Nick donated his time putting this presentation together for Dave Tilley’s fundraiser – Feeding America’s Hunger Relief.

Some highlights from Nick’s presentation:

• when you see a problem in the air, the CAUSE was something earlier:
  • physical ability
  • prerequisites (e.g. handstand shapes)
  • acrobatic prerequisites (e.g. Whip, Round-off, etc.)
• use as much of the 25m vault run as possible
• create > conserve > convert. Convert as much energy as possible to the vault itself.
• actually, each athlete has an optimal speed of run. Not all are fast enough to handle their maximum run speed.
• visual – what do they see? 
• rigid body
• shapes at each phase
• tempo, rhythm
• arms as straight / tight as possible on Round-off
• knees as straight / tight as possible on the Springboard
• hips up quickly on the preflight
• head watches the board before preflight, but eyes watching hands on contact
• watch the horse on post-flight. (Lifting the head too soon can later cause early twist problems.)

Extending the hips while on the Springboard generates rotation through an indirect reaction force of the feet on the board. Nick has gymnasts train backward layouts on Tramp without using the arms — requiring them to use hip extension to generate rotation.

Gainer backward layouts would be an alternative to this, requiring hip extension on takeoff.

Note that Nick doesn’t actually show the full Yurchenko vault. As Edouard Iarov first made clear to me, once the hands leave the horse it’s too late to change height, distance or total rotation.  The flight phase is more related to trampoline basics than vault.

Click PLAY or watch it for yourself on YouTube.