Coaches drills, strength and conditioning ideas NEED for straight arm BWR

[GymMom&Coach]

PLEASE help! I am in desprate need of ANY amazing drills or ideas to get my level 3's their backward rolls with straight arms.. Not one of my girls seems close, even my daughter who is 4 and has every L4 skill, is struggling with this!
ANY tips and advice would be a great help! Thanks!

 

[AmandaLynn]

PLEASE help! I am in desprate need of ANY amazing drills or ideas to get my level 3's their backward rolls with straight arms.. Not one of my girls seems close, even my daughter who is 4 and has every L4 skill, is struggling with this!
ANY tips and advice would be a great help! Thanks!

Try having them do them off the end of a folded panel mat or down a wedge before trying on the floor.

Also, I have kids do hollow body rocks (or even tucked hollow rocks) with their fingers interlocked, trying to get their hands back and put some weight on them. This can be done as a series of rocks, then a straight arm backward roll off of a panel mat as well.

 

[Kiwi]

Backward rolls into candlestick with arms above the head, to get the idea of lifting up. Backward rolls down a wedge. Once they can do it down the wedge, then try them down a beatboard with a mat on top (like a thin wedge).

 

[pattymello]

My kids where having trouble with this too. They all, without fail, ended up bending their arms and pushing strait up like they do in a normal roll. In an attempt to get them thinking about pushing back I developed this simple drill. They put strait arms out in front of them with their fingers pointing together. I then tell them to stop me from moving their arms while I try to pull their arms down. This is the pushing back motion they need for the roll. They can then do a lunge (just to give them some leverage) and I do the same thing with their arms behind their ears. This is sothey can feel an early strait arm push behind their heads. This has been really helpfull with nearly everyone I have tried it on. At first they may still bend their arms, however you should still see more push in the direction we want.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

do them with their backs facing the wall. then they can spider climb the rest of the way up. and be patient, in all my years i have never seen a 4 year old perform a perfectly straight arm back extension.

 

[iwannacoach]

do them with their backs facing the wall. then they can spider climb the rest of the way up. and be patient, in all my years i have never seen a 4 year old perform a perfectly straight arm back extension.

You are going to have to overcome a variety of "problems" that are packaged right along with all the "assets" that 4yo's bring to the gym with them. Three of these problems that I feel might be in play are strength, movement familiarity, and something that I'll call "muscle motion path" infamiliarity. Here's some thoughts on each one, nibble on them or just swallow whole in one bite.....

Strength.....It's definitely a wild card, kids can always improve their strength, but all kids are going to have a different starting point, as well as differing play time activities, and rates of muscle maturity. I've seen kids at 4yo come into the gym with a vast variety of healthy body types, all of them active, but not all of them strong, and some not old enough to realize noticeable increases in strength.......I think you can still get there, but you're going to have to dig deep into your bag of tricks.

Movement familiarity.......I can just barely remember experiencing "my" first straight arm roll as a teenager. It felt very different than a backward roll as it put so much more pressure on my my upper back and shoulder muscles, as well as a senstion of "stalling" on the way up. You maybe could set up a circuit with several skills/exercises, and spend your time at a station where you repeatedly lift them through the section of the roll where their hips begin to elevate as their weight transfers to their hands. You could skip the end of the roll, and make this a "round trip" motion to take them up to a "support phase" position-stall and roll back forward to prepare for the next "round trip".

Muscle motion path familiarity.......These kids may be training a lot of gymnastics, but haven't experienced this specific set of muscles being called upon to the task at hand. They may very well be strong enough to properly execute, but the specific set of muscles needed for the task are confused and don't know how to apply the strength they possess. Come up with a "very light" resistance exercise where they can move their arms in the proper movement repeatedly. Do not use more weight than you'd expect for a 20 repetiton set of exercises. They don't need to do all 20, they just need the weight to be light enough so they can move through the motion in a balanced, harmonious rythym.

After that, take two milk and cookie breaks, and call me in the morning.

 

[coachcasie]

a 4 year old's head is just way too heavy to do a straight arm bkwd roll. Honestly, I don't teach my 4 year olds how to do a bkwd roll, it's not safe.

 

[Valentin]

I have to agree that a back extension at 4 is not a great priority. But regardless, i personally feel that the best tools are
a- Have them lay in candle, a keep their arms straight you pull the through the roll.. They just need to keep arms straight, shoulders to ears, and depending on their position in the skill you can introduce the visual cue from feet to hands. Once they experience this OVER and OVER again, and can recognize the feel between straight and even slightly bent elbows it will works itself out
b- Lots of BK eXt Rolls of the panel mat/wedge (as already suggested above)
c- Conditioning mentioned in above posts, plus lots of bungee works opening the shoulders back, which i think is farrr better than using a weight, because it forces you to keep trying to keep the shoulder angle open
d- I always do the back extension to support first, once you have that down.. its easy to just adjust the direction of the feet, and power. Always emphasise, fast arms, shoulder to ears, shoot toes... works every time.