Floor explosive punching

[Alexis Solis]

Coach and everyone else,

I'm having a lot of trouble punching on floor, so my flips don't really get a lot of height :cry:

I found this drill (watch the video below), what do you think of the two first exercises guys? Or are Senders better for achieving this?

[Joshua Naterman]

buddy lee style jumping rope is great, that video is great, any low amplitude progressive plyo work will help.

You will also get a lot out of very heavy partial squats, front or back squat doesn't matter. Find the heaviest weight you can move 3-4 inches with, not more than 6 inches, and start with 10 reps. When you can easily do 30 reps fairly quickly it's time for the weight to go up. Don't be afraid to pile on the plates, but do so intelligently.

[Alexis Solis]

Got it! THanks a lot slizzardman for answering to all of my posts! As I said... YOU'RE THE MAN!

[John Sapinoso]

holy crap her voice is annoying. that drill could be done n a hard surface. also weights achieve a similar effect.

[Joshua Naterman]

holy crap her voice is annoying. that drill could be done n a hard surface. also weights achieve a similar effect.

+9000!

I personally prefer hard surfaces for the lock leg bouncing, much more force on the calves and Achilles tendon. Her recommendation for locked legs during actual punching is retarded AND horribly dangerous, I left some polite comments on the video so that hopefully someone sees that and keeps a slight bend in their knees instead of ripping their cartilage or tendons or ligaments to shreds... or breaking a bone. Some people just don't think about what they are saying.

[Coach Sommer]

... Her recommendation for locked legs during actual punching is retarded AND horribly dangerous ...

This is incorrect and a common misunderstanding in the fitness world. Punching or rebounding work should and must be done with locked legs; otherwise it is not a punch but a jump. It is true however the ability to rebound must be developed patiently and progressively.

The more advanced the skill, the more meticulous the athlete must be in attempting to punch correctly. The necessity of this becomes obvious when attempting multiple flipping or multiple twisting or elements which contain both multiple flips and multiple twists (e.g.

) due to the extremely brief moment of contact with the floor during the rebound. A jumping action allows far too great a percentage of the force generated to dissipate resulting in a sub par performance of advanced skills (e.g. landing on the face). This problem does however tend to be self correcting :wink:.

- The use of the vaulting table for the drills in the above video is more for the ease of securing the bands than anything else.

- Unfortunately weights are unable to achieve the same adaptation.

In this case, I would also recommend listening respectfully to her opinions. MLT stands for Mary Lee Tracy who has trained several athletes over the years who have made both World Championship and Olympic Teams for the US.

Yours in Fitness,
Coach Sommer

[Nic Scheelings]

Coach,

It is interesting the difference between tumbling on a sprung floor and on a hard surface. On a hard surface it seems impossible to punch as you would on sprung floor due to the immovability of what you are punching against this just creates extreme pain. Most people I know who tumble on a hard floor tend to absorb and jump much more when tumbling. Obviously you cannot do the ammount of combinations on a hard floor as you can on a sprung floor. Basic punching on grass doesn't seem to bad to me however if I'm going to sault I tend to absorb and jump rather than punch as it just seems to be too much force. What are your thoughts?

[Blairbob]

Demus that is covered in Championship Gymnastics.

Tumbling on hard surfaces is different than a sprung floor. As well sprung floors also have a double bounce in them due to the springs.

[Cole Dano]

This is very interesting. I find the punch to be totally unnatural, i think from skating and snowboarding where one always jumps from bent knees and lands with bent knees to absorb the impact. Still, i'd like to learn it and fondly remember Coach point out my inability to do it in Mallorca.

Coach's insistance on locked knees in the seminar had me wondering. As always it's very helpful when Coach sets the record straight on these matters. Gymnastics wisdom seems to often contradict what we've been taught as truths in the fitness or yoga world, and with reflection i almost always find the gymnastic truth to be correct but it assumes the proper preparation so often lacking in 'my world'.

Coach, please do give your feedback on the differences in surfaces. Hard surface, panel mats, grass etc. Does the punch need to soften on these? What is the best path to prepare?

[Blairbob]

http://www.chalkbucket.com/forums/coach-forum/35233-tumbling-technique-sprung-floor-vs-un-sprung-mats.html

3run, just make you sure are opening up your hips and not starting to flip off the ground. Video would help here to have an idea what you are or are not doing.

[Joshua Naterman]

It's definitely true that the large travel provided by the springs will essentially do the same job as the knee bend does on harder surfaces, which is going to allow the athletes to maintain a nearly straight leg without causing problems.

I have spent several hours searching for every slow motion video of world and Olympic tumbling runs I can find, and I have yet to see one without slight knee bend. The forward rebounds are noticeably straighter than back rebounds, which makes sense. 10-20 degrees is almost imperceptible, but it is there and it literally cuts whatever peak forces are present in half at the very least, at least based on the physics equations for impact forces. The important thing is to minimize or eliminate any decrease in joint angle during the rebound so that no rebound force is lost, which a properly conditioned athlete will be more than able to do with up to 10-20 degrees of knee flexion on a spring floor for sure.

I know that straight legs is the teaching euphemism used to keep the athletes from doing a standard leg absorption so that it is spring action propelling them out of the rebound and not a second jump, but in practice a truly straight leg is very likely to cause injury. This is a really, really semantic thing, I know, but I would hate to see someone take it too literally and hurt themselves on accident.

Having said all that, I suppose it may be numerically possible (meaning that force reduction might be enough for the impact forces to be safe with locked legs, but I don't have access to the force data for the joints involved) to have truly locked legs during an actual tumbling run rebound without an acute or chronic injury developing but I haven't seen anything without at least a few degrees of knee bend yet though one run was really really close.

I don't mean to be rude or contradictory, but completely locked knees have a very specific connotation and I haven't seen this in any videos I could find. Darn close, good enough for government work certainly, but not actually locked. Maybe this is just because almost no one truly does a perfect punch, I don't know. The idea of truly locked knees scares me. 2-3 degrees of flexion? Not a problem, but 0 degrees is a bit much for my mind to handle. Doesn't mean I'm right, spring floors have an awful lot of give and it may be enough.

[Coach Sommer]

You are right and wrong. And yes, you are being semantic rather than pragmatic.

The intent is indeed to have straight, tight, locked legs. Coming down onto tight locked knees is only problematic if the landing is on the heels; and the arches and the calves are not permitted to perform their function.

The knee bend however that you are observing however has nothing to do with the tumbling surface (the first double back flip was performed on a standard wooden basket floor in the 60s) and everything to do with either the absorption or the repulsion of the forces involved. The larger the degree of absorption that occurs, the lesser the degree of repulsion that occurs. That knee bend is occuring despite the athlete's best efforts to prevent it.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Alexis Solis]

Just to set things right:

I've found all of this very interesting and very instructive, thanks a lot to all of you!

First of all:

1. While punching to do ANY flip on floor, one should COMPLETELY lock his knees... right?

2. (This wasn't disccused yet) Are Senders better/the same than this drill in terms of the strength gains/ability-to-punch gains that they have? I don't mean to compare the work of two excellent coaches (Coach Sommer and Mary Lee Tracy; you both are great!) but I want to know if I should include this drill on my WODs that include Senders. :roll:

Lastly, thanks a lot to all of you. It is really great when little doubts like these are answered and set straight. Little doubts, however, that seriously affect our training and consequently our performance. Cheers!

[Blairbob]

I would prefer "Senders" for developing leg power than the first 2 drills. Think of those drills as assistance drills.

A Sender is a plyometric movement It's pretty bread and butter. MLT shows a lot of different drills, some that are plyo and training drills.

[Coach Sommer]

... Coach, please do give your feedback on the differences in surfaces. Hard surface, panel mats, grass etc. Does the punch need to soften on these? What is the best path to prepare? ...

Developing the ability to punch/rebound, whether utilizing the upper body or the lower body, requires a reasonable fitness base, adequate joint preparation, correct progressions and careful monitoring to ensure that the athlete is not exposed to either excessive load or volume. Note that this is always the area in which GB Seminar participants arrive with the least proficiency.

However when approached correctly, the strength gains from this type of dynamic work are staggering and cannot be duplicated through any other modality of training.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

[Joshua Naterman]

... Coach, please do give your feedback on the differences in surfaces. Hard surface, panel mats, grass etc. Does the punch need to soften on these? What is the best path to prepare? ...

Developing the ability to punch/rebound, whether utilizing the upper body or the lower body, requires a reasonable fitness base, adequate joint preparation, correct progressions and careful monitoring to ensure that the athlete is not exposed to either excessive load or volume. Note that this is always the area in which GB Seminar participants arrive with the least proficiency.

However when approached correctly, the strength gains from this type of dynamic work are staggering and cannot be duplicated through any other modality of training.

Yours in Fitness,

Coach Sommer

Thank you for the clarification in the earlier post. I definitely believe that the attempt to maintain an unyielding leg is a requirement, and I have to grant that as tissues become more durable through consistent training they can withstand significantly more forces.

Do you think that a certain amount of knee bend becomes somewhat requisite as surfaces get harder? I don't mean requisite in a conscious manner so much as in the sense that it can't be avoided.

As for the questions about the conditioning drills, I have noticed that rapid single leg calf raises for high reps seem to be working well in conjunction with punching drills similar to the low amplitude hops, like how I jump rope with straight legs. Like anything else, start off slow with this stuff and build slowly, and get to the seminars to learn much more about the preferred progressions for all of this dynamic stuff! It's quite interesting and makes a lot of sense.

In the meantime, Buddy Lee style rope jumping is a good place to start off. That will prepare your lower legs fairly well for the rigors of transitioning into true gymnastics-style rebounding and punching. I am noticing excellent results personally and it's quite fun.

Senders would be your strength training for the punching, scaled to your level for both volume and intensity of course, while the rope jumping would be more like pre-hab and beginning preparation that you can start off with 2-3x per week and build up to 4-5x per week.

[Blairbob]

I thought we talked about how jumproping was considered as injury prevention by some coaches during one of the seminars?

[Joshua Naterman]

I think we did. Apparently the Olympic Training Center was using Buddy Lee's jump rope training for a while and maybe still is. They made him a conditioning coach and everything, I think technically he was a jump rope training consultant or something but whatever it is he has tons of testimonials from all sorts of Olympic athletes. Apparently they used it for a bit in the gymnastics program as well.

[Philip Chubb]

If the legs are to be kept stiff and straight, does this also apply to hard surfaces such as hardwood or concrete? I am sure it is possible to keep them straight on mats because that is what gymnastics used to be done on but it seems a bit more painful on a hardwood floor.

[Blairbob]

No.

A gymnastics floor has springs and has had springs for many years, apparently since the early70's.

Seriously, this was answered in this link. http://www.chalkbucket.com/forums/coach-forum/35233-tumbling-technique-sprung-floor-vs-un-sprung-mats.html

Just open it up. I posted it for a reason whereas I could have just quoted it. And I won't.

[Philip Chubb]

Thanks Blairbob. I thought so but Coach and Slizz's conversation made me doubt it for a second.

[Typhoon]

I thought I'd chime in since I learned to tumble on hard surfaces (cheer's carpet floor) and eventually transitioned to spring floor. When I rebounded for tumbling passes on hard floor and punched from skill to skill the focus was always to push through the toes with the legs as straight as possible. Were my legs ever 100% locked? No, on certain skills it got close but the knees always bent despite me trying not to. Besides shin splits I never received any injuries strictly from my choice of tumbling surface.

First time tumbling on spring floor made feel like I was flying through the air.

Not sure why the people are attacking the narrator of the video, weather you agree with her recommendations or not she is clearly a high level gymnastics coach and has experience with what she is talking about. Besides Coach, I doubt anyone here has even a fraction of the woman's experience, which at least should warrant respect.

[Sailor Venus]

Coach and everyone else,

as i watched the video, the girl did a somersault and a twisted version of it in her somersault which is why i love gymnastics. Can somebody tell me please how she developed the required leg power to throw your body upwards high?

[Philip Chubb]

Coach and everyone else,

as i watched the video, the girl did a somersault and a twisted version of it in her somersault which is why i love gymnastics. Can somebody tell me please how she developed the required leg power to throw your body upwards high?

I don't know how she did particularly but there are a lot of different ways to gain that strength if it's your goal. Most important is technique though.