Friction

On my best days as a gymnast, I liked uneven bars. We tolerated one another. On typical days, I wasn't a fan. Burning and ripping your hands from swinging around wooden bars, releasing one bar to catch the other without seeing where you're going, doing routine after routine until you're sure your hands will peel off--it just doesn't seem like a good idea. Then again, what really does in gymnastics?

My gymnasts unanimously love bars. Perhaps the playground monkey bars come to mind whenever we head to the apparatus. I brace myself.

At one competition, Kelsey missed her squat-on twice in a row, with John spotting her for the third. Natalie, competing directly after Kelsey, did her one better with three missed squat-ons. For the other ladies, there was the usual mess of 3.0's and 4.0's, followed by a judge saying to John, "These girls should be in Level 4."

Ouch.

Strategy #5: Bars every practice.

This did not lead to vast, immediate improvement. But it did rough up the girls' hands, ripping and callusing their palms--an important step toward being able to hang onto the bars for an extended period of time.

Victories were tiny last spring but very much needed. Kasey's mysteriously vanished squat-on reappeared. Tia and Kathryn grew bold enough to leap from the low to the high bar by themselves. Kelsey made her kip at the end of the season! And I stood on mats alongside the bars, spotting just about every skill in the routine. An excellent way to keep the old arm muscles in shape and the heart pumping.

But there's only so much one 5'0" girl can do. I'd give Kasey a spot for her kip on the high bar. Nineteen out of twenty times, she missed it and dangled from the bar. I attempted to push her back up. Legs kicked. Arms strained to pull.

"You're on your own, kid," I said.