Twisting Direction vs Pirouetting Direction

[CoachL]

When you're looking at Pirouetting direction vs twisting direction how do you teach your kids. It's taken me a few days to finally wrap my brain around that a front pirouette posting on the right hand is actually a left twist. So I ask you this, when you have determined a kids twisting direction on floor and you begin teaching them pirouetting do you allow them to go their most comfortable direction or do you make the decision for them and tell them to pirouette? This concept is so confusing to me, so today I'm going to go into the gym and have to change some pirouettes and start trying to wrap my brain around this.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I just let my kids pirouette the whatever direction they feel most comfortable with. Only things I do require are that they twist the same way flipping backwards as forwards, and they turn the same way in blind changes and front pirouettes.

I view roundoff direction, twisting direction, and pirouetting direction as being completely unrelated.

[CoachL]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Geoffrey Taucer I just let my kids pirouette the whatever direction they feel most comfortable with. Only things I do require are that they twist the same way flipping backwards as forwards, and they turn the same way in blind changes and front pirouettes. I view roundoff direction, twisting direction, and pirouetting direction as being completely unrelated.

see thats where both you and I were and are incorrect you cannot allow a gymnast to blind and pirouette on the same hand. Read this article.

http://www.usa-gymnastics.org/public...eparation.html

everything that I "thought" I knew for years was incorrect I taught it the same way as you do, both go on same hand. But with the new code you'll get killed at regionals and nationals. I just spent about 30 minutes on the phone with Jack Carter getting straightened out on this concept.....whew my brain still can't wrap itself around it but he is correct.

[Rick McCharles]

There are 23 articles tagged with "twisting" on Gymnastics Coaching:

http://gymnasticscoaching.com/?cat=49

The only iron clad rule is to twist the same direction on forward and backward somersaults. For SAFETY.

The biggest problem for coaches is what is sometimes called "Barani Confusion":

http://gymnasticscoaching.com/?p=453

To avoid that problem and simplify my life, here's my system:

http://www.i-needtoknow.com/gymnasti...confusion.html

Hope that helps.

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Quote:
Originally Posted by CoachL see thats where both you and I were and are incorrect you cannot allow a gymnast to blind and pirouette on the same hand. Read this article. http://www.usa-gymnastics.org/public...eparation.html everything that I "thought" I knew for years was incorrect I taught it the same way as you do, both go on same hand. But with the new code you'll get killed at regionals and nationals. I just spent about 30 minutes on the phone with Jack Carter getting straightened out on this concept.....whew my brain still can't wrap itself around it but he is correct.

YOu misunderstood me: when I say I want them to blind and pirouette in the same direction, I don't mean on the same hand; quite the opposite.

[hammy]

I'm confused, I'm sure I'm just misinterpreting something here and being goofy--what do you mean blind and pirouette on the same hand? Say i'm doing a full twisting giant (full blind change) on bars--I do my blind change on my left arm (pick up right hand) then I compete the full by pirouetting on my right hand (pick up my right arm). Is that what you guys mean?

Or do you mean something like: I complete both my blind change and pirouette by first picking up my right hand?

[Geoffrey Taucer]

I make my kids blind and pirouette in the same direction; in other words, if the blind starts by lifting the left hand, the front pirouette starts by lifting the right.

[hammy]

Thanks for clearing that up! It makes sense to me to keep the turn going in the same direction; it makes the skill more fluent and smooth. I believe doing the blind and then pirouetting on the same hand (turning back the way they came) holds less value than completeing it the way you stated (same direction).

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Well if you want to eventually turn it into a full pirouette or a rybalko, it has to keep going the same way.

Slight tangent here: has anybody here ever done or taught a rybalko? It seems to me like it would be really easy to learn (the progression being blind change, full pirouette, blind change to heely, rybalko), but it's fairly highly valued (C to mixed grip, D to double el-grip) and I rarely see people doing them at JO meets. Is there some reason why that progression wouldn't work, or would be harder than it seems?

[blantonnick]

What I am about to explain is something that I am not totally in agreement with but I believe is a very interesting way of looking at the concept of twisting direction…A fellow colleague of mine, and I were on the topic of twisting and he brought up a very thought provoking way of looking at the direction of twist and its implications.
My colleague, decided after retiring from gymnastics to take up bull riding. In bull riding, the participants are strapped into the bull by one arm while the other arm is used freely to try and maintain balance for an allotted amount of time. On the first attempt, he was asked which hand was his dominate (right arm) and which was his non-dominate (left arm). Coincidentally, he was instructed to strap his left arm down to the bull, and use his right arm as the balancer. In other words, his non-dominate arm was used as a stabilizer, while his dominate arm was the active/working mechanism. Bull riding caused my colleague to question many things about sport and its implications. One of these questions became – How and Why to we come to choose a particular direction of twist for gymnastics.
I think the majority of us would conclude that the majority of the world’s population are right handed. In other words, right-armed people dominate the world, left handed people are a minority (I am one of them). It is quoted in Wikipedia that ‘In 1998, a study suggested that approximately 7 to 10 percent of the adult population was left-handed’ (Hardyck, C., & Petrinovich, L. F. (1977). "Left-handedness", Psychological Bulletin, 84, 385–404.)

Following this well documented concept, there are many examples of sport adapted to this majority. In almost all racing sports the track goes counter-clockwise around the track (in the USA). I do not believe that this is a coincidence, rather I think that racing has adapted to the fact that when you turn a steering wheel, you pump your right arm, or you push the bike handle, the majority of the population find it more comfortable to use their right arm to drive through the left turns. Therefore, it seems very interesting to think that the only sport in the USA that goes clockwise around a track is dog racing, a non-human driven sport!
In gymnastics there are some who have adapted the way they teach gymnasts to this concept. In some nations, for instance the former Soviet Union, the choice has been standard in which direction to twist – it is deemed left for all individuals, regardless of haptic/optic testing, left is standard. There are exceptions to this rule, Vitaly Sherbo being one of them, however, we have to ask why this would be the case?
If you run along the principle of the non-dominate arm to stabilize and the dominate arm to provide work as presented above in the bull riding paradigm, then it makes more sense. The coaches are considering that the majority of their gymnasts will be right handed so why not let their left arm be the stabilizer and allow the right arm to throw across their body to work a left twist. It seems that almost 90% of the time they will get the choice correct, considering documentation has been given that between 7 – 10% of the adult population is left handed.
But what about those 7-10% in those countries that choose only one direction? What happens when they learn to twist the wrong direction? I am a left handed person and learned to twist right…It seems that I fit the paradigm in twisting. I have tried twisting left but it seems that I twist early and can not seem to drive the twist fast no tight enough. Why do I twist early? My dominate arm seems to want to work faster instead of having a stabiliser to set the twist squarely first.
The conversation has been very interesting for me to examine my own gymnastics and this seems a great forum to think about the implications of the majority of the population being right handed and how it has affected gymnasts and coaching principles in twisting. Discuss….?