Tumbling & Tramp Questions

[katvernay]

About two months ago I started coaching full time, and (somehow) was appointed head coach of the gym's year-old power tumbling team (in addition to my position as a JO WAG coach). As of right now, I have a level 6 and 2 level 5s.
I was an artistic gymnast my whole life, as well as a judge, so the world of T&T is completely new to me. Coaching the technical aspects isn't causing me any problems - I'm a pretty good tumbling coach, if I say so myself. I am, however, at a loss on how to run the team - I've never had this kind of responsibility for a private club team. If anyone could give me some advice/answers, I would forever indebted
1. How is the sport structured on a national/regional basis?
2. How do meets work?
3. How do I find meets to take my kids to?
4. I (and my boss/gym owner) want this program to be much bigger. We're looking at adding a trampoline team, and I want to increase the number of power tumblers. How can I get kids & parents interested in joining? What kinds of athletes should I try to recruit?
5. Are there any especially important & essential progressions/skills/technical aspects?
6. How is it scored - how is start value determined, and what are the major execution deductions?

Thanks in advance for any and all help! As of right now, I don't even know where to begin looking for answers - the USAG website is depressingly unhelpful

 

[CoachGoofy]

1. There are states. Several states to a region. The qualifying meets to Nationals are state and regionals. (does this answer your question at all?)

2. Meets have sessions. Theyre grouped by level and/or age. So let's say all your kids under 12 are in one session, 13 & over in the 2nd. YOur littles will come, warm up (sometimes there's an open warmup on the equipment, sometimes not), and then they're organized in flights. THey'll call flight 1, they'll go do their run and 2 touches and compete, sometimes flight awards sometimes not, and then they'll move on to flight 2. Et cetera. At the end there's drawings for raffle baskets and then awards. Depending on the meet, not everyone gets a general award.

3. State and regional chairs are your friend. And the websites often list things. But it's a teeny community, so once you're known as a team people are like YAY MORE COMPETITORS.

4. It's often more fun and laid back than artistic. We have a lot of ex artistic gymnasts, cheerleaders, people who started later (you can do that in T&T!), kids with body types that aren't prefered for artistic (my 5'8" level 9 comes to mind)...those are some of the selling points. And fewer practice hours to be really good.

5. Whips matter a LOT. as does a kickout--and to show shape on time you NEED to initiate the salto straight up with the head in, or you're not going to show shape in time, and you're not going to kick out at 12. and not kicking out can be up to .3 deduction in addition to any other deductions. And tumble LONG. And get in the AIR.

6. Every pass starts at a 10. Judges take between 0-.5 deduction on each skill. There are 3 judges (or 5 with high and low thrown out) and their scores are added together. At 8 & above the optional routine has difficulty. Compulsory passes do not because that is silly. So levels 1-7 are basically scored out of 60 on tumbling & double mini, 30 on trampoline. Difficulty obviously changes that.

In tumbling, the deductions I take the most are landing zone issues (must take off from the tree, land in the mat), instability (.0-.3), fun things like falling, touching the ground, stepping off the track...being below shoulder height on a salto...in terms of biggest deductions. Kids with slow or short or sloppy backhandsprings tend to get tenthed to death.

/cat 2 judge

 

[katvernay]

That is SO incredibly helpful! THANK YOU. I am totally starting to fall in love with this sport, and would really love to grow this program and get the sport more popular in my state.
Do you have any good drills for whips or kick-out? I've started working on kicking-out, but nobody is doing in early enough. And I'm not quite how to introduce whips (I learned mine by just chucking them on tumbl-trak, but I only ever had to to a BHS-Tuck out of one).

 

[CoachGoofy]

I do! Tumbling is my favorite. I have more for back then front kickout bc it seems harder for them and bc given my way I coach mostly tumbling, where it's all back.

For kickout: Ok so they *have* to have heads in and set up rather than back to achieve position in time to kick out. That is the physics of it. So first work on that. If you have trampoline access, a backdrop pullover to belly is pretty helpful, particularly if they're able to show shape before kicking to stomach. A backdrop pullover to feet that shows shape as well, though it's easier for them to slop over so we use the to-stomach first.

I had my former artistic kids do super slow back things on the bar like a pullover with position (so hang, shape, toes to bar in a pike or tuck, straighten to a straight shape with belly on the bar. Not all of them go over but the shape then out is the idea). And we do a lot of back extension rolls-tucking and shooting up isn't a good back extension but it is a great kickout drill in my experience.

Also shape jumps with a T&T technique is helpful, if you can convince them a back pike is just a pike jump where your legs coming up does all the work (We do a lot of 'let's think about this differently').

As far as whips, first they need a solid, SOLID bhs series that speeds up. Until they have that, a whip is going to not be the accellerant it needs to be, for teh most part. Kids with poor shoulder flexibility might whip better than bhs, but that's not generally how it is. I like a tumble trak for whip progressions bc it is easier to get them to almost accidentally forget their hands instead of doing a layout. We go from a stand or an angle on TT a LOT before I let them go from a roundoff or on the rod floor, cuz I am a meaniepants.