How can some coaches not realize they are messing up a kid's tumbling?

[CoachTodd]

Someone please help me keep my sanity.
I worked with 2 girls who developed really good round-off and were really close to standing back handsprings as well as round off back handsprings. They went to a tumbling camp at a near by cheer gym and now neither of them can tumble.
One hurt her neck (again. she's hurt it at the same gym) She was also so confused at her lessons with me after going to the other gym that she decided to take time off.
The other girl tore a muscle in her arm. We spent an hour retraining her round off so she could try some round off back handsprings.
They basically put them on a tumble trak and said "go do your tumbling"

How can they think that this is a safe way to teach kids to tumble?

 

[jenniffir]

The gym they went to was a cheer gym? Mystery solved! Cheer gym dont put as much priority on form and technique as gymnastics gyms do and focus on what skills you can throw and upgrading the already weak skills they have. No offense to cheerleaders, but this is what i have observed from... well every single cheerleader i ever saw tumbling.

 

[cher062]

The gym they went to was a cheer gym? Mystery solved! Cheer gym dont put as much priority on form and technique as gymnastics gyms do and focus on what skills you can throw and upgrading the already weak skills they have. No offense to cheerleaders, but this is what i have observed from... well every single cheerleader i ever saw tumbling.

I agree that has been my experience too. Even the cheer groups that come to the gym to practice I just look at and think my DD use to tumble like that when she was 4yo. I'm sure there are some really great cheer groups out there that have the good form and safety in mind but I have yet to see one.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

Someone please help me keep my sanity.
I worked with 2 girls who developed really good round-off and were really close to standing back handsprings as well as round off back handsprings. They went to a tumbling camp at a near by cheer gym and now neither of them can tumble.
One hurt her neck (again. she's hurt it at the same gym) She was also so confused at her lessons with me after going to the other gym that she decided to take time off.
The other girl tore a muscle in her arm. We spent an hour retraining her round off so she could try some round off back handsprings.
They basically put them on a tumble trak and said "go do your tumbling"

How can they think that this is a safe way to teach kids to tumble?

can't help you with the sanity part. what you have described is becoming more common every day. pitiful is what it is...

 

[gymdog]

Maybe a year (? don't really remember) after I start gymnastics in a rec gym, I tried out at a gym with a team over the summer and they said they would put me on level 5 team for the following season. Okay, looking back this is bizarre. I am good at gymnastics, but I was not a level 5 at that point, and their training was NOT sufficient to get me there in like, four months. It's probable that strength and ability wise I could have gotten the level 5 skills at a gym with great training. Anyway, their approach to roundoff back handspring was to tell me (I could do a standing back handspring by myself, but had literally never done a roundoff back handspring) to just connect it on floor. So I did this multiple times, WITH NO SPOT, all resulting in a back headspring (luckily I was young and small - no lasting damage). I remember how upset I was, because the coach would just chuckle. What the heck. Anyway, after a week of that, I went back to the rec gym and didn't compete for years (and learned a proper roundoff back handspring, and even roundoff BHS saltos). The rec program actually had much more quality coaching, sort of by coincidence of the intensive gymnastics backgrounds of the coaches who ended up working there. If I had started level 5 at the crazy gym, I probably would have ended up a soccer player.

But anyway, it is scary and not necessarily limited to cheer, however due to the explosion of more advanced tumbling skills in cheer you are likely to have people supervising skills they aren't really qualified to teach or don't even really fully understand the skills. Whereas in gymnastics you have some people who aren't that great at teaching, but in a lot of cases physically understand the skill, so usually they can at least have the sense to avoid allowing totally crazy things, even if I wouldn't consider them completely effective.

Any program is only as good as the supervisor, and while it's tough to employ 100% people who are extremely effective, there should at least be enough oversight to make sure all workouts are safe and there is enough training and guidelines as far as proper progressions of skills. I have seen some programs though where the head people are just interested in working with the highest levels and sort of ignore everything else, so there isn't really enough training for people who don't have enough of a gymnastics background.

 

[All Chalked Up]

Man, that's gotta drive you crazy.
NO MORE CAMP AT THAT GYM! That's what I would tell them... crazy people. Gosh.

 

[lavinmeg]

The gym they went to was a cheer gym? Mystery solved! Cheer gym dont put as much priority on form and technique as gymnastics gyms do and focus on what skills you can throw and upgrading the already weak skills they have. No offense to cheerleaders, but this is what i have observed from... well every single cheerleader i ever saw tumbling.

I am a cheerleader and a gymnast and I couldn't agree more

 

[Coach.Simon]

Ahh! This thread sounds ALOT like this other one! Link Removed Except now everyone, not just coaches, can share our anguish! Haha...

Story to tie into this thread...

One of my rec TnT kids is close to her ro-bhs, has standing bhs on floor, good form, round off is a little weak, she needs to get a stronger block/get her shoulders/chest up faster before she can connect a GOOD looking ro-bhs on floor.

Knowing this, i never let her do ro-bhs unless its down a decline with me spotting/correcting/shaping...

Of course, this kid goes out for cheer, makes it easily (a 6 year old with a standing bhs is basically a shoo-in in this area, its not very competitive)

GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

She comes back next week and her BHS looks like total garbage. Jokingly I ask her what's up; she says that the cheer coaches were having her do ro-bhs on their wrestling mats....without a spot.

I'm getting worked up from typing this. But needless to say those two years (been teaching her since she was a little one) of carefully coaching her and all of those spots catching her during which I gave her corrections was basically ruined by one week of cheer coaches probably looking at her and telling her to connect her (weak) round off into her bhs.

It might not sound like a big deal....but imagine if you were a little kid again building a sand castle, and it looks awesome, then some other kid comes by and kicks it in.

Thats exactly what it feels like when cheer coaches get their hands on my TnT'ers.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

it IS a big deal!

 

[Azgymmiemom]

See it all the time at our gym (where I work, too) when cheerleaders come in to take a tumbling class trial and have the worst form EVER!!! In fact, one of our coaches (GREAT coach, by the way-a level 10 gymnast when he stopped competing-NOT a cheerleader!!) went to the local High school to do a cheer clinic "special" for backhandsprings, about 12 of the girls there quit doing the school sponsered "back handspring clinics" and signed up at our gym to be in this coach's tumbling classes. I'm betting they have the best backhandsprings on the squad at any high school around, period!

 

[littlegirlsdream]

Happened to my dd and it wasnt a cheer gym. Lvl four she was taught great form and had great tumbling skills scored nines ask the time. Went to second gym, had to for financial reasons, and they changed all her tumbling. Told her to high hurdle into RO and whip her feet hard under her in bkhs. Her score dropped to low to mid 8 s on floor. She began under cutting something fierce all based on what they told her to do. Changed gyms back to better gym. We decided it wasnt worth the savings to see her form go down the drain frusterating year

 

[JBS]

Someone please help me keep my sanity.
I worked with 2 girls who developed really good round-off and were really close to standing back handsprings as well as round off back handsprings. They went to a tumbling camp at a near by cheer gym and now neither of them can tumble.
One hurt her neck (again. she's hurt it at the same gym) She was also so confused at her lessons with me after going to the other gym that she decided to take time off.
The other girl tore a muscle in her arm. We spent an hour retraining her round off so she could try some round off back handsprings.
They basically put them on a tumble trak and said "go do your tumbling"

How can they think that this is a safe way to teach kids to tumble?

Sorry to here this. It's amazing how a tumble track can effectively destroy the scooping action of a round off when children are left unsupervised on them. You would think the coaches would notice this right away as a tumble track amplifies errors.

 

[CoachTodd]

I'll address a couple of the responses at once. I just didn't want to quote them all. Coach Simon I can feel you pain. The part that kills me most is when you said they wanted her to connect he back handspring to a weak round off hit the nail right on the head. Now, picture little Suzie is 6 feet tall and about 185lbs doing that back handspring out of a weak round off. I wonder how she hurt her neck.
JBS I know a Floor specialist that, after his last season, decided to play on the tumble trak for a few weeks. I took him nearly a month to get his Double back tuck back on floor. You'd think that if any of these coaches that have ever tumbled before decided to play on the tumble trak then tried to tumble, they'd see the difference.
There are some very insightful posts on this out there. It saddens me to think of how many just plain bad coaches there are out there.

 

[aerialriver]

We teach "cheer tumbling" at our gym essentially for girls who want to make the high school team. It annoys me that we teach them for months how to do things properly and then they start cheer and come back with their skills all wonky, they lose skills and hurt themselves and have to go back to square one. We have had girls there for 2 years trying to get a BHS, they get it then hurt themselves at cheer and there it goes.

Also I don't understand why all high schools require you to have a back hand spring to cheer. Some girls are not cut out for it and the parents get all wacky as Suzie is trying out for cheer in 3 weeks and needs a BHS teach her now! And then Suzie almost breaks her neck. Plus generally Suzie is overweight, gangly, tall, and weak and can't even do a hand stand. Annoying to no end! And I HATE the teaching of the round off hurdle and the high BHS! Yeah why not take all the power away so you can't possibly do anything else.

 

[peace.love.gymnast]

*aerialriver* I couldn't have said it better myself!!! I get that ALL the time with girls trying out for cheerleading! It's also so frustrating trying to correct kids with bad form that come in from cheer gyms. I had a student go to a local cheer gym with her cousin last week for a visit and to no surprise, she came back to class this week with a fractured ankle! Talk about fuming! When I asked her what happened, she told me that the coach told her to do her bhs w/o spot (she had it "by herself"). Absolutely not!!! She has only had about 2 months of class...EVER...and was just starting to flip the bhs w/me spotting her heavily! Now the poor kid is out for the rest of the summer and then some!!