With it being summer and all I’ve been letting everyone play around on tramp a little bit more, especially working new skills and combinations. A lot of the littler ones are starting to learn front layouts so I thought I would put together a few drills I think work well.

teaching front layouts

This first one is a nice one to just do statically. Most kids aren’t used to flipping in this shape so giving them a reminder before they go of the shape they are aiming for in the air (and not pulling their chin in) can help a lot.

This is a nice way of teaching front layouts if you’ve got a tramp. The front to back can kind of freak kids out so it may take them a while to get used to, but once they do it’s a lot of fun.

This is one of my most used progressions with optional gymnasts learning to front handspring front layout. Once they’ve figured this out in a tight body with no pike I start letting them go to their feet (flyspring or bounder) and once they can do that I let them transition to doing layouts on the floor. I find that it really helps take any pike out of the hips and they learn how to turn over a little better.

This is a really fun and easy to set up drill (we actually did the other day). The kids generally have a lot of fun with it and you can start playing around with combination tumbling a little earlier.

This last one is very much like how I have been teaching front layouts – although I have been using a low resi (so it’s a bit higher than the trapazoid here). The reason is that with the little guys they understand it really easily and I explain it as “do the exact same thing you would do if the resi were there” and that seems to help them maintain the same technique. If they do revert to some bad habit it’s really easy to stick the resi back in until they’re ready.

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