More thoughts on kips

Hi All,

I decided to another post on kips today. Because kips are so foundational, and such a common sturggle, you can never have enough kip drills. Kips are often something that need to “click” in gymnasts head before they get them and different things are going to make it “click” for different gymnasts.

This first video has a couple great kipping and pirouetting drills, but really I’m just going to focus on the one at (0:23). The straddle uprise drill is one I do with a lot of my girls when they are starting kips. I want to build the muscle memory of a straight arm pull down on the bar and that’s a great way to do it. I also like this version with the casting out, because I think it gives the girls better feeling of what it is like to cast out of a kip without you having to hold them in a compressed shape like you often do with kip-casts.

This second video starts out with one of my most used kip drills/conditioning exercises. I like it so much I’ll build it into warm-ups, make it an “every day” side station on bars etc. It builds great ab strength, and emphasizes and compression and lean necessary in kips at the end. Also, no set-up required. The second drill is great for push-away kips/kips out of skills. Teaching gymnasts how to keep pressure on the bar when moving away from it into their second kip.

Train hard!

more kipping drills

1 Comment

  1. RJ says:

    Do you have any drills for older, bigger girls (11-17) who either almost have their kips or don’t have them at all? They are Xcel girls who don’t have much muscle or time/motivation to work on it.

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