Top tips for women’s artistic gymnasts on adding that ‘wow’ factor to their floor and beam routines.
Chloe is an ex-competitive gymnast with a diploma in dance who has 12 years of coaching experience as well as being an experienced judge and choreographer.
Part 1: Chloe chats through all her top tips for gymnasts, including:
Perform with confidence and personal style to the top tiers of the audience.
Ensure a routine that flows – going from choreography into gymnastic skills and back into your dance effortlessly and without hesitation.
Figure out what story you’re telling and/ or what role you’re playing and maintain expressiveness in your face and body throughout.
Learn how to count your music and know it inside out so you can pick up if you falter.
Record your routine from where the judges would be sitting to assess and improve. This allows you to see if you need to bump up your expressiveness to the next level or perhaps tone it down a bit.
Maintain energy levels from beginning to end so you can finish just as strong as you started. This may require learning how to breathe properly throughout the routine and even choreographing some deep breaths to incorporate moments of physical and mental preparation without losing the performance element.
Think ‘head to toe’ – improve head positions and eyeline, maintaining good posture, good execution of the legs, pointed feet throughout and high relevé.
Enjoy yourself and the audience and judges will too – think of the appeal of Katelyn Ohashi’s viral routine.
All the tips from the video are described down below.
Part 2: Put all your new artistry knowledge into action by learning some choreography
This choreography is made to learn in a small space for those of you who are still training from home due to lockdown restrictions. There are a few basic and safe gymnastic skills included so you can practice making your routines flow – going from dance into a skill and back into dance, holding character and expression.
Artistry explained for gymnasts
Chloe has put these tips together based on her experience as a judge and choreographer. The tips are based on artistry scoring from the F.I.G. code of points, without getting into confusing details about the marking system.
What is artistry in women’s artistic gymnastics?
Just like how you can lose marks if you bend your leg in a split leap or wobble on a landing, you can lose marks in your floor and beam routines for something called artistry.
Artistry is “what” you perform in terms of the structure and choreography of your routine as well as “how” you perform – this is how you present yourself, express yourself, move to the music, etc.
What gives a floor or beam routine that ‘wow’ factor?
I want you to think about some of the best floor and beam routines you’ve ever seen, on YouTube, Instagram, at a competition. What made you remember these routines?
Some of you may be thinking of Katelyn Ohashi’s viral floor routine. What made it so special to be viewed hundreds of millions of times around the world.
Wasn’t it so exciting. She performs with attitude and expressiveness, she’s a great dancer, she performs on the beat, but the absolute best thing about her routine is that she is really enjoying herself so how could we not enjoy it too.
Your floor and beam routine should be an artistic performance, not just a series of skills and positions.
A great routine should flow well with everything connected so that means your dance and your skills should all be creatively linked together with no pauses or fidgeting.
Just like Katelyn’s, your routine should be original, unpredictable, captivating, memorable, and enjoyable for you to perform. You should absolutely love your floor routine and can’t wait to get out there and show everyone. This doesn’t mean you have to be manically smiling the whole time. The expression on your face will depend on the story you are telling or the emotion you are portraying.
How can I add the ‘wow’ factor to my floor and beam routines?
Your coach or choreographer looks after the “what” part of your artistry marks such as ensuring the style of choreography matches the music, that you have a close to floor or beam element, etc…
but something that you can work on yourself is the “how” part, the performance part, and that’s what I’m going to help you improve on today.
Beam
For beam, you can work on ensuring your routine has a continuous flow, that you get really good at moving from dance into a skill and back into dance, smoothly, making it look easy. You should perform with confidence and with your own personal style so you don’t blend into all the other routines the judges have seen that day.
A good tip for working on this is practising beam routines to music, having to hit the beat means you’ve no time to pause or miss connections. It helps if it’s a song that you love and know well and a song that has lyrics. Then you when you practice your beam routine without the song, you can hear the music in your head to help you keep up a good pace and rhythm.
Floor
Tell a story – play a role
For floor, I want you to think about what story are you telling in your floor routine, what is the theme, or what emotion are you trying to convey to the audience.
Is it a really dramatic and powerful routine where you could show bravery and determination. Is it slow and sad and you’re telling the story of how you miss someone you love. Is it a big number from a musical and you’re happy and excited.
Whatever the role you’re playing is, the story you are telling or the emotion you’re conveying, you want to engage the judges and the audience all the way up to the top tiers of the seats so that they feel emotionally involved in your story and they can’t look away. When you walk out onto that floor or mount the beam, you want to stand out from your competitors and be remembered.
Expressiveness – in face and body – consistent and to the appropriate degree in line with the story
After you’ve figured out the story or theme of your routine, practice showing the appropriate emotion on your face and in your body. Practice in the mirror, on video, and when you’re back in the gym working on routines, it’s a great idea to film it from the position of where the judges would be sitting to see how your emotions come across. Perhaps you need to go bigger or tone it down. You don’t want to overdo it either.
It’s really important that you stay in character throughout the routine, even at the hard parts. So this means you need to lose the concentration face. You can’t be dancing with a smile and then do this at the corners for your tumble. It breaks the performance.
If you’re unsure what emotion to convey or you’re nervous or embarrassed, that’s okay! It happens to lots of us. We can get shy and trying something new can be embarrassing which is why it’s good to start working on it at home. Even just relaxing your jaw, parting our lips slightly, using our eyes, lifting our eyebrows can transform your facial expression as it opens your face up to the audience. It’s subtle and not too embarrassing to try.
And if you are super confident with performance, another gymnast might not be so it’s important to support each other’s efforts as we all try to improve our performance. Don’t criticise someone who’s giving it a shot and the confident gymnasts are not showing off, they’re being smart and prepared gymnasts and we should applaud their effort.
Musicality
In your floor routine, there are marks for musicality. This means your ability to listen to the music and connect your movements to it. It’s important that you understand how to count to your music. Is it counted like 1-2-3-4 or is it more of a waltz and counted like 1-2-3, 1-2-3.
You need to know your floor music inside out. It’s good to practice counting to your music as well as practicing your choreography with just the counts and then add the music afterwards.
It’s also great when your music has changes in it or big beats that help you get your timing back if you’ve lost your place. I recommend asking someone to hit play at a random point in your music and then trying to pick up on where it’s at. It’s a good exercise for learning how to not panic if you’ve had a fall or something that’s thrown you off your routine.
Think ‘head to toes’ when trying to improve the presentation of your routines
Aside from expression and musicality, what else can you do to improve your floor artistry and engage your audience.
Think ‘head to toes’.
Head and eyeline
Firstly your head should be part of your choreography, with plenty of times when your head and eyes are up so you can make the judges and audience feel included. You are not just performing for you, you are performing to the top tiers so you need to lift your head up and look up. You also need changes of head position and eyeline. Perhaps there’s a sad part where you look down and then a moment of hope where you look up. We’ve all seen floor routines where the gymnast’s eyes don’t leave the floor and this may sound a bit rude but that is boring to watch and it shows you’re lacking in confidence.
Neck and shoulders
Moving down to the neck and shoulders. You can elongate your neck and show good posture by lifting your chin and pulling your shoulders down and back. Feel your shoulder blades pull together and downwards. When you lift your chin ensure you’re not doing it by sticking your head forward as this is unnatural and doesn’t look very elegant. Keep your chin in line with the rest of your body.
In gymnastics, we’re trained to hide the gap between our shoulders and ears, but when you’re dancing, you want to pull the shoulders down as you lift the arms.
Arms
Speaking of arms, depending on your choreography, you’ll probably have to watch out for doing robotic gymnast arms and try to soften them and let them go a bit more. You should aim to dance past your finger tips, softening your hands too and getting rid of those eating a burger gymnast hands that a lot of us do.
Hips
Depending on the choreography, you may have to learn to loosen up and let your hips go. This can be a little embarrassing for some people so you need to practice it and not just hope you’ll have the confidence to pull it off on the day.
Legs
When it comes to your legs, you’re trying to have good technique and extension, and hitting full amplitude (height) in moves like kicks.
Feet
You should always point your feet unless the choreography says otherwise. This means stretching at your ankle and not just scrunching your toes. Ensure that you point your feet as they come off the floor and as they return to the floor and not just at the full height of a leap for example.
You should also ensure when you are supposed to be in relevé (which means up on your toes), that you are as high up on the ball of your foot as you can go. Incorporating some ballet training into your weekly training schedule will really help with this.
Don’t forget to BREATHE!
It’s important you learn how to breathe throughout your routine in order to maintain stamina from beginning to end. You can always tell when a gymnast starts giving up towards the end of a routine as they’re tired and they don’t finished with a bang. This is the lasting impression of the routine for the judges. You need to finish as strong as you started. If you struggle with breathing in a floor routine, you should choreograph some deep breaths into the routine. This sounds strange, but imagine you’ve a big tumble coming up and you have a piece of choreography beforehand where you raise your arms and head to the ceiling and bring them down gracefully. You can take a deep breathe as you raise the arms and a an exhale as the arms lower. This adds to the choreography and allows you a moment of physical and mental preparation.
It’s important you keep the same level of energy through the routine.
Final advice
You work so hard all year around and put in hours upon hours of training each week. Competitions are a really exciting opportunity to show off that hard work – to perform! Walk onto the floor/ mount the beam with confidence – head up, eyes up, engage the audience, and enjoy yourself. Don’t rush. Remain calm. Hold your expression. If you falter, don’t panic. Listen to the music and pick it up and continue. The judges don’t know what your choreography is supposed to be so perform with confidence and don’t show on your face that you’ve made a mistake. Whatever you do, keep going. It’s your time to shine!
Your tumbles, leaps, jumps, and turns will always take priority and be more important than your dance. However, if you do the best you can with all these, a low artistry deduction is the next best thing you can work on to not only medal in competitions but to stand out from the crowd and to enjoy yourself!