Coaches Introducing twisting

[Wally]

I always look on this site to keep learning something new so I thought I might invite everyone to comment on a new topic from time to time.

Topic today..... Introduction drills for twisting in tumbling & vaulting. From scratch. Ie early drills... prerequisite skills, body & arm positions ... cues and prompts etc etc.

This site is a great PD for many coaches so all your comments and tips are appreciated.

 

[lil_gymnast_alanna]

I haven't taught twisting before, but at my gym (and this is the way I was taught) was to do endless layouts-land-jump turns.
After we had this looking good, we would usually would do the layout and add a very late half twist.
Then the same for a full, except we usually wouldn't do so many jump turns after the landing.

 

[Invisible Duck]

One drill that I have done before is rows of forward roll-jump full turns (all continuous), backward roll-jump full turns and backward roll to handstand-jump full turns.
I think the idea is that you need to stand up nice and tall before doing the twist or you end up going all over the shop or not being able to get the whole way around. Gets you used to setting up in the layout before twisting. Plus there is a rotational factor involved as well.

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

It depends: front twisting or back twisting?

For front twisting: the pre-requisite skill is a front pike (doesn't necessarily have to be landed on floor, just needs to be clean and controlled into a pit). I then train a front pike-open-half. Most kids can just do this without me having to give them any further instruction on how to twist. I've been experimenting with several techniques for those who don't just naturally have a feel for it, and haven't yet settled on one method that stands out as being better than the rest.

For back twisting: I first teach a back layout. Then I have the kid work (from a mini-tramp into a pit) back layouts with the arms straight out to the side. Once they can do this, I have the drop one arm. After this, it sort of depends on the kid.

 

[CoachTodd]

Early drills would be jump turns in each direction. i.e. jump 1/2, jump 1/1, jump 3/2 and so on. This is basically to get used to spinning. After that I pretty much use the same drills as GT mentions with a few variations depending on the gymnast.