How to Do a Round Off

Video Transcript

"My name is Caroline and this is Katie, and we're here to at Encore Gymnastics, and today we're going to show you how to do a roundoff. Before you do any kind of activity like this, you want to make sure you stretch. Katie's going to show you how to stretch her wrists, very good, and stretch her neck, very good, up and down, and she's going to show you a pipe stretch. Reach up, breathe in, and breathe out. This is going to stretch your back and the bottom of your legs. You're going to hold each stretch for about thirty seconds. She's also going to show you a straddle. She's going to put her arms up, reach one arm around her body, and reach to one side. This is going to stretch out her side. She's going to keep her shoulder square, and stretch to the other side, very good, and turn, right, and come on up. Oh, you also want to stretch your ankles. So cross one over, very good, and the other one, excellent. And come on back up. Before you start a roundoff, you want to make sure you can do a cartwheel. So your cartwheel starts with a lunge, your hands face the same way, you go all the way over, big straddle in the middle, and finish on the other side. That's how you do a cartwheel. If you can do that, you can do a roundoff. So you're going to start in a lunge, when your hands come down this time, you're going to put one facing this way and one facing in. This is going to help you block in to the roundoff. So you're going to go in, legs together, push, and finish up top. Katie's going to go ahead and do that again for you. As you go down, your legs are split, right about when your hands hit is when your legs come together, you twist your hips and you end facing the direction you came in, came from, with two feet. Very good. That's what the bottom half of your body does. The top half of your body, right here, pushes through your shoulders. So they're relaxed and then they pop as soon as they hit. Relaxed and pop. So I'm going to let Katie do that on her own, show you how to do it. Pop, and finish with a nice rebound. That is how you do a roundoff."