WAG Why do kips take so long?

[GymBeeMom]

The only skill that ever made my DD question if she should really be a gymnast was that darn kip. She is working some "big girl skills" and still says the hardest thing she ever did was learn to kip. She was the last in her group to get it!

 

[Committed]

Mary A, THATS IT. As a kid on the monkey bars at school I tried to "kip" and do a "mill circle"( without knowing the terms) and could never do them. Once I started following gym stuff closely I thought "no wonder I could not do them in 1/2 hour of recess a day. They are HARD and don't look like it.

Haha! I tried to do a kip 2 weeks ago! It felt like I sprained my whole body!
I can do a pull over, but a back hip circle is just plain scary!

 

[Gymmommy71]

It's true that it doesn't look hard - I remember my mom sitting next to me at one of DDs first L5 meets and I said "THAT is the skill that took her all that time to get!" (I had talked about it so much and for so long how she couldn't get it). My mom said "you mean that thing they do to get up to the bar!?...that's hard?". Haha. My mom was much more impressed with her jump to the high bar (which only took my DD a couple weeks to learn and she had about 6 months before she got her kip!).

 

[LizzieLac]

It's true that it doesn't look hard - I remember my mom sitting next to me at one of DDs first L5 meets and I said "THAT is the skill that took her all that time to get!" (I had talked about it so much and for so long how she couldn't get it). My mom said "you mean that thing they do to get up to the bar!?...that's hard?". Haha. My mom was much more impressed with her jump to the high bar (which only took my DD a couple weeks to learn and she had about 6 months before she got her kip!).

Gymnasts make things look so easy that the average person has NO IDEA that it can take years to get the human body to do it at all!!

 

[pinkos98]

It could be because of timing, because I know a few girls on my team (as well as myself) would bring their toes to the bar to early, killing their glide.

 

[MVJ]

It could be because of timing

Agreed! One of the issues is that gymnasts don't understand the kip yet and don't have the "feel" of it yet, if you understand what I'm trying to say. Timing is key!

 

[Kittykatti]

You know, I don't think I quite understood what Iwannacoach is saying above, even after watching my DD struggle for three years to master this skill, until I watched up close as my DS's talented young coach taught it to the boys on high bar this year. In part I think because he was a competitive gymnast not that long ago, he was both able to do the body shaping with them in slow motion through the skill repeatedly and talk them through it in a lot of detail.

I know it's easier for most boys than most girls because of the nature of the bar, but I still think the guy should get a lot of credit for now having a cohort of boys who've all just finished their first years at L5 after only one year at L4 who all have it (albeit some inconsistently).

At least the girls only have to kip on one event!

I'm sorry but I have to disagree. Of course, boys should get credit, but girls gymnastics requires you to glide into it, not just swing. It takes girls longer because they have to do an almost extended leg lift when boys just swing into it..

 

[ivyagogo]

These are the bane of my existence right now. I posted a thread about this a few weeks ago. My gym is rec only and I have several really talented girls who are working on kips now. They are only in the gym once or twice a week for an hour class and kips aren't going very well. Two of them rock them when I give them a little spot, but if they try on their own, their feel just plop right to the ground. I am doing all kinds of drills, but they just aren't getting the glide part at all, let alone the arm snap down. I also have a sprained pinky on one hand and my wrist hurts on the other and spotting these just isn't a real treat for me right now.