Format for very basic adult gymnastics class???

[Garrett Smith]

Hi all, any help on this will be greatly appreciated.

I organize a once weekly adult gymnastics class for non-experienced folks, based mainly on the progressions from the 1944 U.S. Navy Gymnastics and Tumbling book and the various strength move progressions as presented via Coach Sommer on the web and in the CrossFit Journal.

I'm looking for some help or general ideas as to the best "flow" for a class around the gym, both in terms of apparatus order and strength/dynamic exercises. We meet for 1.5 hours.

We typically begin with about 15 minutes of "warm-up", consisting of joint mobility drills and some basic calisthenics. Nothing crazy at all, as my people need to save a lot of strength for the later stuff. I'm going to add about 10 minutes of stretching at the end of class, so I have about an hour to work with.

Apparati we tend to use in class includes:

Rope

High bar

Low bar

High P-bars

Low P-bars

Trampoline

Floor (rolls and cartwheels, some vaults over obstacles)

Rings

Balance beam

I've been tending towards doing the balance beam first, so that everyone is fresh and it doesn't drain too much from other things. Trampoline has tended to come towards the end, as that's when it is open and no one is doing any moves on it that are difficult enough to require placement towards the beginning of a workout.

Several of the people are still working on basics, like full dips and pull-ups.

For those of you who teach beginning kids, you might be able to help me the most. What does a typical class look like, what movements (strength vs. dynamic) do you do first and why, what apparati do you do first and why, and any other general comments on organizing a class to reap the most benefits would be appreciated. Please remember that this is rudimentary level.

Thanks!

[Blairbob]

Ehh, I ran my gymnastics adult class pretty much as this:

5 min warmup on floor or tumble trak of bouncing, jump roping, forward rollls, chasse, lunge walks, etc

15 min joint warmup with

5-10 min HS basics

rope climbs ( because it really sucks to learn or do these with torn up hands or no strength )

break off to events

sometimes we would all do floor basics for 5-10 minutes and then break off to stations or tumbling ( sometimes sending them to tumbl trak and doing stations with beginners ) Sometimes setting up return stations like a cheese mat or octagon drill on the way back. Or perhaps snapdown off the mini tramp into pit ( or vaulting into the pit since the tumbl trak was next to vault ) We'd also use tumbl trak as a return station for vault

basically most events would be at most 20-25 minutes, longer for those ex gymnasts wanting to stay on apparatus to really work ( typically not swinging apparatus as their hands just would not last that long coming in only 1x a week )

After floor or Vault/Acro, split off to events based per gender. All of our men's and women's bars where in the same general area, besides low and floor single rails. Same as our pbars. I could coach men on pbars and women on high bar as the same time.

10 min of open time, then 10 minutes to condition and stretch. It seemed after about an hour, most of our teenage girls were pretty much into social time ( aka sitting on their duff socializing and playing )

Probably once a month, maybe twice, I got all genders up on team to do what I call Beam 101. Walking, balancing, maybe some handstands or cartwheels, etc. Beam 101 would be about 5-7 minutes and be all done in 10 minutes. Then I'd move the guys to something else.

Females would basically alternate bars or beam as their apparatus per day, often always doing bars with Beam instead of Floor.

Sometimes we would skip floor ex altogether and break off into apparatus, coming to floor later or going straight to tumbl-trak. We'd probably do floor basics 2x a month, and some of these would be in the initial " cardio warmup. " Rolls, cartwheels, handstand rollouts, etc. Easy to just get them done early on and kind of a joint warm up.

Typically we'd do tramp towards the end as well. I've gotten to the point where I save tramp only for tramp progressions versus using them for handsprings or flips. Then again, we also had a pit near the tumbl-trak and tramp.

Any more questions?

[Garrett Smith]

Thanks for your answer, Blair.

My post was likely way below the level of any ex-gymnast/coaches who come here, and maybe beyond the "normal" folks teaching themselves gymnastics on a couple pieces of equipment at home. What I'm doing with this group is not a common scenario at all (taking adult raw beginners and teaching rudimentary stuff).

So, my concept thus far is this, trying to appropriate my charges' strength wisely:

Joint mobility

Movement drills (this last week we did a bunch of quadrupedal aka mimetic movement drills, ie. bear walk, crab walk, frog leaps, etc.)

Pulling movement (rope climb)

Pushing movement (wall handstand work)

Movement drills (worked on hurdle progressions)

Pulling movement (high bar basics)

Pushing movement (ring support, dips for those capable)

Movement drills (trampoline or basic tumbling)

Rinse, repeat, etc., for the duration of the class. I do like putting the rope climbs first, both for safety and the best effort available.

The class worked darn well this way, I think I'll keep this approach.

For those of you in the Tucson area, we're meeting up at Old Pueblo Gymnastics www.oldpueblogymnastics.com , basically it's an open gym for adults, I simply offer my basic instruction and supervision FWIW that I'm capable of while others can go do their own thing or work with the other adult ex-competitive gymnasts.