Gymnastics Parents Master Class
There are so many gymnastics skills and they are all named after Eastern Asian or Eastern European hard to pronounce last names. What’s a Yurchenko? Or a Tkatchev? Or a Tsukahara?? Before we get into the names let’s get a lay of the land.
Women’s gymnastics has 4 events,
Vault, Uneven Bars, Balance Beam, & The Floor Exercise.
These 4 events have a lot of cross over so it’s not like learning 4 different sports.
Floor has music that their routines are choreographed to. There are ballet leaps, jumps and turns, mixed with dance from any dance discipline. Could be more ballet, or hip hop, jazz, contemporary and so on. In addition to dance skills and choreography, there is gymnastics tumbling where we see all their high flying flips and twists. They are scored on their difficulty, their presentation, and their skill requirements.
Beam is almost the same as Floor but without music and on a 4 inch wide beam! The criteria is very similar and the skills are generally less difficult than what we see on the floor because it is so much more challenging to perform with the lack of space and the risk of falling off.
Vault is also very similar to Floor. It’s simply one tumbling skill that goes over the vault table. The athlete has more space to approach and build speed before launching themselves over the table into a powerful tumbling skill. In lower level competition, athletes get two tries at the same vault. In Elite competition, they must perform two different vaults in the same competition.
Last is Uneven Bars, which is the most unlike the other 3. On the bars, most skills are swinging elements. There are also releases where they may do a tumbling style flip or twist in the air, but they still need to catch the bar and generate enough swing for the next skill and/or dismount.
Now that we know the events let’s start learning about the different skills and how to tell them apart.
Most skills in gymnastics are considered TUMBLING skills. These are flips and twisting skills. We have Basics, Compulsory, Optional, and Elite tumbling elements. If you know the Basic and Compulsory skills, you will easily identify the harder skills later.
Here are key terms to search and recognize.
Basic Tumbling:
Handstand
Forward Roll
Backward Roll
Cartwheel
Back Walk Over
Front Walk Over
Compulsory Tumbling:
Round Off
Front Somersault
Back Somersault
Side Aerial
Back Handspring
Front Handspring
If you know all of these skills, it won’t be difficult to understand the harder skills coming later on this list. Before we jump into the advanced skill list we need to understand the somersault basic positions. You will never really hear people say front or back somersault. Generally they say front or back, and then the position they were flipping in. So a front somersault might be said as “Front Tuck” because it was flipping forward in a tucked position, or “Front Layout” Because it was flipping forward in a laid out position. If you don’t know what these words mean don’t worry, I gotchu.
Here are the most common positions for a somersault, it is extremely rare if it isn’t done in one of these 3 positions:
Tuck
Pike
Layout
When discussing the Layout shape, it is generally used for twisting skills. The thinner the body line is, the faster it will twist. Making it optimal for twisting elements.
We are now ready to learn the Optional Tumbling Skills! I added an “*” next to items that are common and will be more worthwhile to search.
Optional Tumbling:
*Front Half Twist, Full Twist, 1 & ½ Twist, Double TwistBack Half Twist, Full Twist, 1 & ½ Twist, Double Twist
Double Front Tucked
*Double Back Tucked
Back Whip
*Front Aerial
Now you know all of the foundational tumbling skills, let’s put it together so that you have the Gymnastics Lingo down. Typically we avoid using the words flip or spin, and instead use a shorthand to explain skills clearly and concisely.
Round off – Back Handspring – Double Back Tucked. Or Round off Through to Double Back. The second one is a bit quicker to say and everyone understands you. The Double back doesn’t need tucked at the end since the tuck is implied, tuck is the default position for double flipping skills unless otherwise specified. Like Double Back Piked or Double Layout (Since Front Double Layout is considered almost impossible, we don’t need to say “Back” When saying Double layout. The back is implied).
Let’s try another one.
Arch Front Layout – Punch – Front Double Full Twist. When it’s a connected pass like this, we use “Punch” In between them to specify it was two separate skills connected through a punch. Here it is rewritten using shorthand:
Front Layout – Punch – Front Double Full. The Arch and Twist are implied given that we can only connect using an arch layout, and the Full is only referring to twists in gymnastics.
Let’s try a trickier tumbling pass and see if we can imagine what it will look like before we watch it on the video below. Imagine it first and then play the video and see if you got it right!
Round Off – Back Handspring – Punch – Back 2 & ½ Twist – Punch – Double Front Tucked. Here we have 3 separate skills connected. Since a round off can only connect to a backwards skill, the “Back” is redundant, Same with tucked since tucked is the implied position if not specified.
Here it is written again using our short hand: Flip Flop is short hand for back handspring.
Round Off – Flip Flop – Punch – 2 & ½ – Punch – Double Front.
Welcome to the club, I want to start hearing the parent conversations using our gymnastics lingo! “My daughter finally connected her new tumbling pass. She was having so much trouble punching out of her back 1 & ½ into a front layout. She kept falling on her butt, and today she finally made the skill clean!”
The word “Made” above sounds weird here, but we never use the words “Landed it” this is skateboard vocabulary. Instead we use the term “Made it.” She was finally able to make her skill, instead of she finally landed it today.
“My daughter is working on her double backs, for some reason she keeps under rotating. I hope she makes it on the floor this year, she is working so hard for it.”
You now can talk with most of the gymnastics parents and coaches comfortably if you got this far. This next section is going to take it to the next level making it possible to understand olympic tumbling skills.
Elite Tumbling:
Front 2 & ½ Twist, Front Triple Twist, Front 3.5 Twist.
Back 2 & ½ Twist, Back Triple Twist, Back 3.5 Twist, Back Quad.
Front Half In Back Out
Front In Half Out
Front Full In Front Out
Front In Full Out
Front Half In Half Out
*Back Half In Front Out (Double Arabian)
Back In Half Out
*Back Full In Back Out
Back In Full Out
*Back Half In Half Out
Back Full In Half Out
*Back Double Double
Back 2.5 Double
*Back Triple Double (The Biles)
Triple Back Tuck
This is where it gets the most confusing because there is a lot of shorthand used for these skills. Gymnastics commentators will also try to use the names of these skills found in the Code of Points, which will have the skill named after the last name of the first person to compete it in their discipline. For Example, The first female athlete to compete the Back Triple Double (3 twists and two flips in the air) was Simone Biles. So the skill is sometimes referred to as The Biles. This can be a bit confusing if you don’t know the skills by their actual names, but easy if you know the skill already.
Remember, if not specified the skills position will be a tucked position. You can easily specify by adding the position at the end of the skill. Here’s an example:
Wow that was an amazing Double Double! (This means it’s in a Tucked Position)
OMG, I’ve never seen a Double Double Straight Before! (This means it’s in a Layout Position)
At this level, you won’t really see people perform these twisting skills in a piked position, it’s very hard to twist and pike. So we might have to specify the position for the entry and the exit.
I think she was going for a Back Full In Straight. But Ended up doing a Full In Straight Pike Out because she was too low.
Have fun with the language, and feel free to shorthand as much as you like, if the person you’re talking to gets confused they will ask for you to specify.
“My daughter was doing a whip back into a double and almost missed the foam pit!”
“That’s crazy, I’m glad she’s ok, was it a double full or a double back?”
That’s it for tumbling names. We totally understand all of the tumbling skills now. These names apply to all 4 events where applicable.
Vault has a few extra names that we have to learn real quick and we can move on to bars.
Vault Entries:
Front Handspring
Round Off on Table (Tsukahara)
Round Off on Spring Board, Back Handspring on Table (Yurchenko)
After Executing the Vault entry the tumbling names apply in the same way. Remember if the skill is difficult enough the announcers might use a difficult last name instead of the vault entry name. Like a Front Handspring Front Tuck Half Out is a Dragulescu. In general you will hear Yurchenko Double Full or something like this, which is just a standard Yurchenko vault with a double full twist in the air. Vault is generally only these three entries, gymnasts are starting to get creative with the Yurchenko, and adding half and full twists before touching the table. The basics still apply regardless of how they touch the table though. For Yurchenkos it is generally assumed that the athlete will be in a straight position unless otherwise specified.
That’s 3 Events down, now we only need to tackle bars and you are ready to start watching gymnastics practice with brand new eyes!
Uneven Bars! The mini game of women’s gymnastics, most of the skills are swings. We will go through the same set up we used for tumbling. Basic, Compulsory, Optional and Elite.
Basic:
Glide Swing
Pull Over
Cast
Back Hip Circle
Long Hang Swing (High Bar Straight Swing)
Compulsory:
Kip
Tap Swing
Front Hip Circle
Squat On or Pike On
Under Swing
Cast Handstand (Straddle up or Straight)
Free Hip or Clear Hip
Toe Circle
Long Hang Pull Over (Baby Giant)
Fly Away
There are a lot of different Kips, but they are all the same swinging element. Here are the other names so that they sound familiar when you hear them. Glide Kip, Long Hang Kip or High Bar Kip, Drop Kip, Multi Kip or Bounce Kip, Jam Kip.
Optional:
Free Hip Handstand
Toe Circle Handstand
Stalder Circle
Giant Swing
Pirouette
Blind Change
Toe Shoot
Pak Salto
Overshoot
Bail (Overshoot to handstand)
There are more skills than just the ones shown on this list, but this is definitely comprehensive enough to understand all of the skills you’ll watch while your daughter is competing. Almost all of the elite skills are some variation of the skills listed here. Fly Away dismounts are all tumbling elements just like what we learned on Floor.
That’s it for this lesson! Hopefully, learning more about gymnastics will help you understand your daughters journey a bit better. See you in the next one!