Gymnastics Beginner

Almost everyone else gets through 60 seconds of the 3/4 handstand, so I’m feeling a bit disappointed in myself now.

Next we try handstand kick-ups. We do a front support with our hands near the wall, bring one leg up so it’s bent under us, keep our back leg straight and bring it off the floor by just an inch. Then we try kicking our straight leg up to touch the wall. If this sounds easy, try it for yourself. I don’t know how some of these people are managing it, because I can barely get my leg off the ground. Our coach says it’s more important to barely get off the ground but keep correct form than to kick-up incorrectly, but I’m still a bit disheartened that I’m terrible at handstands so far.

And then, finally, we get to the apparatus. My group starts on bars, which look much easier than they are. We have two sets of uneven bars with different exercises to try on each, but I fail completely at these. Both require more core strength than I have (basically none), so one of our coaches suggest I stick to the high bar over the foam pit.

There’s a little platform near the actual high bar, so we don’t have to jump up and grab it. After chalking up my hands I step onto the platform and grab the bar—our high bar coach tells me not to use my thumbs, since we’re in the women’s gym today (hence the beams and uneven bars instead of parallel bars, rings, and pommel horse) and the thicker women’s high bar will hurt my thumbs. As soon as I stop curling my thumbs around the bar I feel like I don’t have enough strength in the rest of my hands to hold me up. I’m surprised how much I’d expected to rely on my thumb strength without realising it!

I take a deep breath, hold the bar tight, and let my legs fall off the platform so I’m hanging over the foam pit. I can’t believe how much I weigh! This hurts! It’s completely surprising to me how hard it is to hold myself up on this bar. But the coach doesn’t have time for my complaining. He tells me to start swinging, and as soon as I swing backwards I realise why gymnasts have to regrip so often: this is when you see them briefly come off the bar at the back of their swing before grabbing it again. When your hands are sliding around the bar with each swing, you can tell you’ll eventually fall off if you don’t keep moving your grip.

It’s tough work, but I get the hang of regripping pretty quickly, and the coach says I’m doing it well. Finally, something I’m not terrible at! Then he says to jump off the bar as I swing forward and land on my back in the foam pit. I try this a couple of times, improving my technique, and it’s scary and exhilarating every time.

It doesn’t take many turns on the bars before I notice my hands are stinging. When I look down, I realise I’ve ripped off a little circle of skin in the middle of both palms. I’m relieved that it’s time for floor and vault.

On the floor we line up and practise skills from one side of the open square to the other: forward rolls, jumps, cartwheels, and round-offs. I notice a pulling feeling in my right thigh after doing cartwheels, which hurts quite a bit. It doesn’t hang around too long, but I think I probably need to stretch more before doing cartwheels in the future.

Apart from the leg pain I’m pretty happy with the floor work. I do struggle a little with forward rolls, as I keep flopping straight onto my back instead of gracefully rolling. I’m not sure where I’m going wrong but just as I stand up and realise how dizzy I am, our coach says it’s time for vault.