Did you ever notice how many kids, boys and girls, kick when they try to do a kip?

This is a very common problem. 

When doing a kip, the ankles should be brought up to the bar and as the body swings back, the arms pull up and the legs extend.  However, when the legs are extended there is a tendency to want to kick.  This kick takes the legs away from the bar and makes it impossible to make the kip.  In order to make the kip, the legs need to extend and be kept right next to the bar.  Therefore, this is definitely not a kicking action. 

Sometimes we use the idea of “putting your pants on”.  This concept is easy to understand and relates to the gymnast that the legs need to travel up the bar and stay close to it.  If the gymnast is having a very difficult time making the kip it may be due to a lack of strength.  The strength involved in doing a kip is to fold: first, one must be able to pull himself to a support and second, bringing the legs to the bar requires a certain amount of stomach strength. 

In order to develop the strength involved in the kip it helps to do the following:  the strength to develop the pulling action can be developed by doing muscle ups with or without help from the coach, second, the strength to bring the ankles to the bar is developed by doing leg raises on the bar or preferably on stall bars.  By using the stall bars the use of the shoulders to facilitate the leg raise is minimized, therefore isolating the stomach muscles involved in bringing the ankles to the bar.

Last, but of great importance, the tap swing for the long hang kip and the glide action for a glide kip must also be developed and the coordination of the swing and the action described above takes time to develop.

One more thing, in an effort to isolate the kipping action, the drop kip will help.  The drop kip also requires timing and coordination.  However, there is no swinging movement to learn separately.  To accomplish the drop kip the gymnast begins in a support on the bar. With a very minimal cast the gymnast falls backwards, as if to do a back hip circle, brings the ankles to the bar, waits for the swing to go forward and then extends the legs along the bar while pulling him or herself to a support.  This additional skill will pay great dividends down the road.  I highly recommend you do this while learning the long hang tap swing and the glide swing.

Hope this helps with coaching the kip and remember “there is no kick in a kip”.

Thanks to Valentine for a very astute response to my question.

In answer to Valentine, I agree that there are two types of layouts.  Unfortunately, most coaches think of only the arched whipping layout as a “layout”.  This becomes a drawback when trying to teach a full twisting layout.  In my opinion the whipping layout should be in almost the same body position as the layout that goes up.  In other words the gymnast’s take off is hollow followed by a tight arch.  The difference in whether one does a whip or goes up is in the front handspring.  To create the whipping action the front handspring must rotate faster and land more arched than the handspring that is used to go straight up.   Remember that the hollow takeoff must come from an arched position in order to create power. 

So, there are two very distinct “Layout” front flips.  Please do not be confused by the term “layout” and think that the layout that whips is the only way to do this. As a matter of fact if you try to twist the whipping tight arched layout the gymnast wil have a very difficult time twisting beyond a full.  In order to efficiently twist the front somersault one must rotate the front handspring less in order to stand up taller on the take.  However, note that to create the power necessary to go up you must still land the handspring arched and snap to the hollow position.  The difference is that to twist you never drive the heels to create rotation.  The body stays in the hollow and you begin the twist at the top of the somersault which will increase the rotation and allow you to land on your feet. Good Luck.

 We are luckier today than in 1996 and before in that we have tumble traks to use to teach tumbling.  Unfortunately, the more advanced technology, at times, allows us to skip steps that are extremely important to a skill.  In this case kids can do many repetitions thinking they are being sucessful yet end up learning to do a front handspring finishing with the legs bent and or the head forward or arms forward or even down.

We must use basic concepts to teach these skills.  We should not lose sight of the fact that a front handspring is merely a front limber done quickly with a coordinated push off the ground with the arms through the shoulders.  And most of all it is important to emphasize the finish being with straight legs, in an arch, with arms overhead and head back.  This creates a slingshoot effect.  With the body acting as a bow bent and ready to release into the next skill. That skill would logically be a  front flip. 

First of all, it is important to understand just how a regular pirouette needs to be performed.  The pirouette from a front giant to a back giant should arrive in a handstand which means that the pirouette must be initiated on the way up.  In order for that to be possible the gymnast must first be able to do a front giant without ANY shoulder angle whatsoever.  In addition there must be a tapping action similiar to that used for a hecht dismount.  The hecht tapping action is accomplished by stretching just prior to the bottom of the swing followed by a pike and then releasing the heels into a mild arch.  At the same time as the gymnast releases the heels he should intiate the turn for the pirouette.  This should result in the pirouette being completed in a handstand.

In order to learn a Healy I use a low bar and have the gymnast first do the pirouette as described above finishing in a handstand and falling to his stomach with all parts of the body landing simultaneously.  Next, I have the gymnast do the pirouette and reach over the pirouetting arm to a cross grip and again landing flat on the stomach.  Once the gymnast has accomplished this I have the gymnast reach a little farther on the cross arm phase and continue turning landing flat on the back instead of the stomach.

At this  point the Higgins plays a major part.  If you can visulalize the Higgins you can understand that the progression descibed above is a combination of a regular pirouette and a Higgins turn creating a Healy.  Now if we discuss and work on the Higgins at the same time there will be a definite carryover from the Higgins to the Healy.  Here is how that works:  most gymnasts perform the Higgins on the way down after completing a back giant or other backward movement such as a stalder or free hip.  I believe that actually a Higgins should be performed as a forward piouette from a back giant or other backward movement.  In order to do this you must stack the skill that preceeds the Higgins. In other words the back giant must be performed right to a handstand.  Again this requires a giant with NO shoulder angle. In order to get the athlete to perform the Higgins as a forward pirouette start with a floor bar.  Have the gymnast practice kicking up to a handstand with an overgrip and then do a forward pirouette. You will find that the gymnast is in a mixed elgrip or elgrip which is a Higgins.  This will allow the gymnast to do this movement to a handstand instead of on the way down.  Now remember that this is a pirouette and like any 1/2 pirouette, unlike the Healy, there must be a leaning action in order to move the center of gravity over the pivot hand.  It has been said that our gymnasts may not have the flextibility to perform these skills to a handstand.  I believe that we have just not been teaching them to use the correct mechanics.  If you can get a video of Dylan Carney from Stanford you will see the Healy being done directly to a handstand and he specifically uses the hecht tapping action to make that happen.  This should be the standard by which we measure our performance of these skills and then we will lead the world in this area on high bar.

I would love feedback on these ideas.  I hope they work and it helps us to perform these valuable skills better than anyone in the world.   GOOD LUCK

Since the routines now need to be very long in order to, once again, maximize the start score, the gymnasts end up doing the skills that are easiest but have the highest difficulty level.  A typical example on floor exercise would be: round off back with a 1 1/2 twist, punch front 1/1 twist, punch 1 1/2 twist.  Next, there is an incredible amount of repetition.  For example, on high bar, most everyone does healys and higgins’ in various combinations several times. The rules read you can only get credit for four skills in any one category and both of these skills are in the same category.  However, watching any combination of four of these skills is boring.  Oh yea, by the way if the healy or higgins ends up in elgrip it is an elgrip skill and can count again.  So once again this is very boring.   Of course you add to all of this that the audience no longer understands what a good score is since the 10.0 has been taken out of the equation and you basically have a system that is not a good one.  The one positive thing which has come out of this effort is the change to execution deductions of: .1 for a small error, .3 for a medium error, .5 for a large error and .8 for a fall.  This does give the judge a better way to differentiate between competitors. This is not broken, it never worked in the first place.