In gymnastics, there are skills where both the motion and the body position are repeated in many other skills. We think these are the most important skills in gymnastics for these reasons!
Handstand
A handstand is the number 1 skill to perfect because it’s the only skill that is used in all 4 events in gymnastics. You have to be able to maintain a tight, straight body position, to vault well, maintain body shape on bars, and to do tumbling skills on floor and beam.
In order to achieve this, you need to keep your bottom squeezed, abs tight, legs squeezed together, pointed feet, and to be pushing through your shoulders. Check out our article on How to Hold Your Handstand Longer for more tips to improve your handstand.
Leap
The leap is also a skill that is used in most beam and floor routines, from the lower gymnastics levels all the way through the highest levels. It’s the 2nd most utilized skill in gymnastics.
With your splits, you want your legs to be evenly split, have good hip rise (height) off the ground, to have straight legs and pointed feet, while keeping your chest upright with good posture.
You can check out our article on how to do a split leap, work on drills to improve your split leap, check out our tips to improve your split leap, and finally, our workout to help improve your split leap!
Jump
Jumps are also very important in gymnastics, and components of a jump are utilized in all events as well. The ability to jump high with tight form is an important skill in gymnastics. Jumps are utilized on vault, floor and beam as you need to be able to push off of the floor with good strength and form.
In bars, a good jump off of the floor to transition into your mount on the bar, whether it’s a kip or pullover, etc, is a must. For vault, the jump is important as well to get good height off of the springboard to complete your vault. Floor and beam need good jumps for tumbling, leap passes, etc.
In order to improve your jumps, start by working to improve your body position. Then add some plyometric and lower-body strength exercises to your workouts to work on improving the height you can jump. We have a free download in this article on how to improve your jumps.
We hope you’ve found this article helpful!
View Comments (3)
Thank you! This site really helped me with my gymnastics coordination
How can I get better at my backbend kickover?
It did not teach me how to do a handstand.