Ideas for drills for young gymnasts on the vault?

Lee-annes NetballCoach, Australia

I will stat with Im not a gymnastics coach, but i have been a gymnast, my kids did elite gymnatics when they were 5-8 and i use to coach trampolining, so please take what i have to say with a grain of salt, but it there is some value to it too.

when my kids did gymnastics, and they were learning the vault, they use to play a game of tag. they use to lie down on their stomachs with the feet facing towards the beat board, and on the coaches signal, they had to get up and take off down the runway and first to the beat board won. i believe this was to take the focus off the beatboard, and just make it about running as hard as you can. it was fun and very affective.

as a tampoling coach i use to mainly focus on double mini, and tumbling. the takeoff to double mini is similar to that of a beatboard in that you must have a high powered run, that you must take off from one foot, and have a very powerful mount with 2 feet to get ready for that first skill. the main difference is, is that the mount to the double mini is much higher than a vault so is actually a little more intimidating. and to get confidence in that mount we use to substitute a beat board.

so once again we would have them run down the runway, and have them do a straight jump and land. once they got that, then we would have them try and do straight jumps to a box, and slowly increase the height. once again the focus came to getting them to get onto the box with a straight jump, and not the run, so it all became a little less intimidating.

so maybe try those and see how you go. we then progress some of our kids onto front saults off the beatboard, as it helped with both their tumbling, and mount skills.

hope that helps.