Bars

The second event in the official order is bars. So, here you go: the best overview of bars that I can provide for you.

Bars is different for boys and girls gymnastics. Boys gymnastics has two different events that include bars, but I know basically nothing about those events, so today I will just stick to talking about what I know. Women's gymnastics has an event called the Uneven Bars. The name is literal: there are two wooden bars that are connected but are at different heights, one low bar and one high bar, and are different lengths apart based on how far apart certain gymnasts need them to be. At competitions, every gymnast performs a bar routine. Your level determines how many elements or skills are required for your routine. For me, I am required to have eight elements in my routine. One must be a mount, or way you get onto the bar (there are plenty to choose from) and a dismount, how you get off the bar (there are also plenty of dismounts to choose from). Most girls don't have an identical bar routine because of the number of different elements that you can choose to put in your routine. Of course, the element must be difficult enough but not too difficult for your level. Certain girls definitely have more skills than others. Unfortunately for me, I am not one of the girls who has a lot of bar skills. I have the bare minimum, to say the least.

Basic Mounts
Pull-overs and kips are the only two mounts I have ever done. A pull-over is when you literally pull yourself over the bar into a front-support position, which is when you are on the bar, supporting yourself with your arms, which are straight. A kip is more difficult. You glide on the bar to get into a kip and then you do a certain motion that also has you end up in a front-support. A kip is kind of hard to explain without a visual or tutorial video, which is why a link to one is included at the bottom.

Basic Dismounts
Many dismounts I have done are too difficult to explain, but I will try to explain one that might be easier for you to understand. A fly-away is the basic dismount. And once you have it, and it is pretty difficult to get, you do more difficult dismounts that are built off of a simple fly-away. You basically are in a front-support on the high bar, you cast (swing your legs back and drive your heels down and out) and swing around the bar and let go when you are at about 180 degrees and you flip off and land on a mat in front of the high bar. Once you get the fly-away, you begin to straighten out. You originally get it in a tuck position, then you get a pike (when your legs are flat and your knees are touching your stomach), and then eventually a layout (flat body).

Rips
Rips are another thing you should be prepared for if you want to become a gymnast. You get a rip once you swing on the bar so much that you literally rip off a layer of your skin. Often times you also bleed where you got the rip. Also, many girls don't rip. Obviously, everyone has different types of skin and girls who have thicker skin don't rip as often. Again, unfortunately for me, I don't have very thick skin on my hands, which is probably why I rip so often. That's basically the only disclaimer for bars, except for the chance of falling off, but that doesn't happen very often at all.

Grips
You should also know about grips. Once you reach a certain level or once you begin to do certain skills that require them, you must get a pair of grips. They are made of leathery  material and cover the palms of your hands to help prevent rips (which doesn't work for me) and to help you keep your grip on the bar during skills where it is possible you could lose your grip. When you first get a pair of grips you have to break them in. Breaking them in is a long process and is kind of painful, but once you finally do break them in, you can't imagine what bars was like without them.

~Once I am able to do gymnastics again, I will be sure to post some of my own videos, but in the meantime, here are some links to videos showing basic bar skills:
pull-over video
kip video
back hip circle video
front-hip-circle video
free-hip/clear-hip video
cast handstand video
squat on video
fly away video

*this is a picture of a standard set of uneven bars*

Competition Day

What goes through your mind
Most gymnasts get really nervous for meets, as is expected. You typically get more nervous for invitational and state-wide and regional competitions than you do for little meets that don't count for much, but all different kinds of competitions are still atleast a little bit nerve-wracking. For me and some of the girls on my team, the panic sets in around 3 or 4 days prior to the competition day.

Why you get nervous
We are mostly worried about a new skill if we are doing it for the first time in competition, but mainly we worry about sticking our beam routine. Because, basically, if you fall off beam in a meet, you get a .5 deduction from your score of a maximum of 10.0, and that .5 ruins usually ruins your all-around score, so if you fall, it is hard to place in the AA, which everyone hopes to do at meets. Also, other things like: relatives coming to watch, pressure from your coaches to do well, first competition at a new level, or if how well you do at that competition determines whether or not you can qualify for a following meet can make you extra nervous. 

Judging
As I mentioned before, each event is scored out of a 10.0 and the judges who judge you write down all the errors they see and then add up all the deductions and give you your total score. A 40.0 is the highest possible all-around score you can get, but that never happens. A mid-high 35 or a 36 is usually a good enough score to place in the AA, but nothing is ever guaranteed. Even if you get the highest all-around of your life, you could still get 2nd AA because someone else in your age group could have done even better than you. 

Location
Meet locations vary, depending on the host gym and the type of competition. If it is a little meet that is basically entered for practice or to prepare for bigger meets, then sometimes the host gym has it in their actual gym. But, if it is an invitational, it is usually in a ballroom at a hotel or in a high school. State competitions are usually at a high school in the middle of the state. And regional competitions are somewhere in New England. For example, last year, regionals were in central Massachusetts in a ballroom at a hotel. 

Check-in, warm-up, march-in, compete

You arrive at the location of the meet and you go to a table that is labeled "gymnast check-in". Once you check yourself in, you go into the gym, put down your bag, meet up with your coach, and begin warming up whenever you are told you may begin. Check-in, warmup, march-in, competition, and awards all have a designated time, but meets often run late due to issues in the previous session. 

Once warm up is over, you go over to whichever event you are competing on first, introduce yourself to the judge, get another short warmup, and then compete, in whichever order you are put in. The rotation for the events is vault, bars, beam, floor, but everyone can't start at vault, so whichever event you start on, you follow the pattern to determine the rest of your order of events. 

Right before and right after you compete, you salute to the judge. A salute is basically putting up both of your arms by your arms while looking at the judge. Once you salute after your routine, indicating that you are done, the judge tallies up all the errors they wrote down and they flash you score and write it on your scorecard. Out of a 10.0, your goal is to get in the 9's, but sometimes that isn't as easy as it sounds. Mid-eights and nines are what you want to get for a score, if you want to place on that event. 

Competition usually takes anywhere from 2 hours to 4 hours, if the meet is really slow-moving. After you are completely done competing, you are escorted to awards, where you wait to see how you did. I will soon be writing another post all about awards, so I will talk about awards in that post!

This picture is of a panoramic view of a competition I worked at a few weeks ago, I'm hoping this helps you imagine what being at a competition is like! 

States

Mentality
The State Championship Competition is the most important day of your entire season. You work all year for this- the frustration, the pain, the sweat, the tears, everything is done for this one competition. It determines how well you are doing in your level and shows how much you have improved over the entire year and the season. It is important because if you don't do well, you sometimes think that your whole season was for nothing because you ended it on a bad note. And, to be honest, ending anything, especially an entire season, on a bad note is never a fun experience.

Dates
States for Xcel bronze, silver, and gold are usually the second weekend in May. However, for platinum and diamond, states are the second weekend of March. And that date is fast approaching. This will be the first time I will ever have had states in March instead of May.

My Past Experiences
I have been to states five times and I'm going to explain my experiences at states from the past all the way up until now. 2009 was the year of my first states. I was a Prep Opt Novice at that time (what is now known as Xcel Silver). That year, it was particularly nerve-wracking for me because it was my very first states, ever. I managed to stay on beam and did okay on all the other events. I placed 6th in the All-Around, 2nd on vault, and I actually ended up being the floor state champion for my age group. I consider my first states to be pretty successful!

2010 I was a second-year Prep Novice/Xcel Silver. So, since it was my second time, it was a little less scary for me. That year, that competition, was the one of best competitions of my entire life, if not the very best one. I placed in the top 5 on bars, floor, and vault, and I was the beam and All-Around State Champion for my age!! And the trophy I received at that meet is my favorite, still to this day:)

2011 was a rough year for me. I broke my legs a month before states, and thought I couldn't compete, but I ended up getting special permission from my doctor that I could compete if I iced between events and I was taped a up a certain way by the trainer. This states was a little fuzzy for me, but I do know that I ended up placing 5th place All-Around, as a first-year Prep Intermediate/Xcel Gold.

2012 honestly isn't even worth talking about because that was also a rough year and a rough states for me because I was recovering from injuries and a surgery so it took a while for me to get back in the game and get all my skills back. I placed 4th on floor and vault at that meet and didn't place in the all-around. But, with success comes failure, so I was able to accept the fact that even though I didn't place in the AA, I'll do better next year!

2013, however, as a third-year Xcel Gold, I did pretty well. I got 6th on bars, 5th on floor, 3rd on beam, and I was the vault state champion in addition to getting 2nd place All-Around!! That, in my opinion, was a good way to end my career as an Xcel Gold. I actually qualified for the regional championships based on my performance at states last year, but I will have a separate post all about regionals.

This year, states 2014, are unfortunately not in the cards for me. I am still out on injury for another 6 weeks and states are next weekend, but I am planning to go and support my teammates:)

But, I will hopefully be able to compete at States next year!

This is a picture of me and all of my teammates at States in 2012 when we were the 3rd place team!!!

Please, feel free to comment with any questions you have about any of my experiences or any questions you have about states or gymnastics in general!

AT&T American Cup 2014

The American Cup was this past weekend and it was amazing! The American Cup is one of the first international competitions of the season for the men and women. There were many breathtaking  performances by gymnasts all around the world, especially competitors from the US! This year's AT&T American Cup was held in North Carolina.

Women
The representatives for the women were Brenna Dowell and Elizabeth Price. Both girls are elite American gymnasts who qualified to participate in this elite competition. They both rocked all four events and took the 1st and 2nd place All-Around spots, with Elizabeth winning the whole competition and Brenna coming in a close second!

Men
As for the men, they also did really well! The two US representatives were Sam Mikulak and John Orozco, both elite American gymnasts. John Orozco did well enough but had a few mistakes causing it not to be his best day, and Sam Mikulak was neck-in-neck with a Chinese gymnast for most of the competition, but ended up pulling out a win for the US!

My Favorites
There are many gymnasts, world-wide, who inspire me and really continue to amaze me year after year. Some of whom were present in the AT&T American Cup. Below, I have included links to what I think were the best performances of the competition and you really don't want to miss!

Highlights from the meet:

-Victoria Moors' (Canada) breathtaking floor routine

-Vanessa Ferrari's (Italy) powerful floor routine

-Brenna Dowell's (US) new and improved bar routine

-Elizabeth Price's (US) incredible vault

This image shows Sam Mikulak and Elizabeth Price celebrating their incredible wins!

Focus and Determination

Focus and determination are key components to any sport, especially gymnastics. It is required most of the time, whether you are at practice or at a meet. Beam and floor are probably the two events that required the most focus and determination. On beam, especially when you are dealing with acro skills (cartwheels, round-offs, backwalkovers, frontwalkovers, backhandsprings, handstands, etc.) you must be very focused and cannot be distracted.

Beam requires an extreme amount of focus. For example, during flight elements. In flight elements, there is atleast a second where you are mid-air, not touching the beam at all, and then after that second or two, you come back down on the beam on either your feet or your hands. You would come down on your feet if you were doing a round-off but if you are doing a backhandspring then you come down on your hands. I am not a big fan of round-offs on beam so I don't do them, so I can't describe what it would be like to come back down on your feet, but I do do backhandsprings and coming down on your hands can be scary. If one of your hands comes down even a fraction of an inch off-center, you could fall and get hurt. Your hands come down onto the beam in a certain position, so the weight of your entire body is resting evenly on both of your palms, so if you miss a palm, ultimately your entire body weight plus some extra force is on one hand and that can be very dangerous. You don't only need to focus when you are doing a hard skill. I, personally, along with a few of my gymnastics friends, struggle tremendously with full turns. And, compared to everything else we do in beam routines, a full turn should be one of the easiest skills if not the very easiest in the entire routine. Whenever I do a full turn, I have to be completely focused and I have to spot the end of the beam or I will not even have a chance of staying on. Also, once you do something too many times, something hard or easy, and you don't give it your full effort anymore, then you are giving up and not paying full attention, which can only do you harm. 

Floor also requires determination and focus, along with beam. Some skills just require practice and are pretty simple and once you get them they are there to stay. Twisting skills (when you are twisting mid-flip either going forwards or backwards) are difficult to do without complete concentration and determination. I have never front twisted but I have back twisted and it is more difficult when you are not focused, because twisting requires your full attention. Along with twisting, you need to be focused during an entire floor routine when you do one, because you have to be conscious of whether or not your toes are pointed and your knees are straight along with being able to keep up your endurance during the whole thing.

All four events do require an extreme amount of determination and focus, but I only discussed beam and floor because they are the most complicated.

So, make sure before trying something risky or doing a skill for the first time that you aren't distracted or thinking too much because doing those things can certainly make things worse for you. Trust me, it happens. And when you do get hurt because you weren't paying attention, you want to blame someone or something so you don't take fault for what happened. However, unfortunately, you are responsible most of the time and you just have to accept that.

Clearly, as I have explained certain situations, focus, determination, and concentration are all very important when it comes to doing skills. 

Vault

As I mentioned in my first post, I am going to start going into the details of each event. At competitions, there is always an order of events, so I will begin with the first event in the standard rotation: vault. I'm guessing that even if you aren't a gymnast you have probably seen a vault, either in person or maybe even on television from the olympics (summer olympics, not winter) or other elite competitions that are televised.  And if you are one of the people reading this who have never seen a vault, it's basically a stationary object, made of wood and covered by leathery fabric, that you run towards and, essentially, fly over. As I mentioned in a previous post, you do harder skills as you move up levels. So that principle applies to vault as well. You do a harder vault as you go up a level. I am mostly familiar with vaults done in the Excel program because that's what I have been doing my whole life, so I will tell my experiences with vault and all the different vaults I have done.

The vault is also referred to by coaches and gymnasts as the 'table'. I only mentioned that because, when you start off competing, you don't even use the table when you vault. You are just starting so it is simpler for you because you are learning how to hit the springboard and get enough power and everything. When I started, I had to vault onto a big squishy mat, called a rezzi, rather than the table. When I started, my vault basically consisted of me running as fast as I can towards the rezzi, hitting a springboard, flying through the air until my hands reach the mat and I do something called a 'handstand fall to back". That has a literal meaning: you basically jump into a handstand on the mat and then fall to your back. It isn't that easy for very long, unfortunately.

The second vault I ever learned to do was on the table. And, yes, it was pretty cool to go from the rezzi to the table because you were using  the same thing as the 'big girls' which was pretty cool for a young gymnast. In order to actually make it over the table, you have to have enough power from the springboard when you hit it. So, even if it seems intimidating as you run as fast as you can towards a stationary object, you really do have to run fast in order to perform the vault you hope to perform.

The first one on the table you do is called a front handspring. Also, a front handspring has a literal meaning. You put your hands on the table and then go forwards off of it, landing on your feet. A fronthandspring is tricky for some people because you have a blind landing, you can't see where you are landing when you hit the mat you're landing on, so you could very well fall down right on your butt. But, that doesn't happen as often once you get the hang of it and know what you're doing.

Another vault I have done on the table, which isn't necessarily any harder than a fronthandspring, is called a half-on. You hit the springboard and your hands go half way around (90*), so one hand is on the at the front end of the table and the other hand is at the back of the table. You are essentially doing a fast cartwheel over the table. Once you master the half-on, however, you begin to twist off the table rather than just floating down. You first do a half-half, which is a half-on but you do a half twist down, the opposite way you halfed on. Once you have mastered the half-half, you try a half-full. A half-full is a little easier because you don't have a blind landing, but it's also harder because you need even more height off the board in order to get all the way around in the full. Right now, I switch off between a half-half, half-full, and fronthandspring. There are harder vaults that can be done as well, but as I have mentioned earlier, I have a permenant injury on my shins so I don't really practice vault very much. I usually just vault the practice before a meet and at meets. And, vault was my favorite event for a looonnnggg time, and I bet that if you did gymnastics, you would like it too.

I hope you enjoyed my overview of vault. There isn't much to the event, it's easier than all the others so I tried to think of everything I have done and experienced that I could share with you.

Feel free to leave comments with any questions you have about vault or anything else about gymnastics!

Next post: Bars

How It All Started

A lot of girls when they are little want to go to dance class or gymnastics class or other girly sports like that, so they either beg their moms or their moms do it before they have to beg. I'm going to be honest, not as many people as you think actually stick with the sport past the classes they take as a little kid. Some continue on in recreational classes until they are asked to join team, and others just kind of stop going after they do a certain number of classes for a certain amount of time because they just don't like it anymore. Sometimes, even girls at a very young age, cannot do it anymore because of an injury. I know that happens a lot for older gymnasts but it happens for young ones as well.

Going from recreational classes to team and being a competitive gymnast is a big step for any gymnast. They immediately begin practicing more times a week for more hours and it is a lot more commitment on their part. The first few weeks or even months usually determine whether or not someone is meant for this kind of lifestyle. Of course, as it is with all other sports as well, people drop out at different times for many different reasons. For me, the leap from classes to team was a pretty big deal and a really big change for me. I went from a one hour class once a week to three practices a week two and a half hours each. And, for a girl in third grade, that's a pretty big amount of time to be spent focusing on the same thing in a gym full of chalk while a lot of other things are going on around you. That aspect of the sport, having to focus so much all the time, is extremely difficult at times, but I'll get into that later.

As you become older and practices become longer and your whole body begins to be sore all the time, you become a much better gymnast. You adapt to having meals in the car or having dinner at 9 or later on most nights. Also, as you get older and get more homework, you get used to staying up until the early hours of the morning just to finish what you need to get done for the next day at school. You learn to always appreciate weekends because you get to sleep in and relax and let your body heal as much as it can in two days, except of course, if you have a meet, which take up many of your weekends during the competition season. Competition season is usually from around October or November until May for Excel and JO (Junior Olympic) and is from December to February for high school gymnastics, if that is something you decide you are interested in. If you are in high school and are trying to manage high school gymnastics and either Excel or JO from December to February, good luck. That is all the advice I have for you because during those three months you are basically in a gym at least five days a week, sometimes in two gyms in the same day. And during those three months, you stay up even later and eat even later and even less because you have so much going on with school and sports, food is sometimes the last thing on your mind, even if you are starving.

Even if it seems like it's miserable and a lot of work and I make it seem like I hate it, I really do love it. I love everything about the sport. It may be miserable at times and you get so frustrated that you want to quit and you are in so much pain sometimes that you can't walk, you realize that without the sport you have nothing. Like, right now for example, I am out with a serious knee injury and can barely walk, let alone do gymnastics. So I have nothing to do right now and for at least the next 8 weeks and I am already itching to get back into the gym. Sometimes it takes an injury in which you can't do gymnastics at all to makes you realize how much you miss it and how empty your life would be without it. So, if you are a gymnast and you are reading this, you should appreciate being able to do it while you still can because those years when you are able to do it will be the best years of your life.

Please leave any comments about ideas or just responses to this post- I'd love to hear from you!! :)