Coach Keith's Corner

There have been many times when I went to teach one of my upper level athletes a new skill and realized it is harder to teach than I thought because of bad habits, bad technique or just something I overlooked. An example - I had a very talented kid.  I wanted him to learn a specific vault (a kasamatsu).  Super talented so should not be a problem - only there was a REALLY big problem - he twisted the wrong direction to learn a kasamatsu.  When he was little he just picked his direction to twist and I thought nothing...

One of the hardest things to do is to teach a gymnasts an  inlocate that rises on rings. And you need this before you can get an uprise handstand or yamawaki. Here are a couple drills Coach Sean has his boys do to figure out the inlocate. This one is pretty simple but its important.  It teaches the boy the arch shape and how to create turnover by driving the heels.   Now its time to do lots of basic swings.  Every time your athlete goes to rings they should work on these. Notice the heel drive in the back?  Also...

Many of you who follow me probably have come across Coach Sean.  We coach together and he has a lot of great drills on instagram (@coachseands).  He really breaks down a lot of gymnastics skills and I have always said he should put some together in a nice package. I have also had many of you ask for more gymnastics specific tutorials.  Well you are in luck, Coach Sean and have collaborated on our first tutorial - Basic Tumbling. I am pretty excited about this because Basic Tumbling is important to learning not only difficult tumbling skills but also skills on...

Basic tumbling is an important part of gymnastics.  You can work on movements and shapes that will aid you in the development of skills on other events.   Perfect them safely on the floor first! An example of this is a back extension roll to handstand.  While its a great skill by itself its also a great skill to teach the movement and push back for a variety of skills -  a giant on bars, a giant on rings, a giant on p. Bars, a peach on p.bars, a free hip handstand on bars and many more  (you get the idea?)...

Ok today is a scary day.  I finally figured out how to allow online reviews.  As you can see my store is pretty basic.I know just enough to do the basic functions and maybe mess it up from time to time.   I didn't know how to put in online reviews (and was scared to do it) so I had to look into it.  (Note - shopify made it way easier than I imagined).  Today I did it! It was scary to first create my instagram account. The good part about that was, most people just liked stuff or ignored...