Parents BHS

[Avasmom]

My 7 year old daughter started taking tumbling classes last week in additional to her regular team practices. Her idea...not mine. She said she missed tumbling. She cheers too. Our gym offers additional classes at half off and she really wants to learn her BHS. Her tumbling coach said she is close but seems to jump up instead of out. I know this is a skill that is all over the place on learning. She is putting pressure on herself to learn this quickly and is trying it on the trampoline at home unsuccessfully. Has anyone ever done privates for learning this skill? Is it easier to get it one on one? Is there a certain age that most of your children learned it?

 

[Deleted member 18037]

Personally I wouldn't have my girl work on those kind of skills at home, until she has them. What's the saying, practice makes permanent. As in if you practice it wrong you'll get real good at wrong. I would have the coach give her conditioning skills that will help the skill. I don't think privates ever hurt if you can afford them. But really it will come, what's the rush? I think there is a lot to be learned in the effort.

 

[Shooosh]

Cheer back handsprings are different so which one is she learning?
Is the tumbling coach a team coach? Are the team coaches on board with this?
Often times kids in rec will learn a less structured BHS because they aren't aiming for many higher skills. Team kids will spend up to a year or longer learning a BHS because it is the foundation of many higher tumbling skills. It's great that she is motivated to learn it but make sure she learns it the way her team coaches want her too.

 

[iwannacoach]

No bhs work at home. Privates would be fine if the person working with her uses the time to figure out what physical motions/efforts your dd thinks need be done to make a bhs happen. Usually..... it all goes wrong when/if a child sees a bhs being done and patterns her/his efforts upon that visual pattern.......

Because they see upside down happen, and want to jump into an upside down action......

Mig bistake.......

 

[Aussie_coach]

I too would avoid having Herod it at home at least for the time being. She is obviously taking off incorrectly and if she practices it over and over at home she is going to get very good at doing it wrong and it will be much harder to break the bad habits than just to learn it fresh.

Also this skill is not risk free, essentially the gymnast is jumping backwards to her head and the only thing between her head and the ground is her arms. If done without supervision in the early stages it can result in a catastrophic injury.

I do think a one on one lesson could help, it sounds like she is close but just has some small technical errors to correct which a coach would be able to do more easily when just concentrating on her individually. But it should only take 1-2 lessons.

 

[Avasmom]

Cheer back handsprings are different so which one is she learning?
Is the tumbling coach a team coach? Are the team coaches on board with this?
Often times kids in rec will learn a less structured BHS because they aren't aiming for many higher skills. Team kids will spend up to a year or longer learning a BHS because it is the foundation of many higher tumbling skills. It's great that she is motivated to learn it but make sure she learns it the way her team coaches want her too.

I made sure I asked before hand if she could do tumbling while on team. Her coach was fine with it. They said in the past team girls had taken tumbling and that it would be beneficial. Her tumbling coach is aware she is on team. At this point, Ava still wants to do team gymnastics and cheer. I am not sure how we can separate the two as far as back handsprings go. No one that cheers with the rec even has a round off though as far as I know. They do minimal tumbling. Hopefully we can make cheer with her team schedule in the fall. If she had to give up one it would be cheering. We already have to be at all of the games though because her brother is playing football.

 

[sce]

My 7 year old daughter started taking tumbling classes last week in additional to her regular team practices. Her idea...not mine. She said she missed tumbling. She cheers too. Our gym offers additional classes at half off and she really wants to learn her BHS. Her tumbling coach said she is close but seems to jump up instead of out. I know this is a skill that is all over the place on learning. She is putting pressure on herself to learn this quickly and is trying it on the trampoline at home unsuccessfully. Has anyone ever done privates for learning this skill? Is it easier to get it one on one? Is there a certain age that most of your children learned it?

Stop her form trying ti at home on the trampoline, she can get seriously injured. I don;'t think she needs privates either. Continue the tumbling class, let the teacher work on proper technique, she'll get it.

 

[Shooosh]

Cheer back handsprings are different so which one is she learning?
Is the tumbling coach a team coach? Are the team coaches on board with this?
Often times kids in rec will learn a less structured BHS because they aren't aiming for many higher skills. Team kids will spend up to a year or longer learning a BHS because it is the foundation of many higher tumbling skills. It's great that she is motivated to learn it but make sure she learns it the way her team coaches want her too.

I should clarify that I am not actually sure the back handspring for cheer and gymnastics is SUPPOSED to be different, I have just seen cheer coaches teach it with way more 'up' and less 'back' motion. I was told this is to take up less space. I am NOT a cheer coach though and have nothing to do with cheer...just wanted to make sure I put this out here.

 

[LJL07]

I read this all on the time on here. My DD "learned" her Bhs prior to gymnastics team at a cheer gym. She has also tumbled there in past for open gym, camps, etc. the instructor at the cheer gym was a former optional level gymnast, so not really any different experience wise than her gym coach. Dd has a good Bhs. Of course they are always tweaking the form at gymnastics and it has come a long way. I wouldn't say she has had any issues from learning the Bhs at a cheer gym. What I HAVE noticed about the cheer gym is that if the child's form isn't naturally good, they don't really spend time correcting it and they are very quick to jump to the next big skill without much polishing. I guess it just depends. My dd has been frustrated all year that they don't do much tumbling at her team practice. After a certain point, hours should be sufficient for team where they should be working on most of this stuff or doing progressions at team...I hope.

 

[LJL07]

I guess I should add though that I have seen some very frightening cheer Bhs and there does seem to be more of an emphasis on making Bhs longer/more stretched out in gymnastics. That's what dd works on. So maybe Bhs are different in cheer and gym. I guess I haven't added anything to this convo...lol!

 

[mommyof1]

My 7 year old daughter started taking tumbling classes last week in additional to her regular team practices. Her idea...not mine. She said she missed tumbling. She cheers too. Our gym offers additional classes at half off and she really wants to learn her BHS. Her tumbling coach said she is close but seems to jump up instead of out. I know this is a skill that is all over the place on learning. She is putting pressure on herself to learn this quickly and is trying it on the trampoline at home unsuccessfully. Has anyone ever done privates for learning this skill? Is it easier to get it one on one? Is there a certain age that most of your children learned it?

Tumbling class (which happened to be taught by her regular coach) made a huge difference for my daughter. It sounds like your daughter's tumbling coach has a handle on the issue. They should be doing plenty of drills to reinforce the concept of jumping back during class. As long as she is not reinforcing bad habits by practicing at home, she should be fine. If it takes a few weeks or longer, she will be so proud when all her hard work pays off and she finally does get it.

 

[wgymmom]

I wouldn't have her working a BHS with a tumbling/cheer group, honestly. It's better that she learns it with team, with great form, etc.

My dd learned a lot of old 4 skills before she joined team, but her form was horrendous because we were at a small, noncompetitive gym, so it wasn't a concern.

 

[Ariekannairb]

Our gym has a cheer team attached to it and the tumbling between gym team and cheer team is VERY noticeable. I would not want the cheer coaches teaching my gymnast to tumble. Also, and this maybe stepping over the "don't tell me how to parent" line, but you might want think very hard about doing two sports which can be very intense and time consuming at the same time. Even if DD can handle the hours, it spells burn out in big bold letters.

About my own DD's bhs: She learned it incorrectly at her previous gym. It has caused HUGE time consuming issues. She was undercutting it to bad that she literally couldn't go into a second tumbling skill. This made her level 4 tumbling pretty much impossible. After a year at our new gym and about 6 months of classes with a coach who knows she is on team, she threw it correctly/practically faultless for the first time at her meet yesterday. It took a lot of time and money to correct the poor form. It is so much better to learn it right the first time than to rush through and have to correct it. Especially as doing it wrong can lead to injury which in turn leads to fear which in turn leads to making it even more difficult to correct. From experience I would tell her to slow down, take the time to learn it right and not to practice it at home.

 

[LJL07]

Gosh, @Ariekannairb has a great point. It is pretty much impossible to do competitive cheer and competitive gymnastics simultaneously. The competition seasons overlap, and it is just way, way too much. And especially for a young child. I considered it and realized quickly it was not happening.

Like I was saying earlier, I always hear about the horror stories and years of undoing bad form from learning tumbling at a cheer gym. But, DD did not have horrendous form--not superb gymnastics quality, but very workable. So I don't think it's a huge crime to do a few tumbling classes to work on a back handspring--if you have a level 3 or 4 team child, I would say not, but it doesn't sound like this is the case yet? I guess it all depends on the gym though. The cheer gym DD went to is coached by former gymnasts across the board (male and female). We live in an area that has very few quality gymnastics gyms, so cheer is where the money is at around here. Once they get into more serious tumbling--back tucks, layouts, fulls, there are technique differences. I have noticed the cheer girls do this weird stepping backward thing to throw backhandspring to tuck or to full tumbling. They also start their standing back tucks with arms down. Little differences like that, and I'm sure they are more difficult than you would think to fix from a gymnastics standpoint. Just stuff to be cognizant of...

 

[Avasmom]

My daughter doesn't do competitive cheer just rec cheering where they cheer for the football team so we are good to go in that area. I think two competitive sports would be too much for my first grader. Eventually she can decide which she loves better but right now we can swing them both. I told her just to work on it during tumbling. I think her tumbling teacher will be able to help her the most right now. Thanks for the great advice!