Recreational and Beginning Bars

Hi All,

Today I wanted to share some ideas for beginning and recreational bars. One of the things I find coaches struggling with is finding enough things to do with their gymnasts at this level. Bars takes a tremendous amount of strength, and I often see coaches getting stuck just doing pull overs and conditioning in the beginning because they it’s hard to come up with things that kids can do, when they may not have as much strength as your team kids. So today I thought I would share some ideas.

This first one is straight arm walks across the bars. These are actually surprisingly difficult, but great for building shoulder strength and developing weight shifting skills. If these are too hard for your kids you can also do them on p-bars (in between them) and sometimes those are a bit easier.

This second one is a back hip circle drill that I really like. A lot of beginning gymnastics is about building good muscle memory, and this is a great way to do this. In the video I believe she’s holding foam, I also like them holding a dowel or PVC so it feels more like a bar. This teaches them to fall backwards without piking their hips.

Train hard!