Gymnastics coach Karen Goeller provides great tips for gymnasts who want to improve their balance beam performance.

Read more in her blog at GymnasticsStuff. Karen shares some of the coaching tips she’s learned from her experience with gymnasts in helping them to understand the importance of some of the most basic techniques that will help them to not only stay on the beam but will help them to perform with more confidence and polish.

It’s important for gymnasts remember that maintaining balance depends on your body being square an in line above the center of the beam. Karen’s tips help the gymnast to achieve this by focusing on some core stability techniques.

Keeping thighs together, arms narrow, and shoulders squared help to resolve most of the issues that gymnasts run in to as they complete tumbling skills or even dance segments on the beam. Imagery that Karen mentions – being squeezed between two walls – almost forces such techniques as narrow arms on gymnasts who may be having trouble keeping arms on ears. We each have our own ways of visualizing things and your gymnasts are no different. Using multiple techniques in helping each gymnast to “get” where you’re leading them with your instruction.

Helping them to understand the importance of these core stability techniques in their overall routine success will help inspire your gymnasts to work these techniques until they are second nature in their balance beam moves.

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Karen Goeller is a Gymnastics and Fitness Author whose website gymnasticsstuff.com has valuable, proven resources for gymnastics coaches.