- What's up, Thenx athletes,
my name is Danell Leyva.
I'm an Olympic gymnast,
a retired Olympic gymnast.
But today I'm gonna show you how to do a flare.
I went to two Olympics.
I was at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics in London and Rio,
took a lot of work, right?
Had to be strong in a lot of different ways.
And today, I'm gonna show you something
that although, technically,
it's very gymnastics-centric,
it's something that you could do at home.
The entire point of gymnastics
is to make things look effortless, right?
But the way to do that
is to be incredibly strong
in a way that people won't notice
that you're actually struggling.
And so this skill specifically is something
that, as gymnasts, we make look pretty simple,
but it takes up so many different muscle groups in the body
and you have to be so dynamic
that it actually makes it really difficult.
So let's try and show you that today.
First, I'm gonna show you the actual skill,
what it looks like,
and then, I'll try and break it down for you.
All right, check it out.
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So that's the flare.
What I want to explain first
is that a flare is actually
an advanced version of something
that's just called a circle in gymnastics, right?
Which, essentially, it's what I just showed you,
but with your feet together.
Now normally you would learn it first
on a little mushroom
where you have more space away from the ground.
But we're gonna jump through all those steps
and we're gonna go advanced right away.
Now, again, before you start all of this,
make sure you get a really good warmup, right?
I'm on a softer floor,
so I have a lot of wiggle room
to kind of hit my ankle or my heel,
or even fall on my elbow or on my back
because it's soft and it's bouncy.
But if you're trying this at home,
make sure that you warm up really well.
Your wrists are very important.
You need them to be warm.
Warm up your shoulders really well.
Warm up your back, and your legs, and everything.
So this is the first breakdown.
You want to think about doing things
in quarters, right?
Instead of doing a whole circle,
you're gonna do things in a quarter.
So work this first quarter, right?
What you wanna do is put your hands
kind of shoulder width a part, right?
You wanna be
nice and sturdy.
A real quick tip,
it's a lot about leaning, right?
It's counterbalancing yourself.
The majority of your body is gonna be over there,
which means that your shoulder
needs to be a little over on this side.
And then when your body comes in the front,
you're gonna put both hands,
when it comes to this side,
obviously, constant counterbalancing.
So what you wanna do,
shoulder width apart,
(upbeat music)
spread your legs.
Now you gotta also find,
which is your strongest side, right?
Try both sides, see which one feels best.
So again, here,
use your base,
wind up,
stop.
So for that first step,
and you're gonna feel a lot on your shoulder,
you're gonna feel a lot of tricep working as well,
a lot of core work.
It's a pretty solid full-body workout
in the sense that you need to hold yourself
up in the air for the entire time.
So, like I said, step one,
first quarter, boom.
Now, once you've mastered that
that you feel really strong on this arm
or with this arm, whichever way you go,
then you can can try and keep going to the front.
(upbeat music)
Quarter, stop.
All right?
Now I'm on a softer floor, right?
So it doesn't really hurt for me
to land on my heels or anything like that.
If you're on hard ground and you're trying this,
try and land
(hands clapping)
with your foot flat.
Through here,
wind up,
foot flat,
then here.
And that actually helps you
figure out that your hips
need to be pretty high up, right?
Now, again, counterbalancing,
you're leaning.
Don't think too much front and back.
Think more side to side.
Step two,
half,
boom.
Doesn't matter if you come off,
it's all good.
Step three,
all the way, three quarters.
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And stop.
You see, it's easy.
And you can kind of slide it like that too
and you'll find yourself.
And try and really find
your positioning, your body position, right?
(upbeat music)
Stop, here, all right?
And step four is a full circle.
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All the way around.
Yeah?
Amazing.
Now if you can try and put that together,
you've got a flare.
(upbeat music)
And you can do a bunch.
Once you get comfortable with it,
once you find your balance,
your spacing,
and what you need to tighten,
what you need to swing in the right time,
you'll do a bunch,
as much as your body can handle.
So like I said,
that skill is basically broken down
into four steps in this video.
And skills in gymnastics,
it's a little more based off of, like, what you feel.
You know what I mean?
Like, are you, do you feel ready
to move to the next step?
If you do feel ready,
go ahead and try it out.
If you can't make it,
that's perfectly fine.
There's no shame in taking a step back,
working on that first step again,
and then building up to that second step.
And then from second to third, and third to fourth.
It's really no shame in taking a step back.
Take your time with all this stuff.
Feel really confident.
When you feel that you can almost hold yourself up
without needing that support of your leg,
then move on to that second step.
And kind of same thing,
when you feel that your butt
isn't immediately landing on the ground,
then you can move on to that third step.
And same thing with the first step,
when you feel that your leg can kind of almost float
before you need to put it down for that third step,
then you can move on to the fourth.
Other than that,
feel your body,
trust your body,
and work from there.
I think the good thing about this skill,
I mean, I will say,
back in the day,
a lot of people used this way more,
especially on their floor routine.
You know, if you did a certain amount,
that you went up into a handstand and back down,
it was worth a certain amount
and it was actually, like, pretty high up.
There's a lot of people that used to use it,
and it was beautiful.
You needed a lot of flexibility and strength
and it made you very strong.
Now, people try and do way more tumbling
and it's a lot, like,
a lot more time based.
So they try and focus on putting all their time
in flipping and all that stuff.
But this, it's just a really cool skill.
So if you're not a gymnast
and you just wanna learn this
for the sake of looking cool,
then by all means do that.
And it will make you very strong.
All right guys, thank you so much for watching.
Remember, we post at 10:00 AM
every Monday, Eastern Standard Time.
I hope you learned something.
I hope you were able to figure this out at home.
Remember, like and subscribe.
If you wanna follow me,
I'm on Instagram and YouTube.
Instagram is DANELLJLEYVA,
and my YouTube,
I'm pretty sure is also the same thing.
Otherwise, we'll put it in one of these tags
somewhere around here.
Click on my face, you know what I mean?
I don't even know.
Thanks so much for watching.
We'll see you next time.
Bye.
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