You know you're out of shape when...

...the USAG WAG level 1 floor routine tires you out. Phew! I don't even do the whole routine because I'm too chicken to try the cartwheel.

I started taking gymnastics lessons in April. I've taken lessons before but I've never had anything past beginner skills. I go once a week and today was my fifth lesson since I started again. I'm getting stronger. It would help if I would keep up with my goal of working out during the week. This past week I barely did anything. My plan has been to do cardio/flexibility three times and conditioning twice. I count my class day as a third day of conditioning. The last day I kick back and relax.

hahaha, I know exactly how you feel...

When I was 13, I enrolled myself into a teen gymnastics program which shares a stretching routine with the little kids. After running for 30 seconds and doing intense stretches, I was already out of breath, AT LEVEL 1. Course it didn't help being 45lbs overweight either....

Hahah, the L1 WAG floor routine. Honestly, the backward roll is probably harder than the side cartwheel.

I'm amazed at how little i know about the way gymnastics actually works.

Where do you find these compulsory routines? Would be interesting to know, just for playing around purposes.

The only thing i could dig up seemed to be for women, for that matter it looks like Gymnastics is allot like yoga, many more female participants than male, except here.

USAG sells videos and books about the routines. The women have routines for levels 1-3 but I think level 1-3 in men's is the Basic Skills Achievement program. I don't know.

http://usagym.sportgraphics.biz/c-22-jo ... rials.aspx

I bought a DVD of the women's routines a couple of years ago. I hadn't looked at in awhile though but Yesterday I decided to watch it again. I wanted to see what a good backward roll actually looks like. Mine is pretty bad. I agree. The backward roll probably is harder than the cartwheel.

I did my cardio and stretching today.

Look up routine level "X" on youtube and make sure to type in USAG boy's or girl's and you should be able to find many girl's routines from l1-10.

USAG is coming up with routines for L3 boys but the BSAP does not have routines for those levels. USAIGC does I believe.

I'd say off hand in the US that there are 6 female participants for every 1 male. You can find the actual numbers on USAG's website but that doesn't take into account the number of recreational gymnastics participants.

It's simple really, most gifted young boys who excel at gymnastics are just extremely athletic to begin with. As a result they end up going into more mainstream sports such as baseball or soccer or football.

There is a little kid (6 I believe) that comes on occasion to try his sister's rec class. On his own he has a very solid backhandspring, a tuck on tumbletrak, a front handspring, he did a front handsrping on vault the first time he tried, and he has a very good back hip cirlcle on bars. This is all with minimal coaching. But his parents and him aren't interested in him doing gymnastics because he plays baseball and/or soccer.

Parents tend not to put boys in gymnastics whether they are gifted or not. Kids can do mainstream sports fairly cheaply, for one thing. They also have an opportunity, however remote, to become highly paid pro athletes in certain mainstream sports.

artisticfitness said:

Parents tend not to put boys in gymnastics whether they are gifted or not. Kids can do mainstream sports fairly cheaply, for one thing. They also have an opportunity, however remote, to become highly paid pro athletes in certain mainstream sports.

I wasn't denying this fact I am simply stating that on top of that highly athletic kids tend to go for other sports, which is a shame.

Yeah, I was disagreeing with you because I don't think it's a case of "highly athletic" or "gifted" kids choosing/being put in other sports. It's a case of all kids being funneled to other sports regardless of talent level - especially boys.

I think you're both right, but I also think it's fair to say that most parents do not understand the enormous long-term value of having their kids in gymnastics at least until their teens, even if it isn't their main focus.

There is something to be said about keeping them in the gym, serious gymnastics not effing around even with seasonal ball sports till high school sports. They probably won't become a stellar gymnast by any means, but they might be ahead of the pack at many other ball sports come high school.

Not even a push up, pull up... several months just to be able to kick to inverted hang, not even 5 bodyweight squats initially... I think you get it :oops:

Thinks are changing though!!! :twisted: :twisted:

When I was younger and still in school, I was great at push ups, sit ups, running, etc. Whenever we had the yearly fitness test, I did well on everything except chin ups. Two was always my magic number. :oops:

I think the fact that I never saw a bar until the day of the test had a factor in my low amount of reps.

LaughingTiger said:

When I was younger and still in school, I was great at push ups, sit ups, running, etc. Whenever we had the yearly fitness test, I did well on everything except chin ups. Two was always my magic number. :oops:

I think the fact that I never saw a bar until the day of the test had a factor in my low amount of reps.

That's just crazy talk. How's alcohol going to help kids to chin ups?!

HAHA!!! :twisted:

At 10y, I was fascinated by strength and sportman, I liked competition, but can't even do a pullup / do more than 5 shitty pushup.

At 14y I started training seriously and never come back. It's a way of life.

Not that I'm so strong, but I can squat 100 kg and do a BL, and most of people I know in town can't

slizzardman said:

LaughingTiger said:

When I was younger and still in school, I was great at push ups, sit ups, running, etc. Whenever we had the yearly fitness test, I did well on everything except chin ups. Two was always my magic number. :oops:

I think the fact that I never saw a bar until the day of the test had a factor in my low amount of reps.

That's just crazy talk. How's alcohol going to help kids to chin ups?!

I heard that beer muscles can help you do all sorts of things. Or is that cause you to do all sorts of things...

I skipped my workouts on Thursday and Friday. Saturday is supposed to be my relaxin' day but I got caught up instead.

I do squat jumps (45), pushups (18), cruches (75), toe raises (75), and "pullups" on my machine (36). Fifteen of my crunches are actually tuckups. I do 15 of my toe raises to forced arch because I want to be able to do high releves. I hope that will help. I don't do even sets of pushups and pullups. For pushups I did five then six then seven and for pullups I did nine then twelve then fifteen. Next time I'll increase my pushups by one on each set. For pullups, I actually decided to increase the weight I'm using so next time I'll do three, then six, then nine.

I'm trying to do the program from "Conditioning and Peaking the Junior Olympic Gymnast" by Dr. Larry Nassar. I bought it from USECA a couple of years ago. I don't think I've ever gotten past week five and it's a 37 week program. Right now I'm not even strong enough to do week one. I'm working up to it. I'm not doing four of the exercises. I used to do the hamstring curls and the clear hip pulls with one of those fitness tubes but mine broke awhile back. I just saw some in a flyer but the set is nearly $70 :!: I won't be getting those any time soon. The other two exercises I don't do because they're really easy and seem lame. They're mule kicks and pelvic tilts.

I did 20 minutes on the bike. I think I will try to increase my resistance next time. After that I did flexibility. Usually I do static stretching but I decided to do kicks instead. I did them from the floor instead of from standing. The front and back kicks went okay but my side kicks were pretty bad. I couldn't kick fast enough and I didn't feel like I was getting a stretch. Maybe I should've done them from kneeling instead of trying to do them laying on my side.

So tomorrow I'll have conditioning again and Monday is cardio and flexibility.

Oh yeah. I also worked on L-sit (tucked), straddle L, frog stand, and manna. This is only the second time I've worked on them. I tried to do them for three sets of 10 seconds. My "manna" is pretty pathetic. Imagine me hanging down between two chairs trying to push my body forward but continuing to hang there with no sign of movement. I'm going to try to remember to try front and back levers (tucked) on the bars when I go to the gym on Tuesday.

Didn't do my last cardio or conditioning for the week.

Today was class and we had a new person. I'm usually there by myself but every once in awhile someone else comes to class. I've noticed something about my coach. Every time a new person shows up, she makes the workout really hard! I'm glad I"m in slightly better shape than I was when I started or I'd be really be pooped.

At my first class, my coach had us jumping on the tumble trak. It was disorienting for me and I wasn't very good at it. I've only jumped on the tt once since then but this time when we did it in class, I did okay. I'm very pleased with myself. The only other gymnastics we did was forward rolls, backward rolls, handstand wall walks, straight jumps up to a mat, and I did kick to handstand fall to flat back. Other than that it was run, do some crunches, run some more, pushups, don't be lazy, run, more crunches, no pretending you are dead, more running!

Our coach was making fun of us because she told us to run to the little trampoline and do a straight jump up to a mat and we were both trotting along. She mimiced my slow trot and my new classmate's super girly run. It was so funny. I run slowly when she has me jump on the trampoline or the springboard because it's not a lot of space to gain speed. It just seems like if I ran fast, I'd be there before I knew what to do.

When we did forward rolls, I did a couple on the incline but then I reminded my coach that she had me do them on the floor since I was pretty good at them. When we did wall walks, I tried to get her to let me kick to handstand against the wall but she said she didn't know if I was strong enough for that so then I asked to do do handstand flatbacks. She said she didn't know if I was strong enough for that either but I could do them after I did wall walks. She asked me what was going on because I didn't want to do anything that day. I just want to keep moving forward. If I know I should do forward rolls on the floor, it doesn't make sense to waste time on the incline and if I get comfortable kicking to a handstand maybe I can try cartwheels again. I really was trying to avoid those wall walks though. To make it so bad, my wrists ended up not even hurting too much. YESSS! My classmates wrists were hurting. I told her that mine really hurt too at first but this was just my seventh class and my wrists are feeling fine. I was sooo happy.

I did okay at flatbacks and our coach told me that they were pretty good and next time she'll let me do kicks to handstand against the wall.

I'm not going to class today. My husband needs the main car. I could use the other car but I hate that raggedy piece of crap. I don't feel like it anyway because I just had some fillings done. I'm sort of phobic of dentists drilling on my teeth. Now my teeth have that almost a tooth ache feeling. I didn't even work out all week anyway. Not even stretching.