Counter twisting the end of tricks: A Tutorial

Hey everyone,

With Dave I have been working on a way to hold the line of my trick right tot he bed where a split second before I land, i set for the next trick instead of having arms up to early, where marks are lost and tightness is lost. There are two things to think about when holding the line of the trick.
1) over or under rotation is key in determining if the shoulder joint is going to have to prematurely flex to slow down rotation. If  this happens it means that the trick is over rotated.
2) arm flail to stop twisting (arm abduction). If the arms come out to the sides of the body then that means the athlete has over twisted the skill.

NORMAL TWISTING

theoretically the athlete should land each trick so that no arm flexion or abduction is present. Any trampolinist will tell you how crazy that is to be expected. So Dave, being the physics expert showed me a technique to over come this issue. This technique would enable me to eliminate the problem of (2) ( arm flail). He called it counter twisting. Dave said to me that to twist the way you normally do, you bounce up and down and based on the way you prefer to twist, you make a small "D" with your feet as if you are drawing the letter on the trampoline as you are in the air. If you are a right twister like myself, you would make the curve of the "D" go to the left. It is like jumping in the air and making a 'D" with your feet from a slight pike to an arch. Your feet start in front of you with a slight pike and end behind you in a slight arch after making the curve around the lateral aspect of your body. I was told that the pike at the start makes the body twist more. I interpret it like this: If you do a trifis and go from a tight ball to a huge laid out position the rotation seems to change more drastically rather then going from a pike to a straight. The pike at the start makes it easier to start the twist. Remember this is NOT counter twisting yet, this is the mechanics of how to twist with your feet rather then arms or head or contact twisting in the direction you normally go to.

COUNTER TWISTING:

If you understand the mechanics of the feet twist then you can understand the mechanics of the counter feet twist. Essentially it is the same exact motion in the opposite direction. For me my twist is initiated by throwing my feet to the left for the "D" so to counter my twisting I need to go to the right. The "D" you see right here on this page is the same potion my feet do when seeing from a birds eye view.

Drills:

To get a good understanding of this try the "D" with the feet in both directions. You will very quickly find out how hard it is to stay upright if you do the "D" big enough with the feet. The bigger the curve the more it will counter rotate you. Once that is understood and you actually feel the effect of your feet then you go to cradle with it. Do not twist off the bed at first. Go to stomach almost with a late half turn. but the turn is caused by the "D" of the feet to the normal twisting direction. So you cause yourself to twist your normal way. Then you do a contact twist with the arms and do the "D" in the opposing direction to feel the effects of the counter twist.

If you do it right you will know. You will feel that you went up twisted, stopped twisting and then came down like a normal back drop without the feeling of having to use your arms to stop the twist. You will be able to do a cradle with arms tucked into your sweater or pants pockets. Easy way to test the method if you are doing it right or cheating.

Once that is easy then its time to add int he flips. This is where it can get tricky because now you are doing the "D" upside down. I found it difficult to figure out what way to do the "D" when I added in a  flip. Start with a Birani. Like the cradle the Birani should go up straight, twist and come down like a back flayout with no arm flail. Most people can do a birani with no arm flail because its easy to determine the exact amount of twist needed. You will feel how to do it though. Dave told me that it when you are done half of the birani and you are facing sideways then you do the counter twist with the legs that you did on the cradle to stop twisting. I recommend you start with a last "D" to make sure you are going in right direction. Then as you do 100, 200, 300 birani's you start going earlier and earlier until you actually feel the abrupt stop in twist and the arms are by the sides.

Now it is time for back full and rudy. These are more difficult and I myself still can not do it great. A back full si the same concept but you wait until you have done the half crash dive portion of the back full. Once all you see is a Birani ending then you repeat as above. I understand that reading this may be weird and ambiguous. Trust me that you will feel what I am talking about and that even watching it on a TVO still does not help in anyway. The leg movement is so small that it is impossible to see while flipping.  For Rudy, you do a front full and ont eh birani portion you do the "D". If you can get up to the rudy and you can do it with arms in your pocket and come down straight into a back lay out then you have the concept and it is time to apply it to all your tricks.

The idea of this concept is to make the ending look like a back layout rather then twisting into the bed and possibly messing up the next skill or having to flail the arms out to stop which is a deduction. China is famous for having the arm flail. If you watch this video that I have linked then you will see what I am talking about. This is Canada's ticket to beating China!!!!!

http://www.dartfish.tv/Presenter.aspx?CR=p12651c33933m841911

If you see every one of the endings, you will notice the arm flail. This technique will eliminate this problem so the athlete looks like a stick going into the bed. The you just have to make sure you stay tight for the next trick.


Hope this helps,


:)