If you are looking to solve your back handspring issues, this article might give you some food for thought.
Back handsprings are one of the harder basic skills to acquire, especially for adult gymnasts. The idea of hurtling yourself backwards onto your hands, then snapping your feet back down to the ground and rebounding back up is an exercise in self-trust that not many adults care to try.
This Geriatric Gymnast acquired the back handspring on a trampoline somewhere in her late 30s. I started taking class at 36, and some time later, I had the fundamentals and the courage to try. I cannot remember how long it took me to actually try them, but I imagine it was probably a year or two.
My first attempts were in a belt system, where you wear a thick, padded belt with D-rings on the sides, which is hooked into a pulley rope system that the coach pulls. The idea is that you can throw a tough skill with the safety net of the coach keeping you from landing on your head and breaking your neck. Once you throw a bunch of successful ones and you can be trusted not to kill yourself, the belt comes off, you use your newly developed neurological pathways to throw the handspring without assistance.
The good news is, I’m still alive to talk about it. The bad news is that it has taken me over 15 years to really refine the back handspring. Yes, that’s a long time, and no I’m not exaggerating. My back handspring technique has been wildly inconsistent, probably because I didn’t fully grasp the real fundamentals needed to develop good, consistent repetitions. I think it may have been within the last six months that I’ve fully understood the physics of the whole thing.
The main issues with back handsprings
Here are some examples of the problems I’ve had and have seen in others with this skill:
- Traveling on a diagonal across the trampoline.
- Jumping too high and barely touching the hands on the trampoline bed.
- Landing with the hands in front of the body instead of over the head.
All of these problems are fixable, but for many years, I couldn’t figure out why and apply the fix. It was frustrating, and I’d fall prey to the “I’ve got to try again and again and again and again to see if I get a different result” mentality. Of course, repeating something over and over and getting the same bad result just reinforces the bad habit that gets you the bad result.
The problem with not fixing these issues, especially for an adult gymnast, is the wear and tear on our bodies that result from executing poor technique over and over again. We suffer from rotator cuff, back, and hip issues just from the fact that we are older and have taken more abuse in our bodies.
That said, I have been on a mission: to figure out the most important fundamentals, conditioning exercises, and things to think about when approaching your back handspring. The sooner you employ them, the faster you will see positive results.
Conditioning Exercises on the Floor
Position #1: Hollow Body
I cannot stress enough the importance of this position. It checks all of the boxes for back handsprings: core engagement, arm to shoulder alignment, straight legs pasted together.
This is an exercise that I do, and make all of my adult clients do. It’s a hollow body-egg roll. The goal is to not let your feet touch the floor…ever. This is also great for conditioning front and back tucks, btw.
Position #2: Handstand
Everything about the handstand is important. The same shoulder alignment you achieve with the hollow body needs to be achieved dynamically when you kick to a handstand. You must keep that shoulder position as you move into and out of the inversion.
I’m doing some slow handstands here, concentrating on the hollow body. I’m also using the cheese mat, in case I need to roll out of it. When I’m warming up, I have no interest in rolling onto the floor. When I do roll, I initiate the hollow body so it’s a smooth landing. (No crash = good.)
Conditioning on the trampoline for back handsprings
Exercise #1: Back bounces
This exercise is harder than it looks, but when you figure it out, it is a fantastic core warmup. It’s also super fun.
You’ll see I’m keeping the legs together, activating my adductor muscles in the inner thigh. I also change my arm position halfway through from in front of my body to over my head. For handsprings, you want to train the arms to stay behind your ears while you are moving.
Exercise #2: Donkey Kicks
This exercise mimics the second half of your back handspring. From the knees, you snap into a tight handstand, then snap back down to your feet in a tight hollow body position.
See how everything ties in together?
Application to the back handspring
Once you have mastered the previous exercises, it is time to apply all of the new neurological pathways into practice. That said, if you have never done back handsprings before, you should ALWAYS try under the supervision of a well-trained coach. They will have other ways in, like using octagons, hand and belt spotting. If you are an adult, make sure that coach understands the adult mind and body – it is VERY different from coaching a child.
I will offer three variations on the back handspring. All three have slightly different purposes and entry points, but they all feature the same requirements: body angle for the entry, arm by the ears, and hollow body for the exit. First, I’ll break the handspring down with pictures.
The anatomy of a back handspring
Entry angle: What is most important as you enter your back handspring is to remember that your feet must be in front of your hips when you launch. That angle is what will help you travel far.
From the initial angle, you push with your toes, keep the legs together, and keep reaching for the trampoline.
This is the moment of handstand. You should be able to see the wall in this position. If you can, your head is aligned well.
This is the beginning of the second half. After the handstand, turn on the hollow body – all the front muscles are engaged now as you are pushing off of your hands.
As the feet contact the trampoline, you are still thinking hollow body, arms up by (behind) the ears, and work to send your hands up to the ceiling on the rebound.
High rebound in that hollow body.
It’s a LOT to think about in 2 seconds, but all of these points are crucial to safe and sound technique. The last thing you want is to develop a rotator cuff injury (trust me on that one).
Three back handspring variations
The following are the three variations I’ve used. They are all valuable for different reasons.
Personal story: for 15 years, I only did arm swing BHS (approach #3). It wasn't until just this year that I got the courage to try the other two, after some gentle urging from my training partner Tammy. For some reason, my Lizard Brain (explanation post here) didn't trust the other two. But once I unlocked them, I was able to access better understanding about how back handsprings were supposed to work in my body. (Thanks, Tammy!)
Approach #1: Boundering
This dynamic approach gets you into the right angle easily and gives a little extra momentum to help you get around.
Approach #2: No arm swing, no bounder
This is similar to approach #1, except there’s only a small bounce to get the right angle. You have to use more of your power to get around.
Approach #3: Arm swing
This approach starts from a complete still position with arms over the head.
The most important thing to do is sit back on the back arm swing, like you are going to sit in a chair, then quickly snap your arms up and behind your ears to get into the correct position for the handstand.
If you don’t get your arms up in time, you will land with your hands in front of you, which is not ideal.
Wrapping up
If you have been looking to solve some of your own back handspring issues, hopefully, this article gave you some food for thought. Like I said before, there is so much to think about in such a short amount of time. But if you work the fundamentals through conditioning and drills, you’ll see improvements emerge. If any of this resonated with you, send me a comment. I’d love to know what worked for you!
For the full 10 minute tutorial that goes more in-depth with explanations, visit my Geriatric Gymnast channel on YouTube. There, you'll find lots of videos chock full of technique, personal success (and fails), and videos of me talking shop with my adult gymnast buddies. There's a lot of great stuff there!
Stacey Tirro is an arts educator, a high school physical education teacher, a mom and wife, a singer, and an author/podcaster, and a coach at Flipper’s Gymnastics in Ramsey NJ. She loves creating content of her Geriatric Gymnastics escapades, which you can find on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
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