As important backwards as frontwards

Hi All,

Today I’m going to give you a couple drills for both back and front handsprings. As really essential tumbling skills it’s good to have basically a stock list of drills you can turn to. When I get a new group of kids who are learning these skills I like to write down my core list of drills. Those drills that I think are most effective, and work into the practice well (read: don’t take an hour to set-up). And then I like to make a kind of secondary list of drills to use when those first line drills don’t work or those drills that work really well for fixing a specific problem.

This first drill is a really nice snap down drill. I REALLY like the fact kids get a sense that the chest comes up as the feet snap through, as opposed to telling them that 100x without them understanding the feeling.

This second drill is a front handspring drill I like when they are just learning them. I actually like to keep kids away from doing front handsprings on the floor by itself until they are totally proficient. Whether that means having them doing it over a panel mat, or off a springboard or down a cheese mat I don’t really care. But once they are doing them on the floor I find they are exponentially harder to fix.

Train hard!