Coaches Golden rule for twisting and pirouetting

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Valentin

Coach
Hi Everyone

This is a topic that has personally been a pain in my back side, for quite sometime, and finally i got it all cleared up in my head (thanks to some research and ideas from other great coaches)
(This is not my rule, this how i summed up all the info to make sense to me)

Golden rule is...
Right leg kicking up to HS ---> Left hand post on forward pirouette ---> twist fwd and bwd to the right ---> blind change posting on right arm
Vice versa for left leg kick up to handstand

Based on this you can figure out everything else. If you follow this idea from day one with your little dudes you will not have much trouble with directional confusion.

How to best establish kick up leg, or natural turning/twisting direction is up for debate and everyone has their own ways (ranging from Jack Carter's tests, a whole array of twisting and turning games, jump full turns, round-off direction etc..)

Personally the only one i use, (without explaining to the kid what you are doing).
Get them to stand with their feet together. look straight. eyes closed. Give them a little tap forward and see with which foot they step first. Repeat test multiple times to develop an idea if this is their true natural established dominant leg. Repeat test equally amount of times with eyes open.

If you get mixed results. Get them to do jump full 1/2 turns and 1/1 turns to both sides. Best observable side (regardless of their actual preference) is their twisting direction, and establish kick up leg from there. I suggest you do this all your kids from first day. Write it down and periodically retest to calibrate if needed, before its to late.

Just something others might find helpful
 
Interesting. Thanks for posting (and doing the research). I've seen that this is a complicated topic, but haven't gone into it very far myself. I've always taught right round-off, right post on pirouette, but not for any reason, its just what I've done. But it makes complete sense the other way. A left posting arm would be a right twist, much better for a righty gymnast. But isn't there some controversy that a right round-off is actually a left twist?
 
Ok - Gymnast steps forward with their right foot during a lunge....Follow this 'map'. Hope it helps and gives some insight!

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isn't there some controversy that a right round-off is actually a left twist?

Not sure that its a controversy, it seems pretty accepted knowledge now a days. However even through i see relevance to the information, it really is not that important in my opinion, Only time its worth thinking about is when you consider twisting skills out of a round-off.
 
Nice, in my desperate attempt to clear all this up for me, this was one of the articles i read. Very handy, and helpful.
 

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