Dancing does matter! In my experience I have found that dance is just as important in a floor routine as the tumbling passes.
I put all of my efforts towards emphasizing my dance moves in hopes that it would help my score at least a little bit. It paid off.
Over the years of competing and coaching, I have been complimented many times on my routines. However, there is one particular moment that has stayed with me. At the beginning of my senior year of high school, I had an incident that unfortunately left me with a badly sprained ankle. I struggled a lot with this because Floor was always my favorite event and I could not compete in the next few meets. I worked very hard to eventually come back partially and decided to compete my floor routine without being 100%. Looking back, it probably wasn’t the best idea because my tumbling was very sketchy due to my injury and I was risking additional injury by doing so. But, I did anyway. I went for my first pass and quickly realized that it was not going to be my finest performance. In mid-air I had to rework my tumbling run so that I would land on my feet instead of my head. After a rough landing, I decided that if my ankle was going to force me to water down my skills, I would have to make up for it in my choreography. So that is exactly what I did. I put all of my efforts towards emphasizing my dance moves in hopes that it would help my score at least a little bit. It paid off.
When my routine was over I walked off the floor laughing at myself because I knew that it was nothing close to what I was capable of even though I gave it my all.
In the end, my score was flashed as a 9.3. This was way higher than I deserved but I give my high energy dance all the credit. The judge really appreciated my dance and clearly gave me the benefit of the doubt.
I try to stress the importance of the creativity and composition of a floor routine to all of my gymnasts because I have seen first hand the benefits when this is properly applied to the routine.
