Coaches Difference in Cheer back handspring and gymnastics back handspring

[CoachTodd]

I coach a competitive middle school cheer squad. In our town there are no cheer gyms only a gymnastic gym, so a lot of the girls I get either have no experience at all or took classes at the gymnastics gym. From a cheer coach perspective usually when I tell girls to do a cheer backhandspring instead of a gymnastics one means that they need to start with their arms down by their side and when they sit they swing back wards. We also only rebound when learning and when the skill goes into a routine we land with our arms by our sides and stand up clean. The biggest problem I have is trying to make all 28 of my girls look the same so the extra swinging, sitting timing, stand up timing is the reason for the way we do it that way. Now as for the actual bhs (the form once they sit) should be the exact same as a gymnastics bhs and I personally think if a cheer coach says thats not right then they probably just don't have a clue what they are talking about.

I understand the need to change the timing on the BHS and maybe even have a few undercut and such for cheer routines but the one coach I ran into that lead me to start this thread wanted them to learn it that way. I know for a fact if you know how to do what we would call a good gymnastics back handspring, you can put your arms where ever you like and land almost wherever you want. I think far too many of the coaches want the kids to learn the skill the way it will fit in the routine instead of correctly. This way the 5'10" girl's bhs takes up the same amount of space as the 4'9" girl's. I'm glad you seem to try to make sure they have the skill the make adjustments for it the work in the routine.
My DD could do a bhs, stop in a head stand, then spin around like a break dancer since she knew how to control her bhs.

 

[coacha]

I understand the need to change the timing on the BHS and maybe even have a few undercut and such for cheer routines but the one coach I ran into that lead me to start this thread wanted them to learn it that way. I know for a fact if you know how to do what we would call a good gymnastics back handspring, you can put your arms where ever you like and land almost wherever you want. I think far too many of the coaches want the kids to learn the skill the way it will fit in the routine instead of correctly. This way the 5'10" girl's bhs takes up the same amount of space as the 4'9" girl's. I'm glad you seem to try to make sure they have the skill the make adjustments for it the work in the routine.
My DD could do a bhs, stop in a head stand, then spin around like a break dancer since she knew how to control her bhs.

I tried not to generalize because I know I'm actually the minority in school cheer coaches. Most teams don't have a coach that knows how to teach or spot skills correctly, so I always try to keep that in mind and know that most people don't have great school cheer coach experiences. I think the main problem comes from the coaches not understanding that they are the same with a few adjustments. Just wanted to help explain from a cheer coach perspective. By the way I'm new on here - just signed up to get good new tumbling drills so I'm not up on everything; what's a DD?

 

[CoachTodd]

DD= Darling Daughter
She competed gymnastics at a high level and her only injury was from hitting her head on beam. She was at cheer practice in middle school and within one week she had a broken arm along with 3 other kids on the team. That particular coach wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

 

[CoachGoofy]

We work with a few cheer coaches at my gym...they come in and do their thing. I asked one about some of the things that were said in this thread & he asked me if I was kidding. He looked absolutely horrified.

And that gave me hope for humanity, a little bit.

 

[qdemaret]

"The final goal"

I've had a few kids that tried out for cheer teams that I've been working with on their back handsprings. Their cheer coach said that they were being taught "gymnastics back handsprings" and not "cheer back handsprings" What in the world would the difference be?
... and her cheer coach said she was taking up too much space and " you need to arch more and go higher"
... The "Gymnastics way" is more of the nice rainbow shape where the weight is on its way past the hands as the body bounces.
... Any idea why cheer tumbling would be any different?

Hi Todd,
I think the big diffrence between Cheer and Gym flips is the "final goal":
-As a gymnastic coach, your goal will be to perorm a back-hand flips that keeps (even increase) horizontal speed. That because the final goal would be to end a diagonal with a dubble back or something.
-As a cheer coach, the seek for a final high difficulty is limited by the surface (the ground). Then the final goel would probably be to keep the performer in position (at her place within the group). That's why the ack hand flip ould be more like a minichelli at the beam.

 

[CoachTodd]

If I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying that the reason they would do a back handspring differently is that they are on a firmer surface. Gymnastics was being competed on a firm surface with skills such as double layouts and harder on a dead floor. Old timers still say "on the mats". Mats do not limit the difficulty of the skills. I also think it makes it even more dangerous to do a back handspring or tuck with improper technique on a surface that is even less forgiving. I've never had a gymnast that switched to cheer have trouble putting the higher level skills on the mats. Even the handspring on beam really isn't the same as what I usually see from what many cheer coaches want the kids to do. I have found that there are some cheer coaches out there that do know what they are doing when they coach tumbling as well as gymnastics coaches that don't have a clue but it seems to lean more toward cheer coaches teaching the kids to just throw the skill and pray.

 

[raenndrops]

From what I have seen of cheer, they want the girls to look uniform... that means that taller girls "NEED" o not only do a standing back handspring, but need to do it in place- traveling as little as possible. In gymnastics, we frown on this, but for some reason, some cheer coaches love it.

 

[CoachTodd]

From what I have seen of cheer, they want the girls to look uniform... that means that taller girls "NEED" o not only do a standing back handspring, but need to do it in place- traveling as little as possible. In gymnastics, we frown on this, but for some reason, some cheer coaches love it.

I frown on it because it's dangerous to do a straight up and down handspring with a loose arch. I'm teaching my cheer girls to do the skill correctly for a "gymnastics" handspring. Then they can snap it down where ever they need to for cheer routines.
I do agree that there are quite a few coaches out there that don't understand the difference.