Gym Rats Basic Training: Girls' Gymnastics Book Series with Chapters Teaching Realistic and Valuable Life Lessons by Mary Reiss Farias

Author:Mary Reiss Farias [Reiss Farias, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: IrisBlu Publishing, LLC
Published: 2020-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Perfection

On bars, newly motivated, I really concentrated hard on glide swings, perfect casts, and back hip circles, knowing that if I could do them really well, I’d eventually be working cool skills like kip cast handstands, free hip circles, and giants.

I quickly chalked up and went to the empty glide swing station. I stood on the panel mat in a hollow body position, grabbed the bar and jumped through my toes. I watched my pointed toes stretch all the way out to the block Deb set a little more than a body length away from the bar. I kept my eyes on my toes as my body swung backwards in my swing. I pulled down on the bar in order to bring my feet back to the panel mat and held my hollow position. “One gymnastics, two gymnastics, three gymnastics,” I counted, just like Deb told us to do.

“Good, Rat!” yelled Deb.

After chalking up again, I moved on to the next station.

“You bent your arms on your cast,” Madison told me after my cast back hip circle.

“Okay, thanks,” I said. “Can I try it again?” I wanted it to be perfect. Before I knew it, we were already finished with bars. Actually, we were just about done with practice.

We didn’t get to go to beam since our practice only lasted two and a half hours. We usually spent forty minutes on each rotation, plus warm-up and conditioning. Beam would probably be first tomorrow.

After bars, we conditioned. Then we stretched together in a small circle. While we stretched, Madison and I told Deb about the M & M we invented on the p-bars before practice. “You do a basket, just like you showed us, then before you finish it, you let go of the low bar and catch the high bar,” explained Madison.

“Yeah, it’s going to be so cool! We’re calling it the ‘M & M,’” I added.

I regretted saying the name of our skill out loud as soon as it came out of my mouth. I heard Leslie whisper to Amber, “That’s not even how skills are named. Don’t they know that new skills are named after people’s last names?” Amber laughed.

Deb smiled, “That’s great, girls. But I’m afraid you didn’t invent that skill. I actually competed it when I was a gymnast.”

Leslie snickered.

“What level were you in?” asked Amber as she switched legs in her splits.

“It was my first level of competition,” answered Deb. “All the names were different back then. Keep your back knees under on your splits, girls.” We all looked back at our legs to make sure our kneecaps weren’t showing.

“So, what’s that skill called?” asked Madison.

“It’s called a ‘basket catch,’” replied Deb. “Have you girls actually tried it yet?”

“No, not yet. We were about to when it was time for practice to start,” I said.

“We were getting some mats to put underneath the bars in case we fell,” added Madison.

“That’s a good idea. It can be a little scary at first, but you just have to go for it, and you’ll be fine.

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