Welcome to another episode of ‘How To.’
I know that you’ve been waiting impatiently for this episode,
for today it’s the one and only back flip!
[STEP BY STEP]
As usual, we’re going to learn this element step by step.
Later on I’m going to show you how to fight your fear,
where it’s best to do the flip at the trampoline park,
and will give you a handful of suggestions to make your back flip as good as possible.
Let’s do this, step by step.
Step one is the backward roll.
We start by pushing ourselves with our hands
hold them close to ears,
and kick with our legs.
One more time, see the legs kicking.
They help me do the roll.
We’re on the trampoline, so we’ll try to do the same,
but starting not with our bum and then our back
but we’ll try to skip the bum and go straight for the back.
The back and the kick.
I only use my hands for safety,
though I don’t have to do this.
One more time.
Back and kick. No hands!
If I feel sure enough, I don’t support myself with hands,
but try to hold them below my knees in the position for the flip.
Ready.
Let’s do this from standing, enough with squats already.
I stand on the trampoline, jump on my back, kick and turn.
Even higher.
I start using my hands.
Up with my shoulders first.
Nice.
Now we’ll try a little bit harder with our hands to do this higher.
And now for the mile stone, step by step.
This is for people who are not afraid to jump,
feel their body
or have done this before already.
From standing.
Holding and landing.
Now jumping.
Classic.
[BOUNCE AND SWING OF ARMS]
[HOLDING THE POSITION AND ROTATION]
That was step by step.
Now for something else.
But remember, don’t forget about the backward roll and back drop,
since this will come in handy with many other elements.
This is the short version for those of you who’ve got to be off in five minutes and upload this to Instagram.
This is how you do it.
First, we approach our nice cube.
The attempt looks like this:
I squat, not lowering the trunk, try to avoid this, since we’ll need our legs to jump and not our back.
I bend my legs and prepare to swing my arms, jumping next on my back.
On my back already and I can prepare my knees.
I’m going to show you the whole set in a moment.
I jump on my back, trying to feel the distance and height.
Jump and hold my knees.
This is the key moment.
Jumping, I lay in the air already.
The closer your knees will be to your chest, the faster the rotation.
This is what you have to do as fast as you can after you jump
in order to turn, and you can do this on the cube.
Don’t do this somewhere on the hard floor, go for the cube.
Even harder,
we try to jump and roll.
Great.
Do this as many times as you can for your body to remember the move.
I jump up freely and before I fall,
I grab my knees.
Now let’s go for the foam.
Now that we’ve repeated the move many times with the cube,
our body knows how to behave.
I don’t wait for another 58 minutes for another bad idea,
but as fast as I can, after a few exercises,
stand on the trampoline, rock lightly, jump and hold my knees
As you can see, I’ve made quite a nice back flip for the first time there on the trampoline.
How did this happen?
I have good coordination of my body
and did the exact move I wanted to,
and was not afraid to do this in the first place.
How to fight this?
To work on your coordination, practice with the cube as many times as you need to.
Bend your legs slightly, rock a little even.
Jump and hold your knees.
When I make a jump for the foam, I don’t let go,
whatever might happen, and press my head against my chest, waiting to land.
This would be coordination.
Now for the fear.
Doesn’t help.
Just as standing in one spot, looking round and thinking too much whether the time is right.
No.
Do as many trials on the cube as you can, then go for the foam and jump on the count of three
That’s the way.
Now for some mistakes.
[BASIC MISTAKES]
Let’s start with the first mistake which would be twisting your head while jumping.
If you twist your head,
look the wrong way and not hold your knees,
you’ll be rotating around the vertical axis,
which we wouldn’t want to do.
We want just a flip and no turning, that’s why we don’t twist our head.
Head is still, we jump, hide the head and hold our knees.
If this gets difficult, go back to the roll.
If the roll is ok, I go for the back drop.
If the drop is ok, I go for the flip.
Not the other way round.
Not using your hands has an impact on the coordination.
If your arms stop right here,
your swing is not good enough.
You have to practice some jumps in order to hold your knees, , and then try to turn.
Not using hands is a huge mistake, don’t do it this way.
Such a flip will not help us with learning other elements.
The last mistake is either a turn that is not big enough or the one that is too big.
This is a mistake if we’re doing a single flip.
If we’re doing a few consecutive flips, they should be turned slightly
more than necessary for the starting point of the next flip.
Or, if we’re going for the back-front flip combination,
it would be easier to keep the turn slightly smaller
in order to safely go from the back to the front flip.
Clear?
Let’s continue.
Now I’m going to show you a simple exercise that you can either do at home or in a park as a warm up or at the end.
This is excellent for the abdomen muscles and coordination.
I lay on my back,
hands against my body.
I start to lift my hands and before the arms are fully stretched, start to bend my knees and grab them.
As if I’m doing a flip.
One more time.
Try to do it as if you were doing a flip.
Jumping and landing.
Don’t hold it for 10 seconds, don’t just touch.
Do as many as you can, you might need it.
This is all for today,
but I think that you’ll manage to give me a thumb up
before the end or subscribe if you like it, so that we know if to continue and make more ‘how tos’ so that we can learn together.
Another thing is that I haven’t shown you any of the other flips,
since this will be a special episode in two-weeks’ time
which will include different versions of side, front and back flips.
Anything that might come into my mind.
If I can, I will try to do them, and if I can’t I will make them up on the go.
I might try and do this.
Why not.
In the end, let’s see how we can move from jumping into foam to the back flip
on the air track which is almost hard ground
See how it’s done.