Challenge: RO BHS drills for a 6'4" college guy

[tumblerK]

My college gymnastics club has been going pretty well lately, but we have one who we have run into a challenge with. He's 6'4", very strong, very into parkour and such. He learned a front tuck and standing back tuck, both above my head height in about an hour last year, and perfected them within a month. He can do a decent standing BHS and a round off, while not perfect, it is followed by a rebound a solid 2 feet in the air.

Here's the challenge: This gym has very limited mats. They have 2 large cheese wedges, one normal sized wedge, some trapezoids, and a couple wimpy-half-resi mats. Normally I would just spot a RO BHS, but I can't really do that with this one!

Any ideas on drills for connecting his RO BHS for the first time??

 

[Deleted member D3987]

in your dreams?

 

[Faith]

Could you go to a local gym's adult or open gym session? When I ran a club with limited facilities we had a standing date once a month with a local place to work on stuff we couldn't due to not having the equipment. If we were very prepared we could get a new move well enough to take back and perfect in our own gym.

Failing that I think I'd go straight to R-O back tuck, and miss the BHS.

 

[gymnastbeth]

Handstand snap down on the top of a wedge, connected to a BHS? After it's solid on the wedge, bring it to the floor. When a HS snap down BHS is solid on floor, the RO BHS feels soo much easier, because you have so much momentum. That's how I learned RO BHS. If that's just not feasible you could probably just go straight to RO BT.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

i would hate to get 'hit' by just 1 of his arms while handspotting. it's be like getting hit with a baseball bat i would think. then i think about how my 'bicep tendons' would be swearing at me all the way to the surgeon's hand.

 

[wordsmith]

My college gymnastics club has been going pretty well lately, but we have one who we have run into a challenge with. He's 6'4", very strong, very into parkour and such. He learned a front tuck and standing back tuck, both above my head height in about an hour last year, and perfected them within a month. He can do a decent standing BHS and a round off, while not perfect, it is followed by a rebound a solid 2 feet in the air.

Here's the challenge: This gym has very limited mats. They have 2 large cheese wedges, one normal sized wedge, some trapezoids, and a couple wimpy-half-resi mats. Normally I would just spot a RO BHS, but I can't really do that with this one!

Any ideas on drills for connecting his RO BHS for the first time??

How is he on "guts"? He sounds athletically gung-ho and might actually be easier to spot than imagined, given his round-off is as good as you say it is and he has a standing backhandspring. Assess his level of confidence and likelihood of "going for it".

Has he done any ROs that don't rebound up 2ft but are turned over enough to rebound back (over-rotated)? You might take a cheese mat and lean it against the half-resi at an incline, braced against the wall (or if not soft enough, prop the half-resi against the cheese, leaned against the wall) and have him over-rotate his RO to a rebound into the mats (in a coiled shape- I personally prefer arms in front rather than by ears). Or take the 2 wimpy half resis and line them up such that he can rebound to flatback. If you can determine how far he travels, you might be able to improvise one of the half resis as a kind of barrel/boulder/pac-man to support his back until he reaches his hands.

Can he do more than one standing backhandspring in a row? I'd probably encourage this first since the rebounding out of one into another can help simulate the feel for coming into it from a round-off.

The stronger he is in drilling the round-off and the backhandspring (maybe try having him minimize the arm swing or do without in his standing BHs), the easier it should be to connect the two...*ahem*..theoretically speaking of course.

Is it just your or is there anyone else that can help double-spot? Because the other crazy idea is to take a jacket and tie it around his waist like a spotting belt with the jacket sleeves acting as rope/handles. And then of course, you'd still need sufficient strength to lend support depending on how he does.

i would hate to get 'hit' by just 1 of his arms while handspotting.

Definitely drill into him the idea of keeping his arms pinned by his ears during the backhandspring phase and not stray wide.

The only other thing I can think of at the moment would be to have him purposely go slow and do either a cartwheel snap-up or round-off....pause....(standing) backhandspring. As his confidence builds, at his own pace he will likely minimize the pause time until they are fully connected.

Good luck!

 

[BlairBob]

You need to make a "Super-Wedge." Ok, this is how you do it. You need to connect two or three wedge mats together. It will be quite tall at the top-end. I often don't make them with 3 wedges because kids freak out if they are at the top and it also just about steals every panel mat and gymnastic block in the gym. Two might not be long enough for this guy, but you could connect two wedges and build a runway at the top of the tall wedge by stacking panel mats. This allows for them to step or hurdle onto the Super-Wedge. So you lay down your first cheese mat. Then behind it, you lay down mats or blocks to the height of the top edge of the first gymnastics wedge/cheese. Then you put the second cheese/wedge on top of that. Now you have an inclined ramp. Some kids hate connecting things on tumble-trak but will do it on the Super-Cheese. The inclined ramp also gives them more time to turn over the RO or BHS. However, they do need a fairly straight RO. You don't want to go to one side too much. There isn't much room for margin of error when they are only 3 or 4 feet wide. As well, getting him to learn how to connect a HS snapdown to BHS is really helpful before trying to connect RO-BHS. However, it will probably be very difficult to spot either the HS (because he is a gymnastics giant) so he better be able to kick up to HS by himself up an incline (which ain't super easy). Or of-course, if he learns how to connect BHS to BHS, then the RO-BHS shouldn't be much of a problem which is why I teach SnapDown BHS or BHS-BHS before RO-BHS.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

man, youze guys are more brave than i...

 

[tumblerK]

Thanks everyone! We will give some of these a try next Tuesday. If it works I'll try and post a video for all to see!

I do have another guy there who knows how to spot, so we usually team up when we have to teach these college guys things. We did throw him through his first RO BT last practice. It took him about 4 turns o get the hang of it, by which time he was rotating over my head! I think I'll have him work 2 connected BHS first, and then see what we can do with our wedge mats!