Coaches Freak injury in back handspring

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CoachTodd

Coach
Proud Parent
I was coaching a girl that has been working on back handsprings for what seems like forever. I tend to spot kids far longer than other coaches for safety reasons. This girl was finally doing the skill consistently on the down hill with just a touch spot. I usually spot just as much as the kid pushes down to save the wrists and elbows for these kids. The last one she did was a beautiful back handspring with no help from me. The shape was pretty, the angles were nice, she even timed the snap where she didn't appear to put much force on her hands. Some how she turned her left arm at exactly the wrong angle and the elbow dislocated. She ended up with a fracture in the elbow.

Has anyone else had a kid get hurt while actually doing a skill that appeared to be done correctly?
Any ideas on how to tell her she really didn't do anything wrong and she just needs to turn her fingers in instead of out on that hand?
 
Friday the 13th. One of my advanced beginner optionals walked into the gym and teased that practice should be cancelled because, well, you know it's Friday the 13th. I got a bit of a kick out of it and told her we'd hope for the best, and to get busy with warm-ups. I think it was about 10 minutes later this same kid hollers out after doing a standing bhs-back tuck, and tells me she just broke her finger.

Well of course I joked back that the next thing would be a broken foot..... and of course she walked over to me and held up an obviously, very, broken finger. Darned good thing, considering Friday the 13th and all, that she didn't break her foot as she walked over to show me her finger.

So that's the way it goes sometimes. This kid had done thousdands of comfortable, well executed bhs, and about a thousand bhs-back tucks from standing starts. I posted a few thoughts, on another thread, about what maybe makes these freak accidents happen, and how to do what you can to prevent them.
 
I have seen the elbow one too.

Dunno what would be the best way to guard against such an injury? or is there nothing.
 
Yes, seen it before.

Best way to guard against it? Don't turn the hands out. Make elbows strong.
 
Glad to hear others have seen the same thing. Bless her heart, she really didn't do anything all that wrong to injure herself like that. 11 years of spotting back handsprings and this is the first time I've had this happen right in front of me.
 
I have seen the elbow one too.

Dunno what would be the best way to guard against such an injury? or is there nothing.

making sure they can handle the force when they hit their hands on the floor. and making certain that their hands are slightly turned in.
 
so chins and push ups with the elbows in close. That kind of thing



These are rec classes of just cheer tumblers. It's hard to get a set of push ups out of them. I do have them do drills to strengthen the shoulders and tri's.
I wonder if lack of bicep work has an effect on the sturdiness of their elbows. I wonder if tramp and tumble groups have the same issue more often than gymnasts.
 
I was coaching a girl that has been working on back handsprings for what seems like forever. I tend to spot kids far longer than other coaches for safety reasons. This girl was finally doing the skill consistently on the down hill with just a touch spot. I usually spot just as much as the kid pushes down to save the wrists and elbows for these kids. The last one she did was a beautiful back handspring with no help from me. The shape was pretty, the angles were nice, she even timed the snap where she didn't appear to put much force on her hands. Some how she turned her left arm at exactly the wrong angle and the elbow dislocated. She ended up with a fracture in the elbow.

Has anyone else had a kid get hurt while actually doing a skill that appeared to be done correctly?
Any ideas on how to tell her she really didn't do anything wrong and she just needs to turn her fingers in instead of out on that hand?

The first thing I would say about that is 'Sorry that happened Todd.' I know for me there is no worse feeling than having a child hurt under your watch and care. I doesn't matter if it's a stubbed toe, I'm always second guessing as to what could have been done (and sometimes there is nothing) to have prevented it now, and in the future. I am injuryphobic person and usually over spot and over progress athletes to the point of them begging to go alone. Some of my peers tease me about it, but hey, we have one of the best safety records of any gym I know of. Also, back hands springs and fly aways are notorious for messing with an athletes mind if they wreck on one, so I spot them to the point that that is a remote possibility. Having said that, yes, sometimes no matter how physically and mentally well prepared they are, 'stuff' just happens. They're human, it's life, that's the perfect combination for problems. :) For that particular injury, I believe the best prevention, even more than strength, would be to make sure the hands are turned in slightly. It will help prevent locking, jamming, and hyper extending of the elbow (also helps prevent shoulder injuries). My kids all know it's 10 push ups per hand that is turned in,........... every time. I hope she recovers soon, and gets back to that BHS! :)
 
These are rec classes of just cheer tumblers. It's hard to get a set of push ups out of them. I do have them do drills to strengthen the shoulders and tri's.
I wonder if lack of bicep work has an effect on the sturdiness of their elbows. I wonder if tramp and tumble groups have the same issue more often than gymnasts.

Not in my experience, if they're conditioning. If they run out of time to condition consistently it becomes more of a worry. T&T kids are generally in better shape than cheerleaders (muscle wise. The all star cheerleaders have better aerobic endurance than my T&Ters unfortunately), though I am sure there are exceptions.

The USAG T&T materials have strength standards & they do include more upper body than you need to just chuck a backhandspring or 5, & JumpStart conditioning is flat out intense.
 
I had a kid I was spotting on back walkovers, she had done two just fine- I was honestly surprised with how correctly she was doing them, nothing looked off or out of place- then on the third one, which looked as great as the rest, as soon as she stood up she was screaming and crying hard. she said she "popped" her elbow, turned out to be an elbow effusion. To this day I go over it trying to figure out what went wrong, she was out for a month and is (understandably) terrified of back walkovers now. She'salso rec/cheerleader, my best guess is the lack of strength combined with hypermobility. It just seems like with the rec/cheer kids that they have the flexibility down but don't have the understanding of how important strength training is and push harder to "collect" new skills that their bodies aren't prepared for. And their eagerness combined with us having these kids for only an hour or two a week in a rec class setting makes it more difficult for coaches to assess what sort of workload their bodies can or cant handle :(

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New class season starts in a few weeks. I'm going to try to sneak in more conditioning drills. hard to get it in in a 55 min class.
 
Maybe they could do some while they wait their turn. Or replace some stations with more strength ones.
 
When I taught our cheer tumbling class at first I was not too popular. After watching how their classes were taught spotting them over and over and over again to do backhandsprings and nothing else I came in and made them do probably 80% drills and conditioning. Many of these girls had been there for 2, 3 and 4 years and still had no BHS many couldn't do a a handstand or cartwheel buy CCM (crazy cheer mom) NEEDED her daughter to get her BHS for cheer. I basically told them if they didn't put in the work with conditioning they would never get it, at least not safely. We were limited to an hour too but I suggested conditioning for them to do at home if they really want that BHS! I told them what they had been doing was similar to going to an amusement park and riding the roller coaster that does the loop and saying they could do a back flip as I was throwing them over in their BHS and that it wasn't working. I have to admit some dropped out but the ones that did stay now have beautiful BHS, RO BHS, tucks, pikes and even some fulls.
 
We had a freak accident about a year ago. Was an evaluation for level 4 who came from another gym. Another coach and I introduced ourselves to her right before we called our class out into the floor. She was super sweet and super excited to start class. We called our class and opened the door from the lobby to the gym to let them in. She was the last of 10 kids out onto the floor to line up for warmup. She gets halfway across the floor (on way to opposite corner of floor to start jogging laps) and does a step-hurdle roundoff and snaps her left forearm in half. Literally. Both bones. All the way through. The kid never made a sound. Not one tear. She just kind of collapsed in the middle of the roundoff, got up, grabbed her arm, walked over to me and said "I hope I'm not in trouble. I think I broke my arm" ended up having to be ambulanced from our hospital here to go two hours to the nearest children's hospital. Pins, rods, the whole shebang. She was 9 I think.

I'm still sick over it. She had been told that we don't tumble before class and was given the gym rules, etc. Her mom never faulted us - she said it wasn't anyone's fault and that the kid had done thousands of roundoffs, and that she should have followed our gym rules (her old gym hasn't had those rules) but still. Was awful.
 
My daughter's first L4 meet a team is warming up ro-bhs between routines across the floor. One girl does hers, looked fine, no hard crash, not a scary one at all. Seemed just fine.

Girl rebounds and walks off the floor, looks at her coach kind or teary and nearly faints. They assess her and call ambulance and we see them icing but no one can see where or what happened. Real comforting start for a gym full of level 4 parents.

Turns out she had broken not one but both arms. Just an absolute freak accident. Still the strangest gym thing I've seen.
 

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