Since so many folks are responding to Troy’s request for an intense front handspring discussion, I figured that I’d spur on the discussion a little bit.
So, here’s a topic of debate that I have had with several coaches. What do YOU feel is the appropriate head position when first contacting the table?
In? Slightly Out?
My position –
It should be slightly out (ears uncovered) with eyes focused on the hands.
I feel that the anatomical movements associated with “blocking” are a well-timed combination of an opening of the shoulders (shoulder flexion) coupled with a very quick, reactive “shrug” (shoulder girdle elevation). Essentially, this allows the gymnast to “bump” or “bounce” off of the table assuming they have contacted at the appropriate angle.
Following the “block,” the opening of the shoulders will automatically move the arms beside the ears and put the head in a neutral position and in line with the rest of the body.
If the head is already “in” upon contact, the arms are already in full 180 degrees of flexion. So, how can the athlete initiate any shoulder flexion upon contact? Furthermore, most athletes try to “pull” the head in and end up tucking their chin to their chest and this creates an opposite reaction at the feet. So, they end up sort of counter-rotating.
The argument that I receive usually has absolutely nothing to do with anatomy, mechanics, etc. It’s usually this –
“Well, the judges in this state want to see the head in between the arms…etc…etc…”
So, needless to say, the kids of coaches who use this argument are usually “rolling” over the table.
So, now I’ve started the discussion – it’s your turn to chime in with your thoughts 🙂
I pulled out some personal video from the 2006 TOPs Camp that Excalibur Gymnastics has been hosting in the summer for the past several years.
Here’s a layout and full twist drill as presented by the clinician – Neil Resnick. Neil is the co-head coach for the Boise State University Broncos and the former head coach/owner of Flips Gymnastics in Reno, NV.
I had a request to do some stuff on front handsprings on vault, and I am working on that. In the meantime, though, I wanted to gather up some video of some of our front handsprings over the last few years, and see if we could start up a discussion about the front handspring on vault. Take some time to watch the videos, and then post a comment about them…the differences, problems that you see, etc. These vaults are not necessarily our very best or worst, just some random vaults that have been put on youtube.
These are right at the beginning. You don’t have to watch the entire videos. (And I’m not that fat anymore either…I’m so embarassed)
I would really love to have an intense conversation about this skill. I think that there is a lot to learn about the front handspring vault for all of us.
A couple of weeks ago, Troy created a blog post about training the handstand. Obviously, as coaches, our goal is to help the gymnasts develop a handstand that is straight as possible. But, just what exactly is ideal posture???
Well, ideal posture is defined as a straight line passing through….
Photo taken from:
Oatis, C.A. Kinesiology: The Mechanics & Pathomechanics of Human Movement, 5th ed. Lippincott et al., 2004.
the ear lobe
the bodies of the cervical vertebrae
the tip of the shoulder
mid-way through the thorax
the bodies of the lumbar vertebrae
slightly posterior (behind) to the hip joint
slightly anterior (in front of) to knee joint axis
slightly anterior to the lateral malleolus (ankle bone)
One thing worth mentioning is this – if your athletes can’t stand up straight, how can you expect them to be straight when they are upside down on their hands?
I think that handstand development begins by correcting posture and alignment in a standing position as well as both prone (on the belly) and supine (on the back).
Received an e-mail the other day requesting more information about proper landing mechanics. Here’s an excerpt from the e-mail:
Could you talk a little about landing positions, if you haven’t already done so? I remember reading a comment recently about coaches emphasizing legs together on landings, but it makes more kinesiological sense to have knees and feet shoulder width apart. The Gymnastic Minute on YouTube addressed the correct landing posture today, but I’d like to have a more in-depth explanation.
Here’s the YouTube video that this individual is referring to:
In terms of the feet being together versus apart, a wider base of support allows for more stability. Secondly, it is nearly impossible to get the hips shifted back enough to allow the glutes and hamstrings to assist in absorbing the energy from the landing if the feet are together. Why is this important?
Well, here is an article from the NSCA Performance Training Journal (a free online publication on the NSCA’s website) that explains matters more in-depth. However, I will give you a brief overview.
The hamstrings originate on the ischium of the pelvis and attach on the back of the tibia (shin bone). Their main job is to bend the knee and their secondary job is to open or extend the hip. Well, as the knee bends from a landing, the hamstrings will activate and pull the shin bone backwards. This takes some of the stress off of the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). The ACL attaches at the back of the femur (upper leg bone) and the front of the tibia. Its main job is to prevent the tibia from moving forward too much. So, if the hamstrings activate and pull the shin backwards, this takes some of the load off of the ACL.
Now for the glute max. The glute max’s main job is to open the hip (extension). However, the glute max also helps in controlling rotation of the femur since it partly inserts on the greater trochanter of the femur. (I say “partly” because part of it also forms with the TFL and creates a sheath that runs down the side of the leg known as the IT Band and this connects on the side of the tibia) Further, it assists the gluteus medius (as Kris Robinson mentions in the YouTube clip) in preventing the knees from dropping in – known as “valgus” position.
Controlling rotation of the femur and preventing it from dropping inward is very important to knee health. Coupled with an inwardly rotated tibia, you’ve got the makings for disaster. This is why what appears to be a perfect landing could end with the gymnast on the ground in agonizing pain. Having been witness to a couple of these in my coaching career, I now have a better understanding behind the “why.”
While this is all well and good, the problem is that gymnastics promotes a quad-dominant landing despite the obvious biomechanical problems that it presents. Despite the traditional gymnastics approach, I encourage all of you to think about the health of your gymnast and consider having them bend at their hips a bit more and push their butt backwards to allow for the glutes and hamstrings to engage more and assist in absorbing the landing. Your gymnast’s knees will be thankful later.
Anyway, I hope this offers some insight into proper landing mechanics and their importance.
Thanks for all of the positive feedback on the front handspring articles! I am so glad that they are helping some of you.
I would like to know, though, if any of you have some things that you would like to see me cover next. I am open to suggestions, and eager to get started on another project. Just comment on this post if you have something that you would like to see discussed or disected. It can cover just about anything from events to mental training or whatever, and if I don’t have enough information myself, I will find it through many of you guys.
So, let me know and I will get started right away! Thanks again, and I look forward to hearing from you.
I just popped in over at The Chalk Bucket Coaching Forum and saw some nice comments related to Troy’s extensive post on training front handsprings. Here’s what some readers have had to say over there…
From “BarCoach”
I was working on floor with the level 5s last night. Watching the girls with better front handsprings, I noticed they naturally bend their back legs in their take offs, and the ones who struggle with front handsprings do not. So they all tried standing front handsprings with bent back legs to get the good push. One of them said, “That’s so much easier!”. I was glad to hear it. Thanks for the great drills.
From“Geoffrey Taucer:”
“I also had my level 4 boys try front handsprings with the back knee bent in the lunge. HUGE difference. Great drills, thanks a ton!”
From “Gymdog”
“Another coach who tried the back knee weight transfer…worked really well. Some of the kids took awhile to figure out the coordination but when they did it helped. Will continue to work from these positions.”
Kudos to Troy for such an informative post with excellent videos of drills and progressions!
And, thanks to those of you who are supporting our efforts with this blog. We hope that the information provided continues to be useful to you!
And now for the 3rd and final part of Training a Front Handspring on floor.
THE BLOCK OFF THE HANDS: A lot of times, this action is under-appreciated and over-emphasized at the same time. I know that sounds confusing, but I will try to explain. In my opinion, in most situations, coaches try too hard to train their athletes to block a front handspring on floor (and even vault) when the athlete is not doing the things before this block to allow her to be able TO block. As stated before, if the lunge leg doesn’t do its job, the center of gravity will be too low, and the athlete must bend her arms. At this point, it is impossible to block off the floor, since the definition of blocking involves a “bounce” or “pop” type of action, and not a bending of the arms, where the energy is absorbed. So, stressing on blocking without the pre-requisites of the techniques before this action is a huge waste of time, in my opinion (doing drills for blocking while still getting the rest in order is fine — it’s the expectation of a block without this prior technique that is the problem).
It is also my opinion that this action of blocking will become semi-automatic for the gymnast that does all of the technique before the block correctly.
The “under-appreciation aspect of this action is in the fact that, a lot of times, we are so busy trying to figure out why a gymnast is having trouble with the subsequent skill out of the front handspring that we may not look at how important the block is in the success of that second skill. Many times, the failure of that second skill is due to the lack of angle out of the front handspring, because the gymnast did not block from their hands in the front handspring.
One of the drills for blocking that a lot of people use, that I am not such a big fan of is the handstand hop. I like this drill (and variations of it) for front handsprings on vault, but not so much for floor. It goes back to what I talked about earlier regarding the “kicking through” of the back leg. When performing this handstand hop, we are, in my opinion, strengthening the action of bringing the feet together way too soon. This is an action that is more natural in my experience than the other (kicking all the way through), so I personally, don’t want to do anything to make this action more dominant. I feel like the gymnast can separate this technique more successfully when doing the drill for vault, so we do it there, but not on floor. Call me paranoid, but it works for me.
One drill that I have them do for blocking involves doing the front handspring from a lunge going down to a resi, and then over-rotating to the belly on a couple of wedges. This could also be done on the floor from a hurdle. Here are some of our gymnasts doing these drills:
THE FINISH: This is another very important aspect of the front handspring, as the position of the body and the angle of the body is crucial to the success of the skill that will eventually come after the front handspring.
***A huge point about the landing of this skill is the risk to the back. I am a firm believer that the majority of back injuries in our sport comes from the landing of front handsprings and other forward rotating skills. The reality is that no matter how much work is done on these skills, gymnasts land many of them with their bodies considerably behind their feet. This landing creates a great amount of force which is focussed on the vertebra of the lower back. It is because of this fact that I believe we need to be very conservative with this skill. We should do the best we can to keep our athletes from doing this skill on the floor until we know that they are capable of doing all of the above techniques efficiently enough to rotate this skill to the point of landing their bodies in front of their feet when the feet contact the floor. It is also important to work with the athlete to get her to tighten her core, using a “bracing” system (tightening the lower abs, the glutes, etc.), so that the lower back is protected on impact.***
One of the drills that we do for this are included in this video (thanks to Tammy Biggs for another great drill):
So, there you go. The training of a front handspring. I have included a couple of videos to show the completed process. The first is a video of our level 7s performing front handspring flysprings, and the second is of Ginny, one of our level 9s at Westerns last year performing her floor routine. She does a very nice front hanspring in her second pass.
Thank you so much for your time in reading this series of articles! I hope that it helps. I look forward to any and all comments that you would like to make about any of this.
Josh submitted this comment about basics and conditioning:
I love the philosophy and mindset that you have, I just wish that everyone thought the same way. I do have a couple questions though. I really like conditioning and love to do it at the end of class, however my classes are very short and there is not much time. What are some things that you can do during class to “make-up” for this? Another thing is how can you make the kids feel like they are not being punished? I try being upbeat about it, even join them every once in a while but they seem to still act like it’s because they have done something wrong. Thank you!
As to your first question – – – If you are coaching a class that is only 1 hour, it is very tough to get in any great amount of conditioning (especially if it is a tumbling or cheerleading type class with teenagers), so your options are limited. One thing that I have done in the past is to try to come up with drills that involve much more strength, so that they get some conditioning as we are rotating through a circuit. This can be as simple as doing a handstand against a wall for 30 seconds, or roll and jumps 12-15 times in a row, or jumps to the back on to a resi several times in a row. The success in this comes from the fact that these are all things that the student understands to be important to their acquiring certain skills. This is completely dependent, however, on how great a salesperson you are, which brings us to your second question…
How do you get the students to feel like they are not being punished by conditioning? The answer to this is that you have to change their mindsets as to what conditioning is. You have already done step 1 by being upbeat about it. The next step is to continually re-enforce to them how great they are going to be at the skills they want if they continue to condition properly. Your excitement and their belief in your sincerity are the big keys here.
One of the things you can do to emphasize this importance and how successful it will be is to use examples among your students. Find the kid in your group who is excelling at something and point out how her strength is helping her to this result. Or, even better, find the student who is finally making a skill, and point out how her conditioning and strength has helped her to have this success. Every time a student has success with a skill, it is an opportunity to promote your agenda. This is true not only about conditioning, but drills, flexibility, mental dedication, hard work, etc. Use the girls’ (or boys’) successes as a tool toward future successes for them and their classmates or teammates. DO NOT POINT OUT ATHLETES WHO ARE FAILING BECAUSE OF A LACK OF STRENGTH!! This does nothing but alienate that student and make her feel like giving up. The stress should be on the success that can be had by all of the students by doing something as simple as consistently working hard at a few exercises. Again, it is the “selling” of this idea that is the key. Your challenge is to get the students to want to do conditioning because of how much they want a certain skill.
Also, a huge key to the students “buying in” to the idea of conditioning is your consistency with it. If they know what is coming every week, then they start to prepare themselves for it, rather than having it tossed on to them randomly. This is when it feels like punishment or just a coach trying to “push me around, because he can”. There was a great quote last year (and very funny, I think) on the awesome show “Glee” by the cheerleading sponsor. It is very extreme, but kind of sums up this idea:
I empower my Cheerios to live in a state of constant fear by creating an environment of irrational random terror.
Obviously, this is an exaggeration, but I think it makes the point that things that are random create questioning and uneasiness on the people who are targets of it. Also, I just always wanted to share that quote with everyone, and so I took my opportunity. A benefit of blogging, I guess.
So, be consistent, and be a great salesperson, and you will be fine. Thanks for the great questions, Josh! I hope this helped.
So, here is the 2nd part of Training a Front Handspring on floor:
***Please note that a lot of these drills are done with front handspring step-outs, and while the gymnast may sometimes tend to land behind her foot and create a little lower back arch (something we do other drills for as well), I believe that the real danger to the back is not necessarily in the arching of the lower back (we still try to avoid this), as much as it is in the impact of landing in this position on two feet at full speed. I would love for my gymnasts to do these drills with less lower back arch, but we are still working toward making that better with these girls through spotting of these drills, CONDITIONING, other drills that are not shown, such as flysprings, etc., and through better flexibility. Remember also, that these drills are shown to give you some ideas on how to help your athletes’ front handsprings, and that we do not just do hundreds of these on a daily basis.***
THE LEVER ACTION: This is a big key to all tumbling, as this lever is what generates rotation and results in the body finishing past vertical, leading to momentum in the direction of the tumbling pass. Many, many gymnasts struggle with their tumbling passes, because they land their front handsprings behind their feet, simply because of the lack of this lever action, or the “stopping” of the lever action before the rotation is initiated fully. There are some lever drills on my “Handstand” post. Here is one of the drills we use to try and increase the speed of this action:
The goal in this drill is for the gymnast to place her fingertips as close to the edge of the carpet square as possible and then try and get her foot to land as close to the carpet square as possible. This is done by kicking the back leg through as aggressively as possible.
THE PUSH OF THE FRONT LEG: This is definitely one of the most over-looked parts of tumbling. So many gymnasts do not really understand the importance of this “lunge” leg. All we have to do is think of this scenario, and we can get a much better understanding of the necessity of the front leg push: A gymnast kicks the back leg as hard as she can over the top of a front handspring, but does not use the “lunge” leg at all. What this leads to is a lack of rise of the center of gravity requiring the gymnast to bend her arms in the round-off or front handspring. The second problem in this scenario is the loss of forward momentum, and the resulting “circling” action of that skill. It almost changes the momentum to retreat toward where the athlete started, as a kind of “undercutting” situation.
So, we have to make sure that we are working drills toward maximizing this action of the front leg. One way to develop this push of the front leg is a drill involving jumping across the floor with the lunge leg (do both to keep a good balance in strength in the legs) while holding on to a partner’s hands. Below are some gymnasts doing some of these (this was very new for these particular gymnasts) and another drill that I have found effective:
Another drill that we have found particularly effective is doing front handspring step-outs and cartwheel step-ins from the knee. This creates a situation where the gymnast must “stand up” using the front leg to make this skill. Here are some girls doing that drill:
Watch for Part III in this series, which will cover the “Block off of the hands”, and the “Finish” of the Front Handspring on floor.
Coaching Gymnastics in the New Millennium 