Training a double front pike

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I have one guy on my team who, despite otherwise not being particularly strong on tumbling, has an insanely powerful punch. He can't do a clean back layout, but he can already do a punch double-front onto a mat in the pit at floor height. No cowboying, no crouched landing, no nothing; it's beautiful. I'm thinking about having him learn a double pike. However, it seems to me that this skill would have extremely high risk of causing major damage to his knees.

I have two questions: first, what is the proper timing to bend the knees in preparation for landing? At what point does the bend occur so that he will be ready to land it safely, but not recieve a bent-knee deduction?

Second, any tips on how to train this to make absolutely sure he will be ready for the landing, and not land on stiff knees? (Aside, of course, from doing about a billion of them onto a soft landing first?)

[CoachL]

In all honesty this is a skill that I wouldn't teach. Its extremely dangerous skill with a blind landing, keep with the tuck. You won't be gaining that much by having him do the skill. In all honesty I can't even remember if I've ever seen anyone perform a punch double pike.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Hehe, that's sort of the direction I was leaning.

But I'm also curious for my own benefit, since I want to work an arabian double pike. At what point are the knees allowed to bend in preparation to land such that there's no bent knee deduction?

As far as the double front pike goes, I've never seen it out of just a punch, but I know Diego Hypolito used to do a front layout punch double pike.