Beginner's Guide to Balance Beam

Many years ago, the balance beam was made out of solid wood with a varnish. Learn about the history of the balance beam from a professional coach in this gymnastics video.

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Start with cart wheels & back hand springs
Use different variations
Use combinations

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Mike Wood is a professional gymnastics coach with Crenshaw Athletic Club in Austin, TX. Crenshaw Athletic Club is home to junior olympic performers as well as the University of Texas gymnastics team.

Hi. We're going to talk about balance beam today. Many, many years ago, the balance beam was made out of solid wood with a varnished top. Girls might use some rosin on their feet to keep from slipping, to stay on the beam. Then, they finally started padding it and put a thin layer of rubber on it and put a suede cover on it, which helped the girls increase the difficulty of their tumbling greatly. Now, it's a little softer, a little more forgiving, they would start tumbling on it more. The newest beams are actually aluminum with a padding on top, and a lot of them have springs in them to make them even softer and even bouncier like for dismounts and for the tumbling on the beam. There are many requirements to a beam routine. Girls have to have skills that come from gymnastics or dance, which would be like a leap, a jump or a turn. They also have to have tumbling skills like back handsprings, front handsprings, back flips, and front flips, and they have to have a dismount, some kind of flipping dismount whether it's forwards or backwards. We're going to talk a little bit about some of those different skills and different requirements for a beam routine and we'll have some of the girls demonstrate while we're talking about them.

Beginner's Guide to Balance Beam Video

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