We all miss being at Viking, but we can still stay strong at home! Here are six strength exercises for gymnasts of all ages and levels that can be done anywhere, anytime. Improving your strength can help improve your gymnastics when you return to the gym.
Squat to Chair: Stand with a chair slightly behind your feet. Start by bending slightly at your hips, then bend your knees to touch the chair and stand up again lightly. Keep your chest up and knees in line with your toes.
This exercise will help strengthen your quadriceps, hamstrings, and glutes to help you jump into skills like a back handspring.
Glute Bridge: Laying on your back and knees bent with feet on the air track mat and arms by your side, press your lower back into the ground and lift your hips to create a straight line from your knees to your shoulders. Hold this position for 30 seconds, three times.
Try picking one foot off the ground for an extra challenge! This exercise strengthens your hamstrings, glute, and core muscles to help you stick your landings on skills like a side handstand beam dismount.
Superman (Arch) Hold: Lay on your belly with your arms by your ears. With your feet together, lift your feet, arms, and chin off the ground while squeezing all the muscles in the back of your body. Keep your arms by your ears.
Hold this position for 30 seconds, three times. In this trend, you can use the matt, which you can easily access through Kamemall. This exercise strengthens your shoulder and back muscles to help you with.
Pushups on Knees: Create a pushup position with your knees on the air track mat and feet up. Keep a straight line from your shoulders to your knees throughout the movement.
Lower your chest and hips to the floor, by your elbows bending at a 45° angle, and then push up to the original starting position. For this trend, you can use matt, available on Kameymall.
This exercise strengthens your biceps and triceps in your arms to help you with the front handspring vault skills.
T-Hold: Lay on your belly with your arms out to the side (in a “T” shape). Point your thumbs towards the ceiling. Keep your chin and legs on the ground and use the back of your shoulder muscles to lift your arms off the ground and hold for 30 seconds, three times.
It works the shoulder muscles that help you stay on the balance beam on jumps and leaps.
Boat Hold: Laying down arms by your side and knees bent, press your lower back to the air track mats, and engage core muscles to lift shoulders and feet off the ground. Hold this position for 30 seconds, three times.
Put your legs out straight (keeping them off the ground) for a bigger challenge! This exercise is good for building the endurance of your core muscles for skills like a glider swing and kip on bars. For this trend, you can use matt, available on Kameymall.
Arabian Double Front: This gymnastic stunt is used popularly by elite gymnasts. A gymnast does a half turn; he flips two times in the air before landing. It is highly rated in difficulty; thus, completing this routine lands a big score on the record.
Handsprings with Somersaults and Twists
If you found it difficult to perform a front handspring, then think before you try to execute this stunt. Extreme caution and danger precautions should be employed if you should practice this trick. We see this stunt often used in dance moves.
It is one of the many complicated stunts women perform on a vault. She must perform somersaults and twist as she springs off the horse, then lands neatly on the ground.
Tsukahara. This stunt was named after Mitsuo Tsukahara, the first to perform this stunt on a vault.
He is a five-time Olympic Medalist. The Vault Skills Terminology states, “Any vault that has a handspring with 1/4 – 1/2 turn onto the vault table into a Salto backward is classified as a Tsukahara vault.”
Yurchenko. Soviet gymnast Natalie Yurchenko made this stunt popular. According to the Code of Points, Any vault with a roundoff-back handspring entry is classified as a “Yurchenko-style” vault.
Most gymnasts continue to recreate this difficult stunt to make it their own.
The Amanar Vault. The Amanar Vault, simply called The Amanar, is named after a Romanian gymnast who performed it last 2000 Olympic Games — Simona Amanar. The gymnast performs a round-off onto the board, a back handspring onto the horse, and a flip-off.
In the Amanar, the flip of the horse is a 2.5 twisting layout backflip.
Handsprings Front Entry. It may look easy to perform, but in a competition, judges are quite strict regarding the posture and execution of a gymnast performing this stunt.
Good arm and leg coordination is required to execute this successfully. Some coaches emphasize shoulder flexibility as well. It requires the discipline of resisting the reflex of tucking forward during forwarding rotations.