that too. Now if only she could remember her routines...

Oh, and I forgot to mention that both of the girls did pretty much straight arm kips. Not 100% perfect, but definitely not the bendy arm, struggling-to-get-on-the-bar kip a lot of kids do their first few weeks/months of learning the kip.