Back handspring and round off drills for pike down technique

The pike down action has been somewhat controversial.

Last month, after posting a video clip taken by Irving Nochez onto my gym's FB page, I offered the following explanation, as I understand it:

Can anyone identify the clinician in the video clip? It looks to be Valeri Liukin; but I'm not 100% sure.
At any event, notice that the lecturer has the coach doing the traditional turnover with arms and chest up fast? Then has her do it without standing upright, but keeping the chest low, ending in a pike sit?
I've been asked a few times "Why are you teaching kids to pike down?" out of round-offs and backhandsprings. To save myself some time, here's a concise answer I gave in a comment on a previous video a while back ago:
"As a gymnast and as a coach, I was always told, "Arms by the ears; arms and chest up fast". The problem with young kids (or beginners) is that when they try and connect a RO and BHS without having learned how to turnover a fast RO, get off the hands, and land off-balanced right away, what happens is the classic undercutting where the knees buckle forward, the head throws back early, causing the chest to go out, resulting in a high, loopy back handspring.
I first got the idea of allowing kids to pike down from an Australian coach, Wade Petersen (who is now our head boys coach since last February; and who I think will eventually oversee all the programs at GW).
He has a back tumbling video (it used to be on YouTube but he's since deleted his channel) where one of the drills is to sit in a pike and slide down to your back (a sit up exercise). That's, in part, where I got my inspiration for the pike sit on the block, followed by the fall to handstand (essentially doing the same job as an octagon barrel or pac-man). I want my gymnasts to get it out of their heads that a backhandspring is an archy, bridgie action; I want them to think of it more as a stretched handstand.
Wade teaches both round-offs- ones where the objective is to get the arms and chest up and the strong turnover; the other technique (the pike down) for physically weak kids who can't do that. What's important isn't that they get their chest and arms up quick for the turnover, but that they land off balanced right away (due to the pike down, the hips are already behind the feet) and hold the coiled shape (the hollow in the chest) as long as possible before unraveling occurs into the backhandspring.
I hope my explanation makes theoretical sense. Clarity over agreement.
I've seen others teach the pike down method, too, btw. At National Congress, both Justin Laury and Ivan Ivanov teach the pike action. Their explanations are slightly different. But they are really emphasizing the pike. Ivanov also showed video footage of Valeri Liukin teaching kids to pike. It's essentially an overexaggerated scooped hollow position and eventually it should look "normal". Just the drilling of the position and shape is pronounced (i.e., exaggerated). ;)In Laury's presentation at National Congress, he also showed video footage of kids basically doing a round-off rebound into a piked seat drop shape; he'd catch them and then they'd unfurl into the back handspring. Wade's old video had one of his kids rebound the same way onto an 8 inch mat, and then unfurl into a supine, lying position.
I hope this helps. I know it's a bit unorthodox.

Handstand Flatback Drill

I got this idea originally from Swing Big:

Modifying a staple exercise for little ones

Slider drills across the floor is part of the regular warm-up that many of the boys team, lvl3s, and preteam kids do.

With a new crop of preteam kids, I figured out a way to modify one of the harder exercises for them:

Core Posture Alignment Awareness and Strengthening Exercise/Test

Some conditioning ideas & shaping drills

The gym owner calls this funeral music.  But the slow pace of the music is killer for strength training.

Finding body alignment on the foam rollers

All sorts of creative uses for foam rollers beyond the original intent.


Here's one:

Bungee Bar Handstands

Backhandspring Shape Drill

We only have one vault table and I normally don't get to do this drill setup with my girls on a regular basis.  This was a preteam/new level 3 kid on Saturday.  She made some big improvements on her backhandspring.

Press/Stalder/Cast Handstand Shape Conditioning

Have not done this exercise in a very long time:

That's a preteam/new level 3 kid.  Thought I'd try it with her at the end of her practice.


Below, I think this was a level 5 kid; maybe training old level 6:

Bar Basics with Tom Stevens

Swing Big links to a bars clinic by Tom Stevens:

New FB Page for Gymnastics Drills

Gymnastics Progressions is run by Euro Stars (with Justin Laury). Facebook page for Euro Stars. 

More core and shaping drills with instability devices

I might have posted this before:

Played around with other variations yesterday:

Some core & shaping exercises

Round-off snap up shaping and positioning drill

Teaching Quality Glides

Jason Mortimer's latest video reminded me that I had filmed a few of the level 3's doing correct-incorrect glide shapes, recently:

Also like doing hanging hollow holds and swinging hollow holds.

The crunch hollow holds at 37 seconds in Jason's video is the exact way my primary teacher used to have us do them for warm-up- palms resting face up on the knees.  Periodically through the 2 minutes, he'd demand us to crunch up another inch higher.  Having hands face up on the thighs/knees helped us have a visual of how high we were crunching and maintaining position.

Lvl 4 vault rotation HS idle station

At GW, the boys pommel horse area is right by the end of the vault runway.  So I sometimes take advantage of the equipment for side stations.

Finding straight:

Can never get in enough handstand practice.

TBTh: Back Extension Drlll

Remi was always naturally good at this drill- no wiggle-movement at all in her chest and lower back.  I had always wanted to film a clip of her when she could bring it closer to handstand and candle roll back; but I never got around to it. 

Standing Right-Side Up

October 3, 2014

Swing Big! has a tip this morning on handstand training, while right-side up.


Here are some alignment spot-checking I did with our new level 3s earlier this month:

Exploring Body Line

A tough shoulder exercise is to have gymnasts stand (or sit) up against a wall and touch the back of their hands against it while maintaining straight elbows, pushed out tall, and lower back pressed into the wall.


 Here are some photos of my level 3s and where their body lines are currently at:

Hollow-arch shape conditioning with resistance band

Manual version:

With the resistance band, the gymnast has to really engage the core to pull into the hollow position- so it should really burn the abs:

I saw this a while ago on a French tap swing/giants video; finally got around to trying it out when I saw the right kind of resistance band lying around in the gym.  This is the first time these two gymnasts have tried it out for me. 

It might make for a fun (until the novelty wears off) hollow-arch conditioning station if the girls understand the correct action and can safely get in and out of it on  their own.  Done right, I would think they should feel it in their arms, upper back muscles, and abs/core- especially if they can pause it in the back.  it might also help stretch the hip flexors and with leg tightening.

Here's where I got the idea, a minute twenty-one seconds in:

A lot of good content in there.  Also in some other videos on the channel.