- Jan 21, 2007
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What are your coaching opinions that would likely get this reaction in most coaching circles? The ones that you are utterly confident you're correct about, but make other coaches stare at you like you're crazy?
Here are a few of mine:
1) Athletes should not run or even power hurdle into any back tumbling until they are learning back layouts. My reasoning: the more power you have going into a backward tumbling pass, the more mechanical errors become hidden. Doing back tumbling from the minimum amount of power -- say, a knee lunge or a fall-step -- reinforces much better technique, because any errors become immediately obvious. It also forces athletes to generate their power from the lunge entry, and from the connection technique.
With efficient technique, an athlete can easily get enough power for a strong back tuck with no run whatsoever.
EDIT to add:
1.5) Power hurdle doesn't actually serve any real purpose. The tumbling "power ladder" goes knee lunge -> fall-step -> 1-step hurdle -> 3 steps hurdle. Power hurdle is difficult to do well, and brings no benefit that justifies the time it takes to train a good one.
2) Athletes should not have a rebound in any of their back tumbling until they're preparing to learn back tucks. My reasoning: a rebound reinforces getting the feet behind the center of mass and immediately deflecting the body upward on the landing of a roundoff or BHS -- which is exactly the opposite of what we should want them to do when connecting into a BHS. Instead, athletes should either stick or roll back to candlestick after landing an RO or BHS; this much better simulates the angles and positions and rhythm of connecting RO to BHS.
3) Athletes shouldn't "pretty walk" onto or off of the floor at the start and end of their routine. My reasoning: judging starts when the routine starts, and ends when the routine ends. If an athlete's score is in any way affected by how they walk onto or off of the floor, the judge is failing to uphold the rules, and should be disqualified from judging. The onus is not on coaches or athletes to cater to judges who don't judge according to the rules; the onus is on the judges to do their jobs correctly. (I will give two caveats to this one: first, athletes should always make eye contact when saluting, as a gesture of respect and confidence; second, the traditional post-routine-picking-of-wedgie should wait until they're off the floor/mat/podium).
4) Overly-hollowed (ie dish-shaped) casts on bars should be deducted as hard as -- if not harder than -- loose arch casts. My reasoning: the goal of a straight body cast is to drive the heels up toward handstand. So.... why do we so often discourage them from driving their heels up towards handstand? The exaggerated hollow that seems to be all the rage goes exactly against this, cutting short the heel drive that should be a fundamental part of the skill. If you watch any elite gymnast on bars, up to and including the best bar workers in the history of the sport, you will pretty much always see a tight arch shape on the way up.
5) A correct kip should have bent arms the end of the kip. My reasoning: we want the athletes to finish in a pike with both shoulders and feet in front of the bar, in order to connect to a powerful cast, right? Ok, grab the nearest broomstick, hold it at your hips, and see how much you can pike without either bending the arms or taking the bar away from the hips; for most people the answer is "hardly at all," because the average human has arms longer than their upper torso. This is not a matter of strength or flexibility or technique or timing; this is a matter of simple geometry. Bending the arms allows the athlete to hit a compressed pre-cast position, allowing for a much more efficient cast.
6) There's no such thing as "landing with your chest down." Chest angle on landing is -- literally 100% of the time -- not the problem, but a symptom. For example, consider a back layout that appears to pike down at the end and land with the chest low; if an athlete has insufficient rotation to complete the layout, their chest will not be obove their feet when they reach the floor, and the only way to compensate is by piking down and landing with the chest low. You can spend all day working straight body drills and you can tell an athlete over and over to get their chest up, and it will make zero difference; if they don't have enough rotation to complete the layout in a straight body, it is physically impossible for them to land on their feet with their chest up.
And this applies to any skill involving rotation. If you aren't at the correct angle when you contact the floor, it's because you didn't have the correct amount of rotation.
EDIT:
7) This seems to be less controversial lately, but still far from universally-accepted: a roundoff should generally NOT land with arms by ears; rather, athletes should deliberately drop the arms down in front of them as they snap down. My reasoning: generally in a roundoff, we want the athlete to get the feet in front of the center of mass; dropping the arms shortens the body, making this much easier. It also sets up for a more powerful takeoff into the BHS, since the athletes can use their arms for additional force on takeoff. This also applies to BHS and whips when done in series. The only time a RO/BHS/Whip should land with arms up is when the next skill is going to be a salto.
8) Salto skills should generally land with the arms down by the sides, not by the ears (except when connecting to another salto -- and even then, the arms should only come up right at the last moment). My reasoning: landing with the arms down reinforces the T&T-style technique of extending the hips and legs to prepare for landing, eventually building into a full T&T-style shoot open. This provides better control, and also looks very beautiful when done correctly.
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