How do gymnasts work on combined elements during the Academy training camps? Choreographer Ekaterina Belova shares

As part of the Academy  training camp, training was held to practice combined elements under the guidance of Ekaterina Belova, our choreographer and former artist of the Igor Moiseyev Academic Folk Dance Ensemble.

She explained the advantages of the International Sky Grace Rhythmic Gymnastics Clubs Association rules, which value the most difficult elements more.

“Now we have analyzed the basic elements, from which, according to the Sky Grace rules you can do a combined element, which is worth quite a bit.  That is, it goes into the element count that a gymnast must perform during an exercise, as one unit, one unit. But it consists, for example, of three elements. And the cost of each element will be added up. This is a good rule that we have in our Sky Grace rules. And, of course, the athletes are ready to work on this, which saves time, effort and also leaves more opportunities to show even more of their strengths that a gymnast can show during exercises. To reveal her skills,” Ekaterina said.

The choreographer also explained why it is important to practice combined elements.

“I just tried to help them explain the movement technique, why we do this, why we do that.  Because a gymnast’s exercise is one and a half minutes long, which is very, very little, but you need to do a lot during that time, so every little thing, every step, a well-thought-out detail allows the body and brain to think ahead, but at the same time perform a specific element cleanly, without deductions, and even better if with extras points,” she said.

Camps for gymnasts from different Russian regions were held at the Academy from June 2 to June 9.