How to Do a Back Flip in Gymnastics

Video Transcript

"Now we're going to be talking about the back tuck and actually throwing the back flip. We already talked about our drills that we can do. You'll notice in all of our drills, we had our arms by our ears the entire time. You're really going to want to extend those arms and that's called a "set" because a back tuck, if you think about it, is actually two different tricks: it's a set, the stretch jump and the set and then the tuck. So, if you can think of those as two different, separate tricks, it's going to make your back tucks a lot higher, a lot more powerful and a lot more consistent, rather than just throwing a back flip on the ground. Alright, so now we're going to actually talk about throwing the back tuck. When we first start a back tuck, we're going to be wanting to what's called "spot". Spotting is really simple. What you want to do is you actually want to take your eyes and focus one thing as long as possible. So, I'm going to be focusing on a dot on that wall right now, as long as I can. Until my knees come up so high that they cover whatever I was spotting. That's when you can look back, look for your landing and hit the ground. So we're going to go ahead and just do a back tuck right now and remember to spot that wall. We're going to do a big reach, again, set it up, two different tricks, set, reach around, grab your knees and tuck. Alright, now that we've warmed up on the cheese, we're going to go ahead and take them to the ground and do some standing back tucks here. Same thing we're going to spot that wall, big set and tuck over the top."