Yesterday was my second day back at gymnastics.
I have to admit it’s a lot of fun. Join the class and do a series of drills across the floors. Different kinds of cartwheels. Handstands. Handstand roll out. Handstand rollout to standing. And so on.
The different people there have different strengths and weaknesses in these drills. Some are easy. Some are not, but you try anyway, and even if you fail in many cases you are getting better.
After the various warmup drills we were free to work on what we wanted to.
I didn’t do any back handsprings the previous time so I figured that was a good place to start. It’s nice to come back to gymnastics rather than starting from scratch. Much easier this time around.
A few preliminary drills, a spot on one back handspring and then I was doing them by myself. Couldn’t quite get the ideal form I was trying for but I was getting back to my feet. Will have to work on those more for sure.
Back to Back Flips
This is why training in a gymnastics center is so great. One of the drills involved stacking a whole bunch of pads, including a wedge shaped pad at the top. This was close to shoulder height. The objective was to jump up and back. As soon as you touched the pads, or even before, you would tuck and roll back (the wedge helping you to do so). This allows you to work the jump and tuck while eliminating the entire second half of the move.
Wish I had taken a picture. Where else are you going to be able to do this?
I get a spot on my first real back tuck. It’s done off of raised mats onto a pad. Success. I find often times a single spot is all that is needed, not so much to help in the move, but to calm your mind, and allow you to do it without fear. After that you’re good to go. Just replicate the same action.
Gradually I lowered the mats until it was even. Then I did away with the mats and pads altogether and did a back flip on the floor. Back in action.
Seeing as I easily did these before I knew it wouldn’t be much trouble. Just had to get back into it step by step as I describe in this article on back flips. This time the steps were a lot quicker then when I first learned.
In a few sessions I’ll have all my skills back (and even be better in some ways.) I look forward to the new skills I’ll be learning how to do and sharing that all with you.
Good Luck and Good Hand Balancing,
Logan Christopher
