Parents Strength & Flexibility

[Ex member]

Since having an informal chat with dd's coach about dd she mentioned dd's strengths and weakness, it was mentioned that dd was quite flexible (this must be naturally in her as they don't do conditioning in rec) and she was very elegant on the beam, I was told she behaves well on class and has only been told off once and that might of been her that was doing something wrong - a couple of girls were talking and the coach told them all off as she wasn't sure which one it was, dd listens well. One thing they want to work on with dd is to build up her strength for the vault (her weakest thing) especially in her legs. Dd is tiny - 116 cm at the age of 7 and is a small build, the coach seems to think that as she is small built it would be easier to build her strength up compared to other builds. I have been offered a list of conditioning to do at home with dd to help build her strength up, do you really think that this will work or have most gymnasts got natural ability in strength already - dd's natural ability is flexibility and graceful movement, she does have some strength but more would be better.

 

[gymmomtoo]

I think it's definitely possible to build up strength. Easier to do that than to develop graceful movement

 

[vagymmomma]

I think you can definitely improve both strength and flexibility. I also think children may be naturally wired one way or the other (and some with both). Mine was gifted with natural strength. I would note that her strength has increased exponentially because it was easy for her to work on while the flexibility lagged because it was harder (i.e., she could feel the stretching and it was uncomfortable).

 

[Ex member]

We will see how it goes when she starts her conditioning, dd hasn't done any conditioning for 6 months since she quit the cheer leading squad (she started in January just after she turned 6 and quit 4 months later as she said she would rather do gymnastics - I was quite happy that she quit as she was too young to do cheer leading as she was 6 years younger than most of the girls, she was picked for the squad due to her movement skills and her flexibility and probably the fact the she was a quick learner and worked hard), it seems that she has passed these traits on to gymnastics by the way to goes at it, something that has got her noticed by her coaches and head coach.