Watanabe – Preparation for Competition

In North America many of the best gymnasts are trying to ‘peak’ for the BIG meet. Here’s some advice on how to do that.

Mas Watanabe:

… Our level 9 & 10 gymnasts generally have 2 … routines, especially in the beginning of the season. One is a core routine and the other one is the future routine.

The core routine should be the routine, hopefully, with all the requirements for the level and be able to hit it with ease. The future routine should have skills or a sequence in it that she is still working to make or trying to improve on the consistency of it. …

When they compete, how they warm up in the competition is very critical. When a gymnast is competing a Yurchenko full for example, we try to make her warm up in 5 turns. We ask her to do the 1st turn: timer, 2nd & 3rd turns: layout, and 4th & 5th turns: full.

We try to warm up on bars in 3 to 5 turns. Generally we will allow 5 turns in the beginning of the season but make sure to do 1 complete routine within the warm up turns. Hopefully the routine attempt should not be the last turn in case they make a mistake in the routine. If the routine was attempted in the 4th turn, there is still a correction turn available within the time limit.

For Beam and Floor click over to GymSMARTS – Preparation for Competition

Edited by Dan Connelly

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