Today we have another video featuring a kid, a ten-year-old Donnie who shows his own free running style. The video start slowly with relatively simple tumbling moves, but young Donnie goes on to show his abilities while performing backflips, front/back handsprings, wall spins, front flips and much more.
Donnie says he trains to express creativity and chooses songs which inspire him for the videos himself. It’s never too late to start training and become as good as you want to be at tumbling. Click here to start your tumbling training.
Here are three awesome videos from the 1950’s. They were all uploaded by Russ Hany, so make sure to check out his channel here as he has more videos from that era.
The first one is from 1950 with people performing a couple of basic tumbling moves like backward, forward and side rolls. There are also two guys walking on their hands.
The next video from 1952 features pretty impressive acrobalance duo/trio.
And here’s another one with some very cool moves, like the tiger bend, handsprings, rolls, somersaults and much more. From 1953.
Not everyone wants to learn how to perform all these moves. But you should at least have basic tumbling skills and be able to role, perform backwards somersault and cartwheel. Click here and learn the basics!
The back handspring is one of the staple moves of gymnastics. It is a great move in and of itself, but its also used as a move to set up, and gain momentum for even bigger moves.
It is also one of the tougher of the basic tumbling moves. In my opinion it is harder to do then a back tuck. While accomplishing it is not too difficult, get it to work smoothly and correctly is a bit harder.
And, as it is back tumbling, its not something most people can jump into. While many people could easily work up to a front handspring with a little practice, going backwards over your head can be much trickier, mentally.
The basics of the move is to jump up and back. You need to hit the right amount of both or else you can miss your hands entirely (jumping too high) or not give yourself enough room (jumping not high enough).
When you jump your arms are thrown overhead, preferably locked out and in line with the ears. For those less flexible the arms aren’t always kept straight or in line. While the move can be accomplished this way you won’t have as much speed and momentum useful for going into any other move.
You transition through a sort of handstand position (obviously not pausing at all) and then come to your feet, preferably in an upright position. You want to avoid being bent over or in a squat.
You’ll notice I mentioned ‘preferably’ several times. This is the difference in doing the move and doing it well. When you’re starting out its great to just get through the move, but as you progress you tighten up your form, making the move not only better but easier to do.
I’ve been doing the back handsprings for awhile. Always working on improving my form, but my primary goal has been to string these moves together. My weakness thus far has been in doing just that, going from one move to another seamlessly.
For a couple weeks I’ve been practicing doing roundoff back handsprings as well as double back handsprings all on the mats.
I’m happy to report as of last week I’ve been able to do these on the floor. You’ll notice many of the points discussed above are not shown here. 🙂 Not perfect but a big step in the right direction.
There are some who say if you can’t do something perfectly don’t do it. I say first accomplish the move. Then work on making it better. Yes, you can set in bad habits, but if you constantly work towards improvement these won’t stay a problem.
Many gymnastics moves go through the handstand position. And in this post we will discuss how to do a front walkover as shown below. This is a composite picture of Diane Robinson performing the move with ease.
These are the instructions that come from Acro-Chat. The correct way to do a two arm walkover. Notice the arms are straight all the way through, the legs are extended and split as much as possible, the back is arched tightly with the head and arms trailing as she stands upright.
I will caution that this move takes a large amount of flexibility in both the back and legs. Though its not dangerous, you may end up falling on your butt if you can’t do it as well as Diane.
You can also perform a back walkover which is done moving backwards. Just follow the pictures from right to left and you’ll get the idea.
These moves are not to be confused with the handspring or back handspring. Though the motion is much the same, except for going off of two legs instead of one, there is another big difference.
Your hands will touch the ground before both your feet leave it in a walkover. Handsprings involve leaving the feet to get up in the air before your hands touch down.
While not strictly a hand balance, the walkover and handspring do move through the handstand position. At any rate they are excellent skills that you may want to master.
My friend located this video from Pamplona, Spain when I was doing the Runninng of the Bulls. Someone in the stands just happened to be shooting the video.
About halfway through you can see my closest encounter with a bull on that day. I know the quality isn’t very good but it certainly is me. Just look for the long haired guy.
I was being pushed back while I grabbed onto his horns. Luckily, I got by relatively unscathed.
Nothing to do with hand balancing except that I want to go back and do a handstand on top of a bull horn’s or maybe just a handspring off of its back. Perhaps next year.
I highly recommend participating if you get a chance. It’s the thrill of a lifetime.
This is just for fun, but I got another big annoucement coming in the next couple of days.
