click to watch
Swing Big:
… one of the drills I do with young gymnasts to develop their punching and coordination. …
There are lots of ways you can do these drills, this is with a small hula hoop, but I really prefer carpet squares or a chalk box on the floor. The more ways you can get gymnasts punching and jumping early, the better off they’ll be. …
click through to see the rest – Quick Tip: Developing Punching and Coordination
(via Gymnastics Coaching)
Nick English, a non-gymnast adult, for some reason decided to learn a “back flip”:
… As I entered the sprawling gymnastics playground that is New York’s Chelsea Piers, I tried to forget that the piers were the Titanic’s intended final destination. …
3 Exercises to Prepare Your Body to Backflip
1. Hanging tuck-up: While keeping the chin tucked ever so slightly downward, bend the knees up toward the head, crunching the core and rotating the body as far backward as possible. Perform the move very fast, as the goal is to improve flipping speed.
2. Box jump: Focusing on height, rather than depth, leap onto as high a platform as possible. Repeat as much as is comfortable.
3. Lying bent-knee leg raise : With the knees bent and the lower torso rising off the ground, lift your legs towards your head. This is like a horizontal version of the hanging tuck-up. Perform the movement with arms stretched above the head, and it will train the body to not swing them too far backward during a flip. …
Did it work?
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
(Okay, I acknowledge that Jon gave me a teeny tiny spot in this video—we didn’t film the two flips I did on my own. You’ll have to take my word for it.)
read more – Greatest – Don’t Try This at Home: How I Learned to Do a Backflip in Just 4 Weeks
by Darlene “the Bean”.
GymtasticsGymTools.com – Progressive Exercise Programs Keep Building on the Basics
Gymnastics Zone posted the best summary of this issue I’ve seen:
Beginner Backward Roll Safety Concerns
Bottom line, … do backward roll activities very, very cautiously. The younger the children, the bigger their heads relative to the rest of the body.
If they need spot, they are not ready for backward roll.
I’ve even seen Adult Recreation gymnasts sore after doing backward roll on a hard, flat surface. 😦
It’s a tricky skill.
Downhill is far safer.
You could SPOT a beginner on backward handspring. 😦
Far better is to set-up dozens of progressions without spot. Let the child move step-by-step at their own speed. Have success at each. Dozens of successes.
Let them take ownership of the skill. 🙂
Carrie Lennox:
In last month’s Tumbl Trak newsletter Doug Davis wrote about how progressions build confidence and reduce fear. Just thinking about an athlete “balking” in a round off-back handspring, or other tumbling series is enough to make me shudder.
“Connecting the Dots” is a way to describe all the steps involved in the physical preparation of an athlete and offering an athlete frequent opportunities to feel confident in every step in the process. In a recent video session filming skill progressions, we worked with a young athlete who has good basic training combined with good genes from her parents. The video session focused on cartwheel, handstand, and back handspring progressions from jumping to limbers to fly-backs to work in the pit, (which she had done in many workouts previously).
After filming more than 30 different progressions that lead to a back handspring, our session ended in the pit where we saw in her a confidence and will to move on to her very first back handsprings!! Wooo Hoooo!! We cheered and celebrated with hip-hip-hurray’s and it dawned on me…..we had spent the last two hours “connecting the dots” for this athlete. All the preparation she had done in her classes, put together in a sequence, helped to give her to confidence and success.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
A safety issue in many gyms are the mats used at the END of your tumbling trampoline. Here’s a new alternative that costs less than $2000. What would the equivalent mats cost?
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I love to see girls doing anything on Rings. They are even better for general upper body strength than rope.
Click PLAY or watch a few drills on YouTube.
I especially like the flyaway from Rings. :_
Rings are one of least expensive apparatus you can add to your gym. Those from Tumbl Trak cost as little as $56.
(via Tumbl Trak email newsletter)
Check out the great task card graphics on gymtasticsgymtools.com.
Thanks for this Rick! It’s always a big help when you post our stuff. Much appreciated.
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Thank you for this. Hopefully you’ll be able to help gymnasts out.
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Recreational Gymnastics 
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