We had 10 middle schoolers attend our practice on Saturday. Here are some of the things we went over.
CONDITIONING:
Form drills, including ankling, heel returns, A-skips, B-skips, scissor kicks and high skips. We did these using freeze-frame, slow motion marching, two steps with a pause (aka "boom-boom"), three steps with a pause (aka "boom-boom-boom), and at speed in order to learn precisly why we do the form drills and what the form should entail.
Run to maximize turn-over speed
Run to maximize distance between steps (deer bounds)
VAULT DRILLS:
7-step marching plants
4-step wall plants
Holly Bradshaw drills (available here)
Do 10 reps a day, 3 days per week (do 1/3 of the drills per day, so you do all the drills each week)
Dribbles with pole lowering
Standing plants
2-left plant with halting
2 left plant flowing
2 left running plants
skipping plants
gather steps
1-step plant with resistance
Full vaults on the floor or your bed
Full vaults done standing
Candles
Hand stands or head stands for 30 seconds
COOL DOWN CORE
State circuits (10 pushups, 10 sit-ups, 10 left obliques, 10 right obliques, 10 leg-tucks, 10 crunches) that's one rep; by spring, be able to do at least 12 reps in a row
planks
V-ups
Stretching