For girls gymnastics teams, meets are made up of four different sections: beam, vault, bars and floor. In each segment of the entire competition, gymnasts have routines they follow, helping them achieve the best possible overall high score. The floor routine is when gymnasts get to show what they have on an expansive area.
Junior Charlotte Cox said the floor routine choreography is adjusted to the skill level of the athlete. She said the floor routine format is the same for everyone.
“The dance itself is like a skeleton, and then the skills themselves you can upgrade,” Cox said. “You just do the harder and harder skills and it takes the same amount of time so you’re able to do them in the same place that you were doing easier skills when you’re progressing.”
Sophomore Amun Salam said there are a lot of parts to her routine and it can be difficult recalling what to do.
“The hardest part of learning my floor routine was remembering all of the components in the routine because there’s a lot of requirements that you have to put into it,” Salam said.
Sophomore Sophie Miller said the new requirements changed how she needed to do her routine.
“One of the hardest things (about my routine) is probably my switch leap because just a few years ago it became a requirement,” Miller said. “I had never learned how to do it so I had to learn that.”
Athlete’s floor routines allow them to express their different personalities and skills. Cox said she enjoys doing her dive roll in her routine because it’s an unexpected move for her to do.
“I really like my dive roll I do at the beginning,” Cox said. “I like how I turn around and it’s like a surprise move. It’s the element of surprise when I do my dive roll. I just really like doing my dive roll.”
Miller said the best thing about her routine is her handstand pirouette.
“My favorite part about my floor routine would probably be my handstand pirouette because it’s really fun,” Miller said.
Salam said at the end of her routine she does a move that works really well with the music she chose.
“My favorite part of my floor routine is probably the ending because I do a lot of back extension tricks, and the music flows in with it,” Salam said.
The floor music chosen for the routine is a big influencer on the vibe and skills performed during the routine. Miller said she got to choose her own floor music, and her method of choosing it is looking it up.
“My floor is to “Feeling Good” by Micheal Buble,” said Miller. “We get to pick whatever song we want. I usually just look up gymnastics songs on YouTube and find one I like.”
According to Salam, the songs the gymnasts pick is a good reflection of who the athlete is, and she said she picked a song according to what she listens to the most.
“Your music describes you as a person and your personality, so you get to pick (it),” Salam said. “My current floor routine song is “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd. I picked it because I love The Weeknd and he is my number one artist.”
Cox said if it’s a poor song choice then it’s more difficult to create choreography for it, so she said she chose a song she thought would be good to add moves to.
“(My floor is) to “Hey Hey Hallelujah” by Rachel Platten,” Cox said. “I was looking for something that wasn’t boring and that was easy to choreograph to. If you had a root, a bad song, it’s really hard to make the moves up, so this one was pretty good and easy to choreograph to.”
The next girls gymnastics meet is at 6 p.m. Jan. 23 against St. Anthony Village.
