While I was looking at various threads on tumbling, something hit me. I actually had an interesting thought (strange I know)
I have decided to try something a little different when coaching my tumblers. For tumbling, I see 3 ways for the kids to leave their feet. (not including the hurdle)
1. Jump (i.e. standing tuck, standing handspring)
2. Punch (for handspring tuck and so forth)
3. Bounce (for connecting moving tumbling among other things)
Seeing the differences in the way coaches, parents and gymnasts see how a rebound works made me look at the way I try to teach tumbling. Mainly the rebound. Most of the time, the rebound is going to be a bounce unless the tumbler is going for the big skill at the end of the pass.
My experiment is to see if I can teach the kids that a bounce is the same as loading a spring and letting the rebound of the spring do work. I won't get into detail how they can control the K constant and such but that would be fun just to make them think.
As other coaches have seem many kids seem to try to do their back handspring before the roundoff has finished doing its work. i.e. when they finally do a good round off, they jam the back handspring. Basically I'm going to see if explaining it this way helps them understand it better. One small group of girls I worked with seemed to improve. We'll see if they remember it next week.
Just thought I'd share. I'll try to remember to update this post with any results I see over the next few month.
I have decided to try something a little different when coaching my tumblers. For tumbling, I see 3 ways for the kids to leave their feet. (not including the hurdle)
1. Jump (i.e. standing tuck, standing handspring)
2. Punch (for handspring tuck and so forth)
3. Bounce (for connecting moving tumbling among other things)
Seeing the differences in the way coaches, parents and gymnasts see how a rebound works made me look at the way I try to teach tumbling. Mainly the rebound. Most of the time, the rebound is going to be a bounce unless the tumbler is going for the big skill at the end of the pass.
My experiment is to see if I can teach the kids that a bounce is the same as loading a spring and letting the rebound of the spring do work. I won't get into detail how they can control the K constant and such but that would be fun just to make them think.
As other coaches have seem many kids seem to try to do their back handspring before the roundoff has finished doing its work. i.e. when they finally do a good round off, they jam the back handspring. Basically I'm going to see if explaining it this way helps them understand it better. One small group of girls I worked with seemed to improve. We'll see if they remember it next week.
Just thought I'd share. I'll try to remember to update this post with any results I see over the next few month.
