Coaches Using the men's apparatus for girls

[gymisforeveryone]

I coach my girls vault and floor on Wednesday and on those days the gym is crowded. The floor area is used by cheerleaders so we only have a vault runaway, vault and tumble track PLUS pommel horse, low pommel horse without the handles (or what do you call them?) some mushrooms and the matting under them. We can also use some spotting blocks and spring boards. Some days we have the parallel bars also if another group is not using them for their bars training. I was wondering if you have any ideas how to use the men's apparatus for girls? I'm sure I've seen some cool ideas / videos / blog posts about this earlier but can't finds them anymore and can't remember much.

If you have any useful drills or tips in your mind please share! The drills don't need to be for vault / floor, they can be anything. I can't really spot the drills so they should be able to do them on their own when I'm spotting on the floor or vault. On Wednesdays we don't have time for separate conditioning so we run, jump and skip the stairs as a warm up, use rubber bands for kicks and do some handstand holds (total of 30 minutes) so some extra conditioning during the events could be added.

The girls are 7-10 years old and would be in levels 2 and 3 in the US.

 

[Presstohandstands]

Our girls love doing strength on the boys equipment because it's a bit different to other strength. On the pommel with handles our girls do pike holds, straddle holds or pike and straddle presses and Russian lever holds depending on there level. On the mushroom one girl lays down with her hips and thighs on the mushroom with her upper body hanging over the side. Another girl holds there legs or sits on them, the girl laying on the mushroom raises up her upper body keeping her legs on the mushroom so her hack is arched. We call them banana lifts. On the springboards for the lower level girls they do straight jumps and tuck jumps practising there nice form and tight body positioning and stuck landings, since your on vault you can do the straight jumps with vault positioning. On p-bars they can hang on and swing across them like monkey bars. Or walk across them in gorilla\front support position the girls also do p bar swings like the boys with nice technique because it helps with casts and bar shapes. Sorry these ideas aren't particularly creative but it's what we do at our gym and works for us

 

[Aussie_coach]

Yes, we use the men's apparatus at times for the girls.

P Bars
- Swings to handstands are great for cast to handstands
- presses
- clear straddle holds, L hold, v holds
- basket kips help develop the timing for other kipping skills
- strength like dips, shoulder shrugs, P bars walks forwards and backwards, leg lifts in front support
- Chin ups with knees hooked on one bar
- Put one bar higher than the other and do stemme rises, and stemme rises to a cast. For kips and kip casts.

Rings
- strength - chin ups, chin up holds, front supports, levers, candlesticks, dorsal hang and pull back up
- great for introducing flyaway drills

Mushroom
- clear straddle holds
- presses
- the girls love trying mushroom circles

Pommel
- strength - leg extensions, L sits, V sits, taking legs through and back
- square ons

 

[fuzi]

Also on pommel: single leg shoot through, single leg cuts forward and backward

Do you teach front hip circles in your country? If so, I have a drill for them using P-bars I can share.