How to use your arms for skills. A round table discussion

[coachgeo]

1. Arms circle.  when you go up.. your arms go up.  When you come down..... your arms come down... sorta LOL

2. circle is typically clockwise if your looking from the side.

3. Arms circle NOT behind you on the down stroke.  The arm circle on decending end of the  stroke is downward and outward in a plane that is just a hair in front of your body.

  3a. Bottom of downstroke needs to have a STRIKE.... a tension in shoulders and arms and body in order to facilitate all forces in a verticle downward action to help compress springs.  Its like a microsecond body builder muscle squeeze at the bottom of the stroke.


VARIATIONS.  for reverse spring grabs you might do all of the above with the arm circle being counter clockwise.  Have obsvered some do it this way.

FLIP ARMS

ok... here is where I'm undecided.

Check out the basic arm technique of the trampoline jumper.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpCH7Tm-bhg&feature=channel


Sorry it is a long intro.

you see almost two techniques:

.  the arm circle described above with a very fast aggressive upward movement that starts as the bed rises from a compression.   Watching the routines you see this used in some skills.. arms pressed down (body builder squeeze like mentioned above) on landing on bed then thurst upward sharply into next skill. Sometimes it looks like the up thrust is done little early

.  In some of the prep bounces you see the arms rising on part of the decent.   You see this on some skills too.  Where arms come up early thus putting your landing with the arms already up vertically as you go into the next skill.  Looks to me like this method is used where the skill is exceptionaly fast and you do NOT have time to thrust the arms up and get the skill completed.  Miller (tripple twisting double flip] and tripple back flips are good examples of this.  Also you see this way done by some who are landing a back rotating skill and then going into a front rotating skill.  Not any of this super hard (millers or tripples) in this video but you can clearly see where the athlete has on some skills raised the arms prior to landing thus having the arms up over head during compression of the bed while others use the circle and thrust up method.


sooooooo.... im wondering if Bocks will be simular where you will circle downard to force more spring compression then lift fast into skill.  Others like say.... a flip into a flip... you might land with arms already in flip take off position (arms up by ears) like tumbling is done so you can go ahead and execute skill as the springs thrust you into the air

LEARNING THE ARMS. 

Think the best bet is to shoot for the circle down thrust up on everyrthing and mother nature will just sorta adjust you to lift arms up early on some skills so you have time to exicute it.   

Over time as Bocking flips progress in difficulty I suspect that the early arm lift will end up only on very difficlut major skills like double flipping skills while everything else will use the arm circle to get a fuller compression/explosion out of the springs.  butttt...... ahhhhggggg... just cant decide.  Lots more analysis to do.

[coachgeo]

Here is another video.  this is one of a routine consisting of the highest score start value than any routine ever performed ANYWHERE.  

He uses mostly arms down to compress the bed in the circle with sharp up thrust.  Most times the early arm up method by this athlete  is used is for connecting a backward rotating skill into a front rotating skills.  there is a good slow motion section of the routine to watch the arms on.

My question is bocks spring return rate so fast compared to trampoline that it might require more skills to  be executed with the arms up on the landing/compression of the bocks prior to starting next skill.   This is like tumbling where each skill is landed with the arms up readying for the next skill.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JUZhqxqAMc&NR=1

[XarnuSonci]

who's got one of those 120fps phones that we can shoot some good video with to analyze this.

[BboyVC]

who's got one of those 120fps phones that we can shoot some good video with to analyze this.

Found this after clicking on a related video after watching mine...
its Lidor on 120fps doing a  backflip at about 1.35 min.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRQkQIJfLqg&feature=related

[coachgeo]

yep Lidor used a scaled down version the arm circle; Circle down to the side and Thrust up on lift off.  He just cut the upward thrust short.  

now question is are we not fast enough to thrust up to the ears before its time to execute the skill.  In this vid Lidor could have finished the thrust to fully over head before flipping.... his back flip would have been much higher.  No offense to Lidor;  He can do it compared to me where  I can only anaylze  (for now LOL)

For example a tumbler would have lifted the arms and had them already up durring spring compression..... left them there...... and then on take off thrust upward thru the body and on thru the already raised arms and then executed the flip.

It will take some reaction time measurements to see how fast spring goes from compressed to fully extended and then compare those numbers to human movement to see if someone can raise their arms from low to high fast enough to keep up.  

Some arm lift can still happen as you leave the ground but not too much or your loosing energy.

[coachgeo]

here is a comparision.  Aristic gymnast on the floor.  With springs only 4" tall under the mat the reaction time from compression to extension is miliseconds so the athlete lands the preceding skill as close to having the arms by the ears as possible then thrust thru the body with arms finishing the reach up into the skill.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4iF8inIXPQ

No way they have enough time to have arms low by their side to aid compression springs and then swing the arms overhead as they go into the skill.  

Reaction time of bock springs will be slower than a gymnast spring floor.... but still faster I think than a competitive trampoline.  

[Pendragon]

for easy viewing.

Yeah this arm circling thing is really the key to getting a good bounce. 

[coachgeo]

here is something that is sorta in between.  Power tumbling.  They to use a fiberglass spring like stilts.  Their's is a 1" rod of it though.  about 4" apart from one another laid across like a deck of rods with mat on top.

They use the arm down thrust up circle method sorta. The whole circle is shortend a bit for example the arms do not come to the side by the waiste, the circle is done  in a smaller path so you can get them up quicker.  

You can see if you look hard that the athletes with the highest tumble are ones that thurst their arms up the furthest before executing the skill.  Its a trade off though.  Like said earlier.. contiuing to lift after leaving what ever threw you into the air.. causes you to slow down.  Got to time rotation needed to how fast/good your arm lift is.  Sacrafices in travel of arm circle are made according to your own reaction time/technique.

BTW I think the arm motions of the landing of the next to last skill thru the take off into the last skill is the one that would relate most to this discussion.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or2VmHbiuzk&NR=1

[coachgeo]

Now for something where the athlete has lots of time cause the spring has a very long distant (aka slow reaction time) from full compression to full thrust extension....

Spring board diving.

The arm circle is the same but the circle is the largest of all we have seen.  Also the slowest and most fully extended at the top


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFOaL4Ir4hg

[Locky]

I dont have time atm to watch all the vids but I would say for me arm circling doesnt do it. I do 'pump' my arms up and down, especially at the heighest point of the jump but I definately dont do circles. I have tried with circles but it throws me way off.

[coachgeo]

Up and down like you describe is essentually a circle just a small one.  

Throwing you off may be cause you circle your arms behind you???  

Maybe circle is the wrong word.  If a pencil was on your finger tip you would not actually draw a "circle"  more of a thin oval.  The oval does not pass the plane of the back of the body.

[Locky]

Maybe but in terms of teaching someone who perhaps doesnt use their arms I would definately describe it to them as an up and down motion and not a circle or oval just up and down, with more thrust on the down.

[coachgeo]

Same end result just differnt description in teaching words so sounds reasonable to me.

Keep in mind some path be it circle or oval, large or small,  is more effcient when it comes to the musculature of moving the arms up and down.  A very verticle down using one set of muscles then switch those off and use opposit set to lift is not as efficient as in some form of circle where one set fades out as the other kicks in.  (not a true to detail technical description but gets the point across I think)

[coachgeo]

The folk who will have the hardest time getting their arm use down is those whose bounce posture is off.  These folk are getting popped into the air all which way.  Thusly they end up putting their arms all over the place to help them keep balanced.

[BboyVC]

I tried some different things with my arms today when practicing my backflips.  The higher I was able to get my hands up during spring compression, the more height I got.  I'm not sure it made much of a difference on my rotation since I likely compensated in other ways, such as arching my back or tucking more. 

I also played around with when I threw my arms.  It seemed like I had a more effective bounce when I would finish pushing down with my arms through some of the spring compression, then as the spring pushed back I threw my arms, but I wasn't quick enough to get my arms as high as usual and my height wasn't as good but rotation seemed easy...
But when I would push with my legs for the bounce (instead of my arms) I was able to throw my arms up fully and got decent height, but I had to work more with my abs to pull the tuck.

From this experience, it seems there is a tradeoff with how you choose to use your arms if you aren't fast enough (skilled enough?)... it seems though that the ideal use of them is to push down through compression and throw arms up FULLY as the springs push back before your bocks leave the ground, you just have to be very fast.

~ Bboy