Basics, Basics, Basics!!! Training the Front Handspring on Floor – Part III

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.

Basics, Basics, Basics!!! Training the Front Handspring on Floor – Part II

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.

The Hurdle – Part II

In the first blog post on the hurdle, I discussed the importance of the position of the back leg at initial contact after landing during the brief flight phase of the hurdle.  Furthermore, as shown in the videos, the back leg seemingly pulls in under the gymnast or even slightly in front of the gymnast’s hip(s).

Even with a background in biomechanics, I could not figure out a mechanical reasoning for this phenomenon.  Why do many of the best tumblers do this?  How does it give them an advantage?  After much thought, I think it’s no different than why landing the feet in front of the body for forward vaulting is necessary. In vaulting, as the feet contact the board and are essentially “stopped,” the rest of the body continues to travel forward due to its horizontal momentum. How far the feet should be in front obviously depends on the speed (velocity) of the athlete. Athletes who are very fast will need their feet further in front, because they tend to generate much greater momentum. If the feet are not far enough in front, they are too far forward, too much rotation is created, and the athlete struggles to get enough of an upward flight trajectory to effectively contact and/or clear the vaulting table.

In the floor hurdle, I believe that the initial foot (leg) must contact directly underneath or even slightly in front of the hip to allow a more optimal position of the center of mass. Whether its underneath or slightly in front will again be dependent upon the velocity and the momentum generated by a particular athlete. If the athlete does not pull the initial leg under upon contact, they must compensate in some way so that they remain “stable” as they are transitioning into the round-off.  (At :52 into the Cheng Fei video, if you stop the video, you will see what I am talking about.)

So, how does the gymnast compensate if they do not pull the leg in under them? From my observation, they often push the hips backwards, which is completely opposite of what you want to happen!  This allows a better position of the center of mass so that they remain stable and do not lose their balance. Another compensation is kicking the leg around the side in some fashion. (There are other issues that cause this, of course…head position, etc. so if your athlete kicks their leg around the side of a round-off, don’t assume it’s purely a hurdle issue. I am just citing another possible compensatory strategy)

(Also, as a side note, if you watch kids who do not bend the front leg knee in the lunge as they land out of the hurdle, their hips move backwards as well. That’s why lunging is so important! Teach your kids to lunge when they first walk in the gym!)  Look back at Troy’s post on handstands!

Another thing to consider when we’re talking about the hurdle is the position of the body. The body should be upright with no closure at the hips. Many gymnasts “reach” to the floor and do so by bending (piking) at the hips. The body should act like a lever and pivot over the lead (“lunge”) leg with the back leg initiating the “kick” over the top. The gymnasts should think about “kicking” the back leg to turnover – not reaching to the floor. The weight of the head, arms, and trunk (HAT) actually helps to create an additional torque (rotation) as the body is pivoting over that lead leg and should be helpful to the overall turnover in my opinion in addition to the active “kicking” of the back leg.

However, if the upper body bends down at the waist too soon, the gymnast has lost this additional torque and may also create stability problems because their center of mass will now move too far forward of the lead leg over which they are pivoting. I believe that this, too, can cause a gymnast to innately move the hips backwards as well as to kick around the side.

So, I promote a hurdle that moves up and forward and stress getting the initial contact leg in underneath or even slightly in front of the contact leg’s hip. I also promote an upright body position and any leaning is a total body lean that is caused by the bending of the lead knee (i.e. passing through a lunge) just prior to the back leg “kick” and the body pivoting over the lead leg. Another thing about the lunge is that when the knee is extended (push-off from the lunge), that also contributes to the angular momentum that is being created.

Hopefully, all of that makes some sense and gives you something to think about.

Lastly, the hurdle is like any other skill. Spend some time teaching it. Don’t assume that gymnasts know how to hurdle.

Here is another excerpt from the same lecture given by Stacy Maloney, who used to coach Paul and Morgan Hamm, if  you are not familiar with him.

This shows how he trains his athletes to get their back leg in underneath them so that it is in a position to aid in rotation.

Again, I apologize for the poor sound quality.  I dubbed this video from someone else – from VHS to VHS and I used Dazzle software to convert it to digital format.  If you use headphones or turn up your speakers, you should be able to hear it.

Finally, here is another drill that I found recently  HERE , which was posted by Coach Bart who runs the blog and also hosts the site Gymnastics-Skills.com