Static & Dynamic Shaping

[emacmommy]

Over the past few years we've been training our young gymmies hard on body shaping/awareness. I would say we've made great strides in static shaping, but many are having a hard time taking the good shapes they've gotten strong in and creating dynamic strength moving between the shapes. I'll give an example:

We have decent strong static handstands with shoulders completely extended, ribcage inline with the rest of the body (i.e. not a saggy HS) and head neutral, ears squeezed between the arms. We have a decent static hollow hold on the floor for most, the gymmies have a decent awareness of a "tight arch" (albeit still making mistakes to over arch).

Now take the tapping action on bars, that moves through these three shapes, hollow, straight, arch (really hollow-heel driving tight arch-hollow), or the snap in tumbling coming from a slight tight arch for the heel drive through the round off and snapping through to a leaning back hollow. When I broke these movements down to a tight arch HS against the wall that then snaps to a rib cage hollow hanstand, I found our teamwide weakness. They are struggling to take these isolated shapes and move dynamically through them. Hence... slow progressing dynamic tumbling.

With that said... anybody have some standout dynamic shaping drills? They don't have to be event or skill specific. Looking for some good general drills/strength.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

they need to do conditioning. and while they are in those shapes that you want.

simple: handstand walks across a floor, both forwards, backwards, left side lead sideways and then right side.

 

[BlairBob]

Get on a bar, hang and snap from arch to hollow.

There is a piece of equipment that you can setup that is sort of a harness rig where they will snap from arch to hollow.

Until you master the ability to hold a position, you will not be able to move in it or through it.

 

[emacmommy]

Thanks BlairBob. We back tracked from tap hollows on bars to hollow - arch pulls (slowly pulling through the shapes) because girls were not paying close enough attention to the accuracy of their shapes when they tapped (or bounced) through them. We actually do both, but do more pull throughs.

Funny you mentioned the "torture tension" as we call it. We do have one set up but haven't used it to it's full ability. It's one of those things that has to be manned when someone is in it full time, which means others are doing things independently with less supervision. At this time, most of the girls' problems are stemming from inattentiveness to working through these dynamic shapes correctly and with accuracy. We aren't using this tool nearly as effectively as we can.

Here's a link if anybody wants to know what we are talking about.
Arch/Hollow Machine (tap swing machine)
Don't know how to embed, sorry.

 

[BlairBob]

Pretty much my exact thoughts and actions on the harness or a lot of other drills and equipment setups.