On and off the beam

Hi All,

I’m going to talk a little bit today about tumbling up on and off the beam. I’m a huge fan of basically doing EVERYTHING you do on the beam UP: Back handsprings, back tucks, front tucks, leaps etc. That being said, I’m also a huge fan of going up OFF the beam. I think that dismounts should actually be started on a low beam onto a mat on the floor. This encourages kids to go up, to be aggressive and to not use the distance between the beam and the floor as a way to not have to do the work of going up or turning over.

This first video is of a set-up I really like to use. I like back handsprings that are a little more floaty (especially if it’s between that or the scary bent arms almost hit your head on the beam ones). But this is a really easy set-up that I believe should be used often.

This second video is exactly a drill so much as a demonstration. How many of you have seen level 7s doing roundoff – back tucks off beam that don’t go up AT ALL? The ones that sometimes look like they are going to hit their heads or that just lack height and aggression? A great way of helping fix this is by putting a resi-mat at the end of the beam and making them dismount on to that. When they don’t have the distance to the floor they will have to do the skill more correctly. This is a video demonstrating the height that SHOULD come out of a back-tuck dismount.

Train hard!