Cheerleading: Ms. Pineapple's Cheer Page - Tumbling Cheernastics Back-Handspring Help

Question

My 14 year old daughter has been tumbling since she was 7. She saw a boy tumble in someone's yard and got hurt and now is scared. She is a good tumbler and I thought when cheerleading started back it would encourage her to want to do it, but she still has the fear. Is there anyway of helping her to over come this fear or should I just not say anything about it and let her handle it on her on?

Tina

Note From Coach Wayne

Greetings!

Lately I've received a BUNDLE of email questions from tumblers who are AFRAID of back-handsprings.
Please NOTE: it is PEFECTLY NORMAL AND HEALTHY to feel a MOMENT of fear when a person springs backwards onto her hands!

Think about it. You're going BACKWARDS... so you can't see where you're going, so you're JUMPING BLINDLY!... As if That's not enough.. you're goal is to LAND on your hands... (not your head!) Literally, you're diving very quickly INTO THE FLOOR!!! Yikes!! Ok. Now, for the REAL clincher... to perform the skill safely, you'll need to KEEP MOVING QUICKLY so you land on your feet again.

Then... you must perform ALL that... elegantly, beautifully & in such a way as to allow you to KEEP moving into additional tumbling skills like another back-handspring, or back-tuck. Anyway you look at it, the back-handspring requires VERY careful preparation and LOTS of practice. Now, to compound all that... if you make a mistake, it's quite possible to severely injure yourself.

So all you tumblers out there that are feeling FEAR... congratulate yourself. It means your brain is alert and your instincts are working correctly.

HOWEVER... your fear should not STOP you from tumbling. It should GUIDE you to SEEK more knowledge and experience. Let the fear INSPIRE you to BE WISE and use COMMON SENSE. Fear should ALERT you to the OBSERVE risks you are incurring and to discern effective ways to PROTECT YOURSELF.

With enough knowledge about HOW TO DO a safe, strong and beautiful back-handspring you should easily FACE your fear with COURAGE. If you are armed with sufficient UNDERSTANDING about proper habits of motion, positions, timing, coordination and abundant muscular STRENGTH, you'll move PAST your fears into confidence.

Here's my answer to an IMPORTANT question.

The Solution

Thanks for writing Tina,

It is a scary thing to see some one badly hurt, whether in the gym, or outside. Any athletic activity has the potential for severe injury. As fun as gymnastics:tumbling can be.. .it comes with REAL risks that must be RECOGNIZED and HONORED by participants. The human body DOES have physical limitations. An important part of growing up is learning to recognize those limits with as little damage as possible. Because of its rich diversity of motions & dynamics gymnastics:tumbling CAN be an excellent choice of activities for SAFELY learning those limits.

Gymnastic: tumbling is an integral part of human culture. Kids have always... and will always to perform acrobatic activities in the gym, in the house, in the yard, on grass, on concrete... everywhere. With all the cheerleaders on football fields, acrobats on stage, martial artist in the studio and untold millions of us playing in the yard & the house... only a small fraction of us have received proper instructions for safe skill execution.

And, unfortunately, to an unaware tumbler, what SEEMS like an "improvement" can actually be a disastrous error. For example, running FASTER is NOT the way to improve a round-off, except for specific rare instances with highly experienced tumblers. Because it feels more dynamic & thrilling, it may feel NATURAL to do many things like RUNNING FASTER into tumbling skills. With each increase in SPEED and POWER, all aspects of a skill become exaggerated... which means minor errors become MAJOR errors. So, unless the body is well prepared, coordinated, attuned, & the skill is truly WELL FORMED such seemingly natural changes like "running faster" can DRAMATICALLY INCREASE the risk of severe injury.

One of my primary motivations for making the "BETTER BACK-HANDSPRINGS" video was to insure that the fundamental elements of WELL-FORMED tumbling activities are available to ANYONE who can watch TV. Simple lessons... (that are NOT, however, generally known) can GREATLY enhance safety and provide tumblers with a STRONG CONFIDENCE in their abilities..