Teaching Flipping Skills on Beam

Hi All,

Today I’m going to share a few thoughts on teaching flipping skills on beam. Note: these are my thoughts, you may have different ones, but I feel these keep gymnasts safe, and create good gymnastics. 1st, if you can’t do it up to a panel mat on the floor, I don’t want to see it on the beam. 2nd, start going off the beam. The beam is a different tumbling surface than the floor making a gymnast both take off and land on a new surface can be overwhelming and scary. Start skills on the beam, but land off the beam.

Here is example #1. Say you are doing a back handspring, back tuck dismount at level 7. I would start with it on the floor, then back handspring back tuck up to and 8″ then I would move onto this step. If a gymnast can back handspring, back tuck up to something that is level with the beam you can be sure that any height deductions she may have gotten will decrease significantly. Don’t just stick them on the high beam and let them throw it.

Here is example #2, like I said, up, up, up. This way the gymnast is learning to punch from the beam, go up, and doesn’t have to deal with the beam she’s landing on being hard and skinny. I would keep having her do this drill until she stops landing quite so low on the block. That being said, it’s a good place to start. If she can make it up to the block, she can definitely make it on the beam.

Train hard!