Coaches Twisting Cartwheel - help!

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Miss Alyssa

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I coach rec classes mostly beginners ages 5 - 12. One student in particular, although i have a few other cases, is having trouble with her cartwheels. Instead of facing toward the way she came at the landing she is twisting her hips out and landing in a squat facing forward. I see the issue in the hips twisting, but my advice in correcting has proved ineffective -- Look at your hands! Keep your belly button facing your hands! Try to point your toes toward your hands on the landing! Try it slower! I am not sure if it is mental block, or if there are other helpful ways I can instruct or drills I can implement to improve this before bad habits are formed. I have tried spotting but without the gymnast going slow enough for me to physically turn her hips there is still a slight twist. She might get one good one and I congratulate her even if she doesn't land on her feet but has her hips the right way, but so far, still reverts to the hip twisting. Any suggestions you can offer would be much appreciated - it's driving me crazy!
 
Not sure what else you can do advice wise. But when I teach cartwheels initially with rec children I use a skipping rope (without hard ends) on the floor in a large semi circle/half oval I get them to start at one end and cartwheel around the edge of the rope. I also say they need to have 5 points of contact. Standing, 1st hand, 2nd hand, first foot, second foot.

Hope this helps. I also sometimes put hand/foot shaped foam shapes (completely flat like the dots for races etc) where the placement should be so maybe you could do this for the end with the feet/arrows facing the way her feet should be x
 
I coach rec classes mostly beginners ages 5 - 12. One student in particular, although i have a few other cases, is having trouble with her cartwheels. Instead of facing toward the way she came at the landing she is twisting her hips out and landing in a squat facing forward. I see the issue in the hips twisting, but my advice in correcting has proved ineffective -- Look at your hands! Keep your belly button facing your hands! Try to point your toes toward your hands on the landing! Try it slower! I am not sure if it is mental block, or if there are other helpful ways I can instruct or drills I can implement to improve this before bad habits are formed. I have tried spotting but without the gymnast going slow enough for me to physically turn her hips there is still a slight twist. She might get one good one and I congratulate her even if she doesn't land on her feet but has her hips the right way, but so far, still reverts to the hip twisting. Any suggestions you can offer would be much appreciated - it's driving me crazy!

stand behind her and tell her she has to come up facing you. if she can't find you she may be going the wrong direction. if not, maybe she needs another sport.
 
We have a cartwheel mat.

It has hand and foot placements on it and works for both left and right hand cartwheels.

Something like this -
Link Removed
 
I like Dunno's suggestion. I give them an object or a classmate to focus on to make sure they come up the right direction. We also do cartwheels off of a panel mat (start standing on the panel, hands toward the end of the panel, feet go onto the floor) which helps a little because they don't need as much "push" over the top. They also know they need to land facing the panel. This also helps with sideways hand placement - with kids who are very new to gymnastics and get confused between cartwheels and handstands, or kids who don't quite put their hands sideways and wind up doing diagonal cartwheels.

I also like to pause them in the middle of a cartwheel if they are strong enough - a straddled handstand position - and let them finish the cartwheel from there so it's slow enough that they can feel what they are doing.
 

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