Hi All,

I wanted to share a couple things that you may not be doing on beam today. In lots of my beam lectures I talk about getting gymnasts comfortable on beam, and not just upright and jumping. One of the biggest things I try to build into beam complex is getting them comfortable at high and low levels, moving forward, backwards and sideways and doing jumping and dance movements in all of those directions and levels.

Armine Barutyan has managed to do all of this in some really interesting and compelling ways. It’s important to note that if you start having your gymnasts do these things it almost definitely WILL NOT look like this at first. Building in this kind of artistry and confidence on beam takes some time but it’s so worth it. Just like I believe what you do in your warm-up every day has a greater impact than once in a while side stations, same thing with beam complex, what you do in your complex every day will have a much greater impact than doing these things once every few weeks or month.

I find that one of the places gymnasts are least confident on beam is when they’re sideways. This is a really easy way (only takes a couple minutes) to build that confidence

I know a lot of people do backward walks on beam, but I think that that misses a whole series of movements. We want gymnasts to be able to MOVE backwards, and to be able to do the same contractions and extensions they do forwards. This is a great way to do it.

Jump roping is a great way to build confidence in foot work on beam. If you’re looking for a new way for gymnasts to warm-up at the beginning of practice, this may be it.

 

Train hard!