I coached All Star tumbling for a few years. It is different, especially with the focus on finishing standing skills with arms down. I also found it challenging because you tend to have a much larger kid to coach ratio, making it hard to feel like you accomplished anything. Not to mention you have so many differnent tumbling levels happening in one practice it is hard to set-up stations that are condusive to the whole group. What I found was that standing tumbling was as important as running tumbling, so I always split my practices between both, having a few standing stations (lots of wedge activity), leg strength stations, tumbletrak stations and then corner tumbling.
When I coached All Star I also felt the kids were being pushed into doing skills quickly without progressions. I really had a hard time with that (one of the reasons I don't coach All Star anymore), but realized all I could do was try and keep the kids as safe as possible by pushing conditioning and falling drills. Honestly, All Star was SO FUN to coach because the kids were great and very, very eager and excited to learn, but I found it hard to do with a gymnastics mindset. I had to become a little less picky and perfectionist and take my cues from the owner.
Good luck!!
