Teaching Twisting: The beginning

Hi All,

Today I thought I would share a couple videos with you that may help the process of you teaching gymnasts to twist. My philosophy with twisting is like that of many other things, one way of teaching is not going to work for every single gymnast, and the more tools we as coaches have the more success or gymnasts will have. So while there are many debates as to arm position, twisting direction etc. it’s always good to learn a new way to teach it, so that if you come across a kid that just can’t do it “your way” you have some options.

This first one is a really nice little twisting drill you can do on trampoline. The more you can get your gymnasts twisting in a way that is not standing up, the more comfortable they will be when they start to twist their layouts.

This second video is kind of a nice demonstration of how I teaching twisting. Slightly wide arm layouts, then drop an arm. As long as the kids aren’t trying to pull themselves back to straight they generally end up with a half very easily, and if you tell them to drop the other arm, often it will turn into a full within a few turns. I personally really like to work into a pit at first if you have one, because the kids aren’t as scared of getting lost.

Train hard!