Mas Watanabe

Part 1

The back handspring is one of the basic skills used on various events (floor, beam & vault) and a very critical skill to teach correctly.

The back handspring is occasionally done as a single skill but most of the time it is used as an accelerator or a facilitator to assist the following skill. In this case, the main goal of the back handspring is to increase the speed of the body rotation and gain punching power for the following somersault.

Lets us imagine that the gymnast is doing the round off, back handspring to back layout.

You expect the gymnast to do an accelerated back handspring from the round off to a high back layout somersault. But are all gymnasts able to accelerate the back handspring well enough to do a high back layout? Or are they all accelerating the back handspring enough to produce the strong punch for the layout?

When you see one of your gymnasts doing a slow, weak back handspring what would you ask her to do or change to make it better?

Usually the slow back handspring is coming from a long and very arched back handspring. The gymnast is not jumping strong enough from the feet and using back flexibility to develop body rotation. When her hands reach the ground, her legs are most likely dragging behind so that she cannot snap down from her hands quickly. In this case, she will snap her feet very far from her hands and the chest will stay low when she snaps down. This type of long snap down will never be able to accelerate the body rotation and vertical strong take off. This will result in a low weak back layout.

So what does she need to do?

In order for her to accelerate her back handspring, first she needs to jump up and flip her body into the handstand position or close to it. From there, she can snap down quickly and punch very strong.

The snap down action needs to start as soon as the hand reach the floor, but at that point, the feet should still not have reached the vertical point.

The body should be in a tight arch and should be ready to snap downward quickly.

When this snapping down phase of the back handspring starts too late, the strong power cannot be developed for the take off. The weak snap down is the most common result for the arched long back handspring.

During the snap down phase, the shoulders should remain over the hands and then the shoulders should rise up to the take off position as vertically as possible.

Here, let us think about step by step, how the back handspring should be done.

The goal in the first half the back handspring is to jump and flip up to the handstand position as quickly as possible. The most difficult part in the first half is to elevate the legs up toward the handstand position because the feet need to travel the farthest.

What do we need to emphasize in the first half the back handspring?

1.      Jumping high – encourage to flip up in a high arc

2.      End in a handstand or close to Handstand position – feet are slightly behind in tight arched position but shoulders are directly over the hands.

3.      Continuous toe raise – feet are continuously flipping over the top and moving down to the snapping phase.

The emphasis in the 2nd half of the back handspring.

1.      Snap the feet down close to the hands – the hips might flex a little but the speed is more important

2.      Lift the shoulders up quickly, as close to vertical as possible – picking the hands up without elevating the upper body to the vertical position slows down the standing action.

3.      Try to punch the feet directly underneath the body

When you read the way I described the back handspring technique above, does this make sense to you? Some of the things that I said here such as jump up in a high arc or try to land close to the handstand position, may be very new to you.

We as coaches, need to understand how each skill should be done very clearly and we need to know what to tell the gymnast on each step.

When I work with my gymnast, first I will tell the gymnast to jump up high rather than long or arching back quickly. Then, lift up the legs (or feet/toes) quickly to the vertical so that she can land close to the handstand position. From that position, the quick stronger snap down is possible because the legs are continuously rotating down through the snap down phase to add speed.

When a gymnast can do this type of back handspring, she will be able to accelerate the second half of the back handspring.

When you video tape the gymnast who has a good back handspring technique, this is most likely happening in her back handspring and you need to check it out yourself.

OK, what if some of those are not exactly happening in your great tumbler, but she is still making some great skills (such as full in, double layout, etc.), does it matter?

Perhaps in some cases, it does not matter but you also need to realize that if she does the technically better back handspring, she might be able to add another twist in the flip.

In the next issue, we will discuss some common faults of the back handspring.

Until then, have a fun coaching!