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