1. The first drill is to teach the quick sit up action after the block. Don’t be frustrated if at first your athletes land on their knees then hands. As they understand the concept of the drill they will get a quicker sit up and make it to hands and knees landing. Also prepare your athletes to have slightly bent arms on the landing of this drill, an easy way to enforce this is to have them turn there hands in slightly to avoid hyper extension of the elbow.
2. The second drill does take some advanced spotting and I only recommend doing this once the young athlete has good awareness of seeing the ground out of the front handspring before adding the salto.
3. The third drill in this sequence is using double springboards into a loose foam pit where the athletes can practice performing the flip portion of the vault safety. If they start to tuck early don’t be afraid to go back to drill 2 to help separate the handspring and the salto.

Enjoy!

Enjoy!

Cast Handstand (straight and straddle)

• Bounce from feet to quickly push the shoulders to full extension and hit handstand, three to ten reps
• Start in handstand and bounce on knees and back to handstand
• Straddled seat drop, bounce and lift butt overhead to handstand
• Straddle bounce on feet to straddle bounce on feet on other side of the bar (compression), bounce back and forth 5x in a row
• Straddle bounce to feet to straddle bounce on feet on other side of the bar to bounce to handstand

Top Change (Handstand 1/2 Pirouette)

• Bounce from feet to switch one hand and pirouette on way to handstand
• Start in handstand and bounce on knees and switch one hand and pirouette on way back to handstand
• Straddled seat drop, bounce and lift butt overhead to handstand switching one hand and pirouette on way to handstand
• All above drills to go over bar and to come back down to back from HS

Back Giants

• Back bounce to handstand several times in row
• Back bounce to hop hands on way up

Front Giants (straight and straddle)

• Under grip straddled seat drop, bounce and lift butt overhead to handstand
• Under grip stomach drop to stand on bar with both feet in straddle, and working up to handstand
• Under grip belly drop bounce to handstand
• Add 1⁄2 pirouette on way to handstand

Rear Uprise HS

• Straddled seat drop, bounce and push butt over head to feet on the bar and work up to handstand
• Stomach drop to stand on bar with both feet in straddle, and working up to handstand

Blind Change

• Handstand to back and bounce to handstand on the way up work the 1/2 pirouette to land in a hollow back on the tramp
• Same as above finishing the blind change 1⁄2 higher and higher with perfect form and technique
• Same and complete turn to continue over bar to fall stretched for front giant

Rear Stalder HS

• Start in handstand then fall to back with feet by ears in a compressed straddled position and then bounce off of back to open the hips and arms to a HS to simulate the opening of the Stalder to a HS

Cast Hop Handstand (straight and straddle)

• Over grip straddled seat drop lift butt overhead to hop grip to under grip

Cal Hop Handstand

• Back bounce to hop hands on way up
• Back bounce to hop hands to under grip on way up and come back down to back

Front Stalder

• Start in handstand with reverse grip; fall to back with late compression then up to handstand, several times in a row

The back handspring must pass through a handstand while the head remains in-line with the body.

As the body changes to a hollow/scoop shape the shoulders stay pressed tall and the hips remain flat.

The gymnast should continue to hold shape while pushing long. Length is power!

The final position with the feet making contact varies depending on the next skill, more upright for dbl flipping while long and low for twisting single flips.

OOPS! This is a common error to watch for; the gymnast pikes her hips down for take off instead of a hollow snap-down with the whole body.

It’s hard to believe that the long shape in picture 3 piked down that much before take-off but the action shots don’t lie.

Happy Tumbling,
Bart

These 2 bar skills are very similar so we teach both skills at the same time with the trampoline and trampoline bar.

1st Drill is a hurdle drill to help create more punching action with the back leg into the round off

2nd Drill is a hurdle round off scoop drill to help hold the “round” round off shape

Do any of your athletes ever tweak their rotator cuff? Well 90% of the time this is caused by overuse.

A few years back we had 3 of our optional level gymnasts have rotator cuff strains. Instead of chalking (no pun intended) it up to random injuries we took a look at our conditioning and bar conditioning programs to see either what could cause the overuse or what we could do to prevent it in the future. We then implemented into our event conditioning program some shoulder “pre-hab” (injury prevention).

Since then we have completely alleviated our rotator cuff injuries and you should too!

We added some basic shoulder/rotator cuff physical therapy warm-up exercises to our pre-practice warm-up and also as another vault side station. We do change these on a regular basis.

I did quite a bit of research and purchased a few books and ebooks. To save you the time and money that I spent, here is the best ebook I bought. It explains the exercises correctly and very clearly.

Best of luck in your training!

There are 5 basic steps to teaching the tkatchev on the trampoline bar:

1. Back bounce quick pressing action downward and backward on the bar
2. Back bounce to bridge
3. Back bounce to bridge and stand up with arms overhead
4. Back bounce to bridge and stand up with arms overhead, reach through straddled legs to push down on bar and travel back over it to either straddle stand or straddle sit
5. Tkatchev over bar (pad the bar the 1st few times performing this, put heal pads on your athletes or slide a mat in as the athlete goes)

Enjoy,

Bart

Hip/leg rotation drill with sit-up action on the exer-ball

Leg rotation drill with backwards travel

Tkatchev Leg Rotation Drill on Trampoline