Required Strength for USAG Level 7?

[lisiflex]

Hi,

So I got two questions.

I am not from the US, I come from Austria and we have very very very poor possibilities to train gymnastics here. We only have 2 gyms in the whole country that have uneven bars and the 2 best gymnasts of Austria + are probably a Level 9 USAG!

My little sister who is 12 is a level 6 going to be a level 7 soon. (I would say, we don't have those levels here either!)
She can do 10 pull-ups, 50 push-ups and 20 hanging leg raises on a free bar as well as 40 very good V-Ups.
Would you say she is strong enough to be a level 7 in the USAG system? In their gym they don't do a lot of conditioning, so she does 30-40 minutes at home every day.
How strong should a Level 7/Level 8/Level 9 and Level 10 gymnast be?

And the other question:

She can't hold a free handstand. She can do a press handstand, is able to hold it against the wall for 3 minutes, but is not able to hold it free. I guess ger body position is really good! What could the problem be?


Hope you can help me!

[Daniel Burnham]

Girls are a bit different in conditioning needs for the sport. By this I don't mean they should be weak I just mean their events are not as shoulder girdle dominant as men's gymnastics as they do not have supported events like rings, parallel bars and pommel. With this said girls still need a great deal of strength and if you look at the successful American gymnasts you will notice that they are absolute beasts. This is something we get very right in the USA, female strength conditioning.

Now to try and say if she is strong enough for level 7 is difficult to say. It would depend on the routine. Most of the girls in my gym are quite capable of climbing a rope with no feet several times. They all can hold lsit and one can almost press to manna. They are weaker than me on most things but one thing I've noticed is that they destroy me in press handstands. On. Good day I can do 3-4 stalder a in a row. They can do about 5 at any given moment.

There is something I have learned from the successful coaches I've watched. Gymnastics revolves around a good handstand. There is not exception. A gymnast regardless of *** should be able to hold a straight handstand for a while if they intend to be competitive. The girls in my gym often walk around the perimeter of the floor on their hands one has made it around twice before falling. I would think this is the biggest deficit.

Other than that the girls do a lot of bar conditioning and a ton of leg and ab conditioning.

[Daniel Burnham]

I would like to add being stronger almost never hurts unless you are trading flexibility or agility for the strength.

[Connor Davies]

At the moment I would say not to worry too much about conditioning (although like Daniel said, more strength never hurt) but you really need to get that handstand situation sorted out.  Try to replace some of her at home conditioning sessions with handbalancing sessions.

 

There's a ton of information on handstands on the internet, but I'll give you a couple things to try here.  First is to hold a handstand against a wall with the stomach facing the wall, hands 6-12 inches away.  Then she will need to practice kicking away from the wall, holding a freestanding handstand with the wall for psychological support more than physical.

 

Once she can do that for a decent amount of time, she could work handstands with her back to the wall, but work on kicking up to a handstand a little further out every time.  Eventually she will need to walk her hands in toward the wall, which is basically just walking on her hands, even if it's only for a couple steps.

 

Or, if she's confident, she can simply not start walking towards the wall, and maintain her handstand away from the wall completely.

 

A couple of other movements that help:

 

Frogstand.  This is a simple little drill for teaching the basics of balancing on the hands.

Headstand. This is a much simpler version of the handstand, because you don't need to balance from the arms at all, but can still maintain a similar bodyline.

 

Forearm stand.  Great for bridging the gap between headstand and handstand, because you need to balance from the shoulders, but you have a wide base of support unlike a handstand.

 

So there you go!  Obviously F1 and H1 are excellent for conditioning and balance training respectively, but if you don't have the money there's loads of great information on the internet.