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How long can YOU hold a bridge. Yes more gymnastics at home. My young gymnast is only 5 years old and the only gymnastics experience she's had was a couple months of kindy gym when she was 2 or 3. I've probably offered to help her try doing a bridge - AKA back bend - a couple of times, but she's never accepted - and I thought we'd both lost interest in her even trying anything gymnastic. So WOW!! If I hadn't taped this and re-watched it a couple of times, I wouldn't have believed my own self. Now I'm left wondering how long she could hold it if that was her purpose ... whereas here she was just wanting to show me if she could do it at all. Holding a bridge is actually incredibly difficult. I've seen experienced acro bases who couldn't hold a bridge this long or this still - and they have to in order to be able to support their partners balancing on top of them. So bridge hold challenges tend to be an important component of training for acro bases. Maybe my little girl really should do acro after all? The up side of being a base in acro is that you can develop tumbling skills at an average pace - whereas a top has to be either be phenomenally talented or incredibly small or both. Oops - a problem just dawned on me: Cherub might have the bridge and the strength and develop the tumbling skills, but is unlikely to ever grow big enough to support a top bigger than a 9 month old. Doh! I guess we can rule out a big future as an acro base after all. :-D 12th April, 2013