WAG Which vault is easier to flip?

[JBS]

 

[JBS]

This is a Kasamatsu... not a Tsuk full...

 

[JBS]

For Kasamatsu... you just "cruise" off the table. Here are a few very good "cruise" videos...

 

[JBS]

Here’s another… Cody fulls are excellent for the Kaz…

 

[JBS]

I'm on a roll here... but the Kollman is the same as a Kaz... here is a great video for that...

 

[CoachPow]

Question first, before the long tale of why I am asking! In your experience as a gymnast, coach, judge, parent, etc, is a Yurchenko or a Tsuk easier to flip?

Background is that my DD broke her shoulder at the main growth plate last year, seemed to recover fine. Then this year started having severe pain and weakness after doing a lot of pirouettes and after learning to flip her vault. The xrays showed that she had actually started to close down the growth plate due to repetitive stress (Little Leaguers shoulder). She modified (no weight bearing on the arms) for 8 weeks and xrays looked much better. All that to say that the orthopaedist and therapist are both convinced that Yurchenkos place too much stress across the shoulders and elbows of skeletally immature kids and told her she needed a new vault or would end up permanently shutting down her growth plate and requiring surgery. Their preference on timing for resuming Yurchenkos is when she is more skeletally mature and the growth plate is closer to closing naturally with age and growth. So she moved to a Tsuk 2 weeks before the season started and then had to repeat level 7 because she obviously did not have time to learn to flip the Tsuk. The hope was by the end of the season, she would be flipping them and finish out as an 8, but it just did not happen.

On my observation, the Tsuk seems so hard to flip because of the hand position, but I cannot tell if this is just her poor interpretation of the timer/vault since it is new and different for her. Should the hands hit the table simultaneously and leave simultaneously? Is it hard to block in that sideways position? The Yurchenko looked very natural when she moved from a timer to flipping but the Tsuk looks....well...odd. Much less powerful.

My observations: Easier to flip isn't such a simple question. The Tsuk is "easier" if the athlete is fast enough and strong enought to generate the necessary block. The Yurchenko is more of a finesse vault and uses the round-off to increase speed and power-but takes much longer to perfect. The Tsuk can be learned much faster, but the Yurchenko enables more athletes to flip and are generally cleaner with fewer deductions. We've taught athletes to do Tsuks in a week-long camp, from 1/2 on to flip (with spot) whereas actually flipping a Yurchenko can take all summer or longer. Learning the Yurchenko sets gymnasts up for greater expansion of future skills, as it does generate more speed and height out of the round-off.

 

[ReluctantGymMom]

Looking at the 6s and 7s doing tsuk timers at our gym, I seriously can’t imagine them being flipped. This looks like a really hard vault to get a good block out of.