When it comes to “technical” training, most WAG coaches train Bars and Beam every day.
In a 4hr practice, for example, it’s common practice to schedule 1hr of each. (Perhaps we should be conditioning with some of that time, instead.)
I often go back to the article Managing Training Time 2002 (PDF) by J. McNeal, Ph.D. and Bill Sands, Ph.D.
They use this as an example of how a coach might priorize:
Lately, however, I’ve spoken to a few coaches who feel we need spend more time on Bars than Beam. (For the average gymnast it may take more hours to achieve the equivalent level as on Beam.)
Do you agree? … Beam coaches, do you agree?
It might work if we spend more time on Floor and low beams.
11 comments ↓
I think that it’s really dictated by how messed up the athletes are technically. What I mean by that is that if gymnasts are not well prepared physically or technically and then one must spend a lot of extra time trying to work through poor fundamentals or trying to fix poor fundamentals. If the athletes have great basic fundamental skills, then I think one can definitely prioritize time in other areas. Unfortunately, bars is probably the event where talent will not get you by. A talented, powerful kid can be successful on vault, beam, and floor. But, on bars, you have to be a technician. If you want a prime example – look at Sacramone. What event is she not competing? But, she does well on the other three.
The rationale for beam is just a matter of consistency, I’d guess.
At the elite level, of course, there are issues with regards to trying to get the higher difficulty and due to the longer routines. With that said, with this new code and such, the body shaping/positioning is really lacking. And, it shows on bars a lot.
Bars and Beam seem to be the two events that will make or break you when it comes to competition.
I personally figured out how much time we were spending on each event over the course of a week.
General Warm Up – 10%
Advance Warm Up – 5%
Conditioning – 15%
Flexibility – 5%
Vault – 11%
Bars – 18%
Beam – 20%
Floor – 11%
Mental Training – 5%
I always priotise bars and beam. Beam has to be trained alot to acheive consistency. At competitions this is the most nerve racking piece, the piece where you have to cotrol your adrenaline and the piece that wins or loses you the competition.
I drum into my gymnasts why bars is so important and has to be trained more then any other piece (for every hour i do on one piece i will do an xtra 20-30 mins on bars).
The reason being that not only is bars the hardest piece it is unlike every other piece, when you working tumble your actually still practicing for beam and vault, same goes for when your working vault, your practicing still for beam and floor. The moves are all relative.
Bars however is its own entity, none of the skills on the other pieces help or correlate to this piece (except of course the most important skill in gymnastics the handstand).
Even the most talented bar worker can not acheive if they are lazy on this piece. I have a gymnast who is very talented on all four pieces but is slightly lazy, she is only young and when she cant be bothered to train at 100% on vault floor and beam, she still acheives and looks beautiful but when she wants to train at 70% on bars cant do a thing. She is a fantastic bar worker but due to her lazy mentality is now so far behind and struggling on previous learnt moves due to lack of repitions and now not liking the piece as she has realised that it is the only piece where she has to have full concentration and put in maxium effort every go…even on the “easy” elements, to acheive!
That looks good, Katrina.
Perhaps you could drop some Vault minutes if and when the kids are “ready” to compete on that apparatus. Put them to use elsewhere.
Some boys only vault once a week.
We usually only Vault once or twice per week as well. However, it seems we spend more time there because the group I coach has alot of different ages and levels which all require different vault heights and mat set ups with limited equipment (only one vaulting table and one porta-pit)
115cm – 4 gymnasts
120cm – 2 gymnasts
125cm – 2 gymnasts
As said before, bars is unlike the other three events. It needs a bit more time and technical care. As you go up in the levels, the elements also become scary AND technical.
I like to train vault more at lower levels since getting wee ones to run full speed at a large, immovable object takes a lot of repetitions. But you can do vault, beam, and floor stuff on other events as well. For instance on vault we also work flips front and back. On beam we can jump off to the side and do some high-end tumbling on the Tumble Trak. On bars, well … we can do back extension rolls and blind change drills on floor. MOST everything else requires an actual bar.
Greg notes:
Time distribution chart is from 2002 – 8 years ago and a different CoP.
In my workouts bars is the top priority.
We do:
23% bars
21% beam
18% strength
11% Floor
10% Vault
6% General Warmup
6% Floor Basics
5% Flexibility
Bars requires such precision and strong basic technique, it needs to be trained and perfected on a daily basis. For high level kids there are so many types of basics that are necessary to train on bars:
You have:
Kip and Kip Casting basics
Freehip/ stalder and toe on toe off basics
Swinging basics, tap swings and giants, and forward swinging giants
Pirouetting basics
Tumbling is more straight forward, you have back tumbling basics, and forward tumbling basics and for vault you have an entry timer.
Beam also requires more time because of the basics required:
Acro basics (handstands, back walkovers, back handsprings)
And then basic work leading into series, (back handspring sets for series etc)
You also need to work on landing positions for acro skills (back tuck sticks etc.) And leap/ jump connections (leap to a straight jump etc)
Beam and bars take are a priority because of the precision and importance of these basics in high level skills. Bars is the priority due to the amount of time that needs to be spent building and maintaining these basics daily. Beam basics are also in a small way touched upon in basics floor training. Whereas bars skills aside from passing through handstand, and the dismount that can be similar to a tumbling skill on floor does not relate to the other 3 events.
In an hour of bars training I usually spend a minimum of 20 minutes working on basics. For beam, I usually spend 10 minutes on the basics.
Wow… Im a bit saddened to read that people think that bar work does not correlate to any other movement in gymnastics…
Giant – Back extension rolls, along with free hips
Every release has a counterpart on floor, even the rev. hecht. (shushenova.. I don’t know how to spell it).
I agree that bar work is the most physically intensive, requiring the most strength and stamina, but in NO way is it mutually exclusive from the other events.
THANKS BC.
A very detailed evaluation.
As other coaches have eluded to, bars is of a very different nature to the other three WAG apparatus. It’s also one we try so hard to get as much apparatus time on, because it’s the only event where you can’t access it at home. Yes, you can condition at home, but say 90% of the other three events have aspects that can directly be practiced without the apparatus (note, I realise “but you can’t vault at home!” will be forthcoming…but you get my drift).
Leave a Comment