Here’s What You’re About To Learn

• Why the brain works differently when upside down
• The magic 5:1 ratio I use to eliminate bad habits (works with all skills)
• How elevation changes can be a curse or a benefit
• The #1 muscle group the athlete needs to squeeze for tight, beautiful legs

Here’s Why This Drill Works So Well

Generally speaking, most athletes have no trouble squeezing their legs in the RO by itself (and if they do, they shouldn’t even be working BHS connections.)

The athlete in the video is a perfect example: She can do the RO and the RO jump back beautifully without issue, but if you were to ask her to connect it to a BHS, the legs would magically part like the Red Sea.

So what gives? Well, the issue was that she couldn’t feel the squeeze while going upside down. When orientation changes, the quality of a particular skill someone was once competent at, suddenly goes out the window.

At least for most humans who are not elite tumblers.

Hence why I’m making her go downhill; it allows her head to go below her hip level, making it a mild inversion.

But during this mild inversion, she was told to squeeze as tight as possible and simulate the BHS while engaging her glutes.

That last part is very important. If the glutes aren’t tight (fancy word for muscles in the butt), then the legs have an almost zero chance of staying together.

This may be visually hard to see in the video because she wasn’t as tight as she could’ve been. So if you’re a coach, a check to see if the glutes are slightly elevated. If so, that’s a good indication of muscle engagement.

The Magical 5:1 Ratio For Fixing Bad Habits

Most people think that if you get an athlete to do this drill a thousand times, then the next time they throw the RO BHS, it will instantly be fixed. That’s usually not how it works.

What you want to do instead is make the athlete feel the correction with the drill, then have them test it out. Eventually the feel of the squeeze will “click” in their brains and you’ll have a RO BHS that doesn’t want to make you poke your eyes out.

And I like to follow a ratio of 5:1

In other words, for every 5 reps of this drill, they are to throw one pass of the RO BHS, so we can check. As time passes, there should be a very obvious improvement. If not, take a step back, and check their RO jump back to see if the legs are staying tight while their body is in a more naturally orientated state.

An Easier Way To Fix Wide Legs For Any Tumbling Skill

While going through the process above is something I’ve found to be very effective and useful, I do prefer to spend more of my time on coaching tumbling instead of fixing tumbling (especially the bad habits which I never put there in the first place).

This tool was called AnkleMagz. You can see how it works below…

Unfortunately, AnkleMagz are no longer in production.

But don’t worry, not all is lost. You can still get great results but using more “home-made” solutions like cutting up a pool noodles, rubber bands, velcro straps etc.

Give this drill a try, and then slowly introduce the BHS connection once the athlete’s feel has developed. In the meantime, be sure to join my newsletter (below) and you’ll be the first one to know when new drills, articles and other content is released! 

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