if you are impressed by the gym stars challenge straddle to handstands i've got some tips for you
to practice in the gym this is a really great example of a very complex skill that's used a
lot in men and women's artistic gymnastics and acrobatic gymnastics so to start on this very
complex skill what you need to do is strengthen the hip flexors and all the muscles around the
legs these girls often start with their leg taps on their right leg and you can see their hands
are nice and low working all the muscles up near the top of the hip they can also do this into a
hold where they hold their legs nice and high again replicating the straddle lever position
this is done both sides and then they also do have their hands in the middle they can do the
taps and the hold once you've mastered the leg taps you then can move on to the shadow lever hold
from here the hands go into the middle you can lift your feet up for a bit of counter
before pushing down and lifting the bottom off the floor so the next step is to then progress
up into the handstand it's really important that you do this in a gymnastics facility with a coach
but don't worry i'll be back with some more tips on how to master your handstand cartwheels can be
super spectacular and i'm going to show you some top tips on how to make your cartwheel super neat
and super special so we're going to start at the beginning and the beginning stages of a cartwheel
is being able to transfer weight on your hands across a line so you can see here daisy's jumping
her feet from side to side whilst moving her hands forwards we call this a bunny hop and with more
confidence they can then jump a little bit higher and jump their feet up as lillian's showing us
so once you've masked the bunny hops we're then going to go on and introduce a slightly higher
block or you can even use a small beam and here you can see that we're starting to incorporate
the straddle position that we need in the cartwheel so daisy is going to show us
she points her foot out her hands go down onto the block and she goes round the
sides and that's the beginning of a cartwheel that's it there you go very good and lillian
yep and they're very good first attempts it may not look like that on your first attempt but
with practice you'll definitely get there now you're confident going over a raised platform
it's going to be about taking the platform away and trying on your own so let's see daisy
she's got a lovely stretch to begin with nice fingers too
nice straight legs and a nice stretch at the end very nice having a cartwheel that goes in
a straight line is also the best way to do it so when you've got really good at your cartwheels
you can then move on to different variations of cartwheels now don't forget these girls have
learnt them in a safe gym so i wouldn't recommend trying them at home sophie's here with a round off
lillian with a one-handed cartwheel and daisy with a no-handed cartwheel
so it's not easy for everybody but just keep taking those little steps and it'll become
easy one day one of the first things you learn in gymnastics is a forward roll now it might
seem easy but to get the perfect technique takes a lot of hard work so i'm going to show you some
top tips to make your forward roll olympic standard so when starting with forward rolls
it's good to start with the basics so we're going to show you some other roll alternatives which you
can begin before the forward roll come on then girls so mia's going to show us the log roll
hands up nice and long very nice and then freya is going to show us the egg roll
these can be done either down a ramp or they can be done on the floor so once you've mastered
those we can now move on to our forward rolls so mia's gonna start on the top of here she's gonna
put her legs out nice and wide in star position hands down on the floor and now the first top tip
your chin must always be on your chest her chin is on her chest she then bends her arms and rolls
now once they've mastered that we can go and pop our legs together this time
so bend down chin on your chest very nice
then once you've got really good at that there's no need for the ramp and we can go on the floor
very nice mia so when you get really good you can look at doing different
forward roll variations so let's start with the forward roll through straight legs martika
and kick straight and bend and stretch very nice freya through to pike stand nice stretch freya
arms round keep those legs straight push very nice i like that one that was a good one
and then a big stretch through a star push legs open and start good girl mia
go very nice so there's some different variations that you can try whether at home or in your gym to
make your forward rolls brilliant so splits are really important part of all gymnast repertoire
no matter the discipline boys they'll be using it a lot on their pommel horse and their flares and
girls they use it on the beam in all their split jumps change legs and all their split elements
so the box splits are a different way to stretch your splits they use different
muscle groups and they focus more on the hips the hamstrings and the groin here we've
got a demonstration of the stretches that we'll be looking for to open up the hips
ruby starts on one side opening up her groin and her hip area and then she goes over to the
other side doing the other side stretches and then from there she can go up into a straddle position
and again slowly work to your maximum she can slide down until she feels her furthest point
so these girls are demonstrating where you can get in the end with lots of practice
and hard work they can be this amazing good luck