first look – Championship Gymnastics

Just got a review copy in the mail. (It will be donated to Keith Russell‘s library at University of Saskatchewan).

Wow. It looks great.

A university quality text book. Glossy, heavy pages. Big, beautiful illustrations by James H. Stephenson, the best in the business.

Check out the Table of Contents.

Instantly I jumped to these two sections:

• Twist Direction for Somersault Skills
• Twist Direction for Round-off

I found, happily, that Dr. G.S. George agrees with what I’ve been teaching for years:

– all somersault twisting should be done in the same direction
– the initial turn of of the round-off should be in the opposite direction

For example, if you put your right hand down first on round-off, you normally will twist all somersaulting skills to the right.

If you put your left hand down first on round-off, it’s normal to twist all somersault skills to the left.

We know this is “most common”. Bill Sands published that conclusion in Technique Magazine (2000) – Twist Direction (PDF)

This is for Artistic gymnasts. It’s more important for male gymnasts to be “normal” than for female. And, yes, you can win the Olympics if you are not normal. But – all things considered – your odds of winning the Olympics improve if your twist direction is normal.

I’ve not seen any scientific data on why this relationship between round-off and twist direction is most common in successful gymnasts.
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Trampoline and Tumbling coaches take a far more sophisticated approach to this issue.

Brett MacAulay at Calgary Gymnastics Centre would do many tests before deciding what direction a new trampolinist would twist somersaults.

He’d do a separate battery of tests to determine what hand to put down first on round-off. The two are not necessarily related, despite what we see as “normal” in Artistic gymnasts.
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Order Championship Gymnastics from the official website – Winning Gymnastics. Or phone 888-796-5229. ($79)

Or catch Dr. George at one of his seminars this summer.

related post – ROUND-OFF – problematic tumbling skill