Holding Lines At the End of Tricks

I have been asked to talk a bit about how to hold lines at the end of the tricks. Easy as it sounds, it actually is pretty difficult and not many trampolinists do it perfect or even as good as they could. Here is how I practice holding my lines.

I start off my doing all singles with keeping my arms down on all the landings. If you are not good at holding your lines this will prove to be more difficult then you think. You will find you over rotate a lot of skills that normally you wouldn't. This is because the arms are not coming up over the head, which lengthens the body, which slows the rotation at the last second. So put a little bit less rotation on all your singles and you will start to feel like you land perfectly up and down. Once you are comfortable with landing with arms tight by your sides then its time to start linking tricks. Do not worry about putting arms up yet. Keep them down the entire time. I do just sloppy back flips with arms down by the sides. You may find it hard to balance with the arms being immobile but if the back is in the right position and you land on the cross then you will be able to keep going.

Then you start playing with birani, back tucks and repeat as above. At this point you are probably asking how do I control my flips? Simply said, it's repetition. Start off low and gradually build height with time. Dave Ross told me about a Russian trampolinist that would be able to do back straights in a  row perfectly every time holding his like right to the last second every time. So how did he do it? Well, it is all about the arms on the take off. If the arms drop quickly on a back straight then you simply have to hope for the best and see what happens. If you keep the arms up longer then you can get a better feel for when to drop them to be able to hold the perfect line. The longer the arms are up ( up to a specific point) then the easier it is to judge when to bring them in and hold the line of the back straight. If the arms come in before quarter of the flip is done then it is a big gamble but if the athlete waits until they are in the air and can get a idea of where they are then it is easier to tell when the arms should drop. If the rotation is heavy then the arms stay up longer before coming in to finish the lay out. If the rotation is small then the arms come in earlier to shorten the body to get the layout around. Either way the line is held until a split second before landing on the bed.

This concept can be applied to all singles. Unfortunately I do not believe this works for  doubles or triples. The line holding dilemma in this case relies more on the timing of the kick out. I found that If i tried to kick out always at the same time, that that helped me be able to judge how long to hold the lines without over or under rotating. Unfortunately, again, this just takes time.  If there is a secret to it, I have not been told it or discovered it.

If you hold lines almost into the bed Dave told me that it would enable me to do something else that not many athletes do. Dave told me that landing with arms up right over the head is not actually what you want, even though this is taught world wide. If hands over head is 12 oclock and hands at shoulder height is 3 oclock then you should aim to land with hands at 1:30. Landing in the bed with the hands at 1:30 allows you to keep pushing them up to 12 oclock which will actually give more height to the jump that is next to come.

 (a)Try jumping on the ground with a arm sing from your knees.
 (b) Now try jumping with arms above your head

Most people will find (b) is harder to jump high. So theoretically you want to jump with an entire arm swing before every skill. Yes this is true but in reality it does not work. It is too hard to swing the arms up this quick because of the G-force in the bottom of the bed. If you can try to add some sort of arm swing, ie. arms at 1:30 then you can get a bit of an extra bounce. When you actually do the "1:30" you do not actually stop then finish the push above the head. It should be smooth like a proper pre bounce with arm swing but instead of arms at 6:00 the are at 1:30. Then you hold the arms up, judge your flip, add twists then stay tight and hope you flipped the perfect amount so your arms can be back at 1:30 for the next skill.

Start of by playing with the concept. Do not make it your entire training program because like mentioned in last article, you will de-train yourself. This is nothing more then a ideal, even the best in the world do not do it all the time, if at all.

hope this helps :)