Inspired by the Santa Mon­ica Rings, I decided to immerse myself into learn­ing all about gym­nas­tics.  In the begin­ning I thought it was mostly about strength, but no!  It’s all about strength, bal­ance, flex­i­bil­ity and your over­all grace.  To say it’s fun to learn these things would be understatement!

This arti­cle is struc­tured into four parts.  This will get some­one pre­pared to be a level 1 gym­nast which is your foun­da­tion for any­thing else you want to learn on top of it.

1. Gym­nas­tics primers/basics
2. Rings
3. Floor exer­cises
4. Flex­i­bil­ity

I am not includ­ing things involv­ing the vault, beams, uneven bars because these are things I per­son­ally do not have access to and have not researched enough.

Gym­nas­tics primers/basics

First of all, here’s how you’re sup­posed to grip bars and rings:

 

Hol­low Body Posi­tion Part 1

Being able to hold the hollow-body posi­tion is key in gym­nas­tics whether you’re in a hand­stand, on the rings/parallel bars or doing  your jumps!  Basi­cally your shoul­ders are for­ward and your back is rounded.  Watch this video about it to learn the impor­tance of it!

Hol­low Body Posi­tion Part 2

If you ever get a rip…

As we dis­cussed in the other arti­cle about how to use the trav­el­ing rings, the skin on your hand will have to go through a thick­en­ing process to be able to with­stand the pres­sure.  The heav­ier you are, the worst the pres­sure and fric­tion of the skin against the rings of bars.  If you ever get a rip and want to con­tinue training… Here’s how to tape your hands prop­erly!  By the way, to get ath­letic tape, it’s just paper/cloth tape, and you could find it at any drug store where the ban­dages are.  Gath­er­ing from all the stuff I’ve read on forums, appar­ently the John­son & John­son Coach Sports Tape is the best.

How to make prewrap:

Next, let’s learn the impor­tance of putting your shoul­ders to ears so that you could act as one solid unit:

How to do a tap swing:

The tap-swing is this move that is used as a foun­da­tion for gain­ing momen­tum for MANY moves (high bars, rings, trapeze, etc).  It is a com­pul­sory rou­tine you gotta learn and it makes every­thing way more FUN!  It con­sists of going from a hol­low body to arch to hol­low body.  The arch posi­tion is the oppo­site of the hol­low body posi­tion.  This video below shows drills for get­ting more strong in the hol­low body posi­tion and the arch posi­tion.  Then around 2:40 it starts to put the hollow-arch-holl0w together to start show­ing the for­ma­tion of the tap-swing.

Warn­ing:  If you acci­den­tally “peel off” (mean­ing, you invol­un­tar­ily lose your grip) while doing the tap-swing, you may get badly injured. Notice in the video there are mats on the floor!  If there are no mats where you are and are prac­tic­ing the tap-swing, have a spot­ter stand­ing right next to you so that in case you fly off they can slow you down to break your fall.  They don’t have to catch you, just slow you down to break your fall.

Rings Basics

Ring Basics, Part 1:

Ring Basics, Part 2:

Front Lever Tutorial:

Back Lever Tutorial:

and also…

Dis­lo­cate Tutorial

The dis­lo­cate on rings is one of the first epic skills you could learn on the rings and mas­ter over your life.  Very impor­tant to keep the arms straight.

Mal­tese:

Learn how to do a Mus­cle Up:

and also…

Floor exer­cises

How to do a For­ward Roll

There are a vari­ety of rolls that begin­ner gym­nasts can do on the floor. The for­ward roll is the most basic of these.  The back­ward roll is sim­ply the oppo­site and is slightly more dif­fi­cult but still doable.  You don’t have to do it fast.  Try it slowly so you have a good foundation.

Clar­i­fi­ca­tion: Be aware of the dif­fer­ence between the tra­di­tional gym­nas­tics roll and the for­ward roll described for park­our and mar­tial arts.  The inten­tion of the tra­di­tional roll is to remain sym­met­ri­cal through­out, con­tact­ing the ground along the length of your spine.  In park­our and mar­tial arts, the roll described is asym­met­ri­cal, where con­tact with the ground starts from one shoul­der, diag­o­nally to the oppo­site hip min­i­miz­ing the con­tact with the spine as much as pos­si­ble. This style of rolling is much more prac­ti­cal due to its safety (it’s even called a safety roll) and it can be done to land safely from high jumps onto hard sur­faces.  As opposed to the tra­di­tional gym­nas­tics roll which should be done on soft sur­faces only and is for scor­ing points for symmetry.

How to do a Back­ward Roll

How to to do a Strad­dle For­ward Roll

How to do a Handstand: 

Being able to do hand­stands is essen­tial for begin­ner gym­nasts. Other move­ments may suf­fer if you do not mas­ter this skill.

Can you already do hand­stands?  Learn Hand­stand Pushups and MORE!

How to do a per­fect cartwheel:

Drills empha­siz­ing can­dle­stick position:

How to do a Round Off:

How to do a Planche:

How to do a Backbend:

Flex­i­bil­ity

You must work con­sis­tently on improv­ing your flexibility.

Here’s a great video show­ing a series of flex­i­bil­ity exer­cises every­one must work on:

Here’s how to improve flex­i­bil­ity to do the splits:

Learn the impor­tance of work­ing out your abs and know­ing the dif­fer­ence between work­ing out your lower abs and hip flexors: