WAG front handspings

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munchkin3

Proud Parent
DD is having trouble with her front handspring. She can do it, but she lands a bit squatty and no rebound.
She has the power, but is doing something wrong with the block, or the angle of the block, or maybe the heel drive. Anyone have any good thoughts or drills?
 
DD has exactly the same issue, 3 out of 5 times will land in squat. Her coaches have got her practising in stages: fast track, mat in the pit, floor. Can't get to the next stage until she gets a series of perfect landings.

She's getting better, coaches aren't concerned and reckon it'll click soon enough....
 
Lots of practice and trusting the coaches to help get her there. Is she new to the skill? A lot of kids look like that at first.
 
I think kids first learning the skill just focus on getting over and landing, so they fling themselves and jump into a ball. It takes time to realize how open and arched you should be and how doing that will get you to your feet.
 
If you post a video we will be able to tell you exactly what is causing the problem. As there are several different mistakes that she could be making which lead to a squat landing.
 
Landing in a squat?

Hard to say without video but most likely she is tucking in her chin looking from the floor instead of watching the hands and trusting in the blind landing.
 
I'm learning that and definitely improving. Sometimes I tuck my head in like BlairBob says and lose the arch. It is, as he says, that coming off your hands and back to feet it is hard not to feel you should be looking for the wall in front of you. The other thing that I was doing (but now not hence big improvement) is that I wasn't keeping an open shoulder angle going into it. I was hurdling long and low but then reaching down to the floor. My coach said to think of it as a modified handstand and keep my arms straight and glued to my ears from the start of the hurdle and that has helped massively. I can do them pretty reliably on tumbletrack but on floor I tend to land leaning back and fall straight back on my bum. I think that might be a timing thing, like I'm trying to push away from the floor with my hands too early and not letting my feet come over enough first. (I don't think that's relevant to your DD though because that doesn't make me squat, I have an arched shape but leaning too much to stand up.
 
Does it look like this?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7wcdse5ajk841d/kopio_videosta_front_handspring-2QI6xjI8WM0_fmt18.mp4

This is one of my gymnasts who is having very hard time with front handspring. She's been practicing it for a year now and I can't see too much of improvement. All the others are getting there but she keeps having shoulder angle, leaning too far and having tucked hips and bent knees. I have spotted her for ages and we have done all kind of drills. I know she will get it but we are getting a bit frustrated because this is the only skill holding her back. A kip came easily for her but her FHS looks worse than many of my rec students. I can see what she does wrong and I know there is no magic words or drills to improve it but maybe some other coaches would want to say a word.
 
GymisEveryone

It's a rec kid, which is why it's ok to let her jump off a mini and go down to a height. But I would say she is not physically prepared to have an Awesome FHS as she is. She is also hitting the floor with a closed shoulder position and will not be strong enough to open it as she kicks over.

Munchkin3

She opens her arms off the floor versus keeping them close and pushing through. She doesn't turn over her FHS enough and that's why she is landing squatty. Of course, I'd like to work on her upper shoulder strength and block besides her legs ability to absorb and repel force (plyo).
 
Does it look like this?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/g7wcdse5ajk841d/kopio_videosta_front_handspring-2QI6xjI8WM0_fmt18.mp4

This is one of my gymnasts who is having very hard time with front handspring. She's been practicing it for a year now and I can't see too much of improvement. All the others are getting there but she keeps having shoulder angle, leaning too far and having tucked hips and bent knees. I have spotted her for ages and we have done all kind of drills. I know she will get it but we are getting a bit frustrated because this is the only skill holding her back. A kip came easily for her but her FHS looks worse than many of my rec students. I can see what she does wrong and I know there is no magic words or drills to improve it but maybe some other coaches would want to say a word.
She's bending her legs and moves her head from chin stretched out to a chin tucked in position. Either one will make the skill harder to do.......

When she bends her knees she is reducing their length and ability to pull her over to her feet. The mass of her legs makes a very small contribution because of this, and if it doesn't contribute it becomes dead weight for the rest of the forces to carry along. Another problem is bending her knees changes the radius of her body and likely she has no two efforts with identical body length and shape. So she can't really try one and make adjustments in her entry or exit because she has no consistent standard to compare her efforts against. Basically, she changes the skill every time she bends her knees a little more or a little less.

Her hear should be positioned the same as a back handspring done in reverse motion. Or you could think of it like this. Kids lead sightly with their head going into a bhs and then let the head trail slightly as they finish. Have her lead with her head (chin slightly tucked in) as she drops to her hands and leave her head in a trailing position (chin stretched away from collar) when she's pushing off and landing on her feet.

It also looks like she has her mind made up to do the skill the way it would make sense to most non-gymnastics people...... when she wants her head to come up it makes sense to her to throw her her toward her collar bone. Great kid logic, but it doesn't work.
 
Thank you BlaiBob and Iwannacaoch!

She isn't a rec kid, she's a level B (pretty much like level 3 in US) and has all the other skills but this to move up to the next level. I wouldn't say it's her shoulder strength, because she can do almost 10 chin ups, a great back extension roll, a kip etc. There's many kids much weaker in this group who can FHS. She just doesn't get this skill. I think it is her mind model of the skill like IWC said. How can I change it?

If she wasn't part of a big group I wouldn't made her do the skill by herself for a little while but she has to because we don't have many spotters and we have to have some stations they do by themselves. When I spot her I push her shoulders to the opposite direction and that usually causes a pretty nice try with straight knees. I have even taught other kids to place their hands on her shoulders when she blocks and that helps a little but of course they are kids and usually miss the timing.

She does the same mistakes when we do front handsprings from two feet on tramp. She does ok as long as I only make her do a handstand flat back but.

What drills should I do with her? We do handstand hops every practice. We do handstand forward rolls. We do handstand hops - flat backs. We do them slow motion of a spotting block. We do quick handstand kicking the wall behind. We do handstand holds.
 
Thank you BlaiBob and Iwannacaoch!

She isn't a rec kid, she's a level B (pretty much like level 3 in US) and has all the other skills but this to move up to the next level. I wouldn't say it's her shoulder strength, because she can do almost 10 chin ups, a great back extension roll, a kip etc. There's many kids much weaker in this group who can FHS. She just doesn't get this skill. I think it is her mind model of the skill like IWC said. How can I change it?

If she wasn't part of a big group I wouldn't made her do the skill by herself for a little while but she has to because we don't have many spotters and we have to have some stations they do by themselves. When I spot her I push her shoulders to the opposite direction and that usually causes a pretty nice try with straight knees. I have even taught other kids to place their hands on her shoulders when she blocks and that helps a little but of course they are kids and usually miss the timing.

She does the same mistakes when we do front handsprings from two feet on tramp. She does ok as long as I only make her do a handstand flat back but.

What drills should I do with her? We do handstand hops every practice. We do handstand forward rolls. We do handstand hops - flat backs. We do them slow motion of a spotting block. We do quick handstand kicking the wall behind. We do handstand holds.
Tell her it's common and admirable for kids to want to do a skill so badly that they spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to do it before they've been given a chance to learn from their coach. Then have her explain the skill to you as if she were the coach and you the student. You want her to do this with no concern for anything you have told her, so have her forget about your corrections and just to focus on what she feels is important. If she won't commit to an explanation of the skill you need to ask her what she believes are the important things she feels she has to do in order to make it from her hands to her feet.

If she still can't explain the skill you can ask her if she thinks it makes sense to reach upward with her head as she leaves her hands. The goal is to get to a point where the two of you are comparing your model to her's to see if there are differences, she believes in, that are conflicting with the proper model. That should give you an pretty good idea of where her problems come from.

When kids have their own version of a skill they will take everything you say and apply it to their model, and that changes your correction as it receives secondary priority in favor of what they believe works. They honestly believe they are doing what you asked, but don't realize they modify your corrections to fit their version of the skill.

For instance.... if you tell her to push her head back as she blocks and reaches though with her feet, she add the correction just before she throws her head the wrong way. You end up with 10% effort on the correction, and 90% effort on the old model. Since it's not enough to work she'll think she needs to do better at applying her model so she can get your correction to work. So go ahead and tell her you believe she's been trying, but that she's been trying to do two versions of the skill at the same time, and that's too much for anyone to be successful with.

Thank her for her efforts and then tell her just one correction to make, and add that her entire existence for that moment is that correction and nothing else matters. Making the skill doesn't matter....... eating, sleeping, breathing, and shelter are nothing compared to the single thing you want her to focus on making happen. Tell her the only way you'll be excited about any progress made on this skill is if the progress comes from the effort you want on that correction, and that even if the skill gets worse you'll be pleased if she makes the correction happen..... even if everything else looks terrible.

That ought to provoke something good.
 
Thanks somekiwichic.....i did not know how to post this stuff!!
Here it is again.....

Run less and block harder. She'll have more time to prepare for and concentrate on the block if she runs two steps instead of four. If she does 10 two step run handsprings followed by 1 four step run handspring she may do better on the single effort with four steps.

Repeat the process many times daily.
 

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