Gymnastics - Vault
Skills & Techniques
The vault generally has more to do with the run and takeoff then the flipping after contact with the horse. A gymnast must run fast, and explode off the board to generate as much height and rotation as possible to get those good results.
Running:-
Arm swing:-
- Before any running approaches are used to the vault, the gymnast should understand a proper arm swing. On a springy floor work hurdle to punch with an upwards arm swing. This should be comfortable and consistant before moving to a spring board.
- The arm swing is a very important and often a major componant of vaulting. Many younger gymnasts don't have a proper arm swing and later have to relearn their vault approach.
- The arm swing should enhance the lift generated by the springboard. This entails swinging the arms upward as the gymnast punches off the board.
- Work straight jumps off a spring board onto a large mat or stacked mats. The gymnast should be able to do this without any forward rotation. An aggressive arm swing and properly extending their feet in front of their hips will result in the proper take off.
Tactics & Strategies
Pre-flight:-
The stage of the vault is after your feet hit the springboard to the time your hands hit the vaulting horse itself. There are several ways to do the pre-flight, depending on the particular vault you're doing. A few of these are handspring, half-on, and Yurchenko entries. But for our basic purposes, we will only look at handspring and half-on vaults.
Something I forgot to mention last week was the importance of landing with your feet in front of you when you hit the board. This will ensure an upwards transition of energy; otherwise, with all the forward momentum you have created from the run, if you lean forward when you hit the board, you'll smack your face into the vault. Not a pleasant feeling. Trust me.
Now, on to the pre-flight. Here the most important thing to keep in mind is to stay tight. The same principle goes for vault. If you stay tight, you'll bounce and fly right into the after-flight.
Handsring:-
The handspring vault is the compulsory vault for the USA Junior Olympic Levels 5 and 6, and is often used as the Level 7 optionals vault. And while the judging gets more specific and "picky" in the higher levels, the vault is exactly the same.
Besides staying tight, another important element to remember is to produce a strong heel drive to get the flipping motion for the handspring. There are several exercises you can do to strengthen your back and stomach muscles.
| "Superman" body tighteners |  | Lay on the floor on your stomach with your arms in front of you, tight by your ears. You whole body should begin as tight and long as you can make it. Then lift your chest and your legs at the same time and hold it for about 20 seconds. |
| Heel kicks |  | This is one where you'll have to lie lengthwise on the vault. Grab the underside of the vault for balance. Let your legs hang off the end. Then using your back and leg muscles, kick your legs up into the air as high as you can. Ideally, they should be above horizontal. Remember to keep your body tight throughout the repetitions. |
With a spotter watching, try doing dive rolls over the vault. You'll want to have quite a few mats stacked up on the other side of the vault to soften the landing, and it doesn't matter if the stack is high. The point is to drive your heels while staying tight so that you go over the vault.
Once you get that, go ahead and apply all these drills into your handspring vault. Another thing to keep in mind is not to bring your pre-flight too high on to the vault. Like the springboard, the vault is designed to transfer some of the horizontal energy into height.
Half-ons:-
With half-on approaches, you want to keep just about everything from the handspring the same: the low hurdle, punching with your feet in front, finishing your arm circle to the top, and staying tight throughout the pre-flight. The only difference you make is when you twist.
The important thing to remember is to twist only when you have completed your arm circle to your ears and have begun to start your heel drive. If you start twisting too early, you won't go over the vault straight; instead you will go around the side.
To get a good, tight twist, don't think about it as if you were twisting by pushing your leading shoulder in front. Instead you want to twist by throwing your following shoulder behind you, and using your leading shoulder's arm as the axis around which you turn.
And finally, as soon you hit the horse, don't let you body, especially your shoulders, sag. Stay pushed out, hollow, and tight to get to a good block, especially if you're going for Tsuks.
The Approach:-
Have you ever thought about how many different kinds of vaults there are? An awful lot, especially as the ability level increases. But there are a few basic things they all have in common, and over the next couple of weeks, we will look closely at three of the most important components of vaulting, starting today with the approach.
Let's think for a moment. What is the first and most important factor in doing a good vault? If you're thinking that it's the run, you're right on!
All the power for your vault comes from a fast and direct run. I've watched my teammates attempt vaults with weak runs, and almost certainly, they end up with weak vaults. The more speed you can get out of the sprint down the runway, the more potential power and distance you'll have for your after-flight.
There are many drills you can do to improve your run. The most obvious one is to do sprints, but some others that will strengthen your legs are what I learned as deer runs (illustrated below), marches, and butt-kicks (illustrated below).
 | As you do these, you want to lift your front knee and push off your back leg and get forward momentum as much as possible. You don't want them to be too high; they should be somewhat low and fairly long. When done correctly, these should look like a deer running. |
| These are just short runs lifting your knees as high as possible. Don't travel forward too much on these, and try to do them as quickly as possible. | |
| Okay, I don't know what else to call them, but with these, as the name implies, you run while lifting your heels as if you were trying to kick your butt. Like the marches, you don't want to have too much forward velocity, and you want to do the kicks as quickly as you can. |
In addition to the run, the hurdle on to the board is also very important. Keep in mind that you want to keep your hurdle somewhat long and low to the ground. The board is designed to transfer forward momentum to upward momentum; it is not very effective in bouncing already-vertical movement.
After-flight:-
The after-flight has to be the most fun part of the vault. If you've got lots of power and control, it'll be the closest you can get to flying!
This final phase begins as soon as your hands leave the vault, which should be as soon as possible. The judges can hack off a large chuck of your score if your hands stay on the vault too long, so as soon as your hands hit the horse, you should already be popping out of your shoulders.
As you can probably guess by now, the important thing to keep in mind is to stay tight throughout. When you "pop" off the horse, you do this by lifting your chest into a tight hollow position with your arms tight by your ears. Your head can be tucked
slightly forward, but not too much otherwise you'll pike. As long as you're tight, this "lift" of your chest will give you the rotation you need to flip to your feet without arching.High-scoring vaults are those that have both height and distance away from the horse. In order to achieve this, you need to have a fast run, a low hurdle, a tight pre-flight, immediate "pop" off the horse, and hollow-body position in the afterflight.
Remember to land with your knees bent. If you land lock-legged, you can throw out your back or your knees, both of which are very painful injuries you want to avoid.
Chest Positions:-
You'd be amazed at how often having good chest position comes into play in gymnastics. Most of the time, it's essential in maintaining balance and in proper position to lead into another trick. Here, we will look at a few of these, but these examples should give you an idea of when and where it is important.
| We'll start at vault. Numerous times in past features, I've emphasized the importance of keeping your chest up when you hit the board for a handspring-type vault. |  |
| Where your chest is in respect with the rest of your body is extremely important on bars. Most of the tricks rely on good form in order to work. For example, casting out of a kip requires you to be in a pike position with your chest leaning over one side of the bar - this will give you the leverage to get enough power to cast. In a free-hip circle, in order to get the power to circle the bar, once you bring your body back towards the bar, you need to drive your chest backwards and down. This will give you the momentum to shoot you up to handstand. Then there's a layout flyaway dismount (illustration): don't think your upper body doesn't help here. While you keep your body in a layout position, you can lead with your chest to give you an extra "push" in the rotation. |  |
| Keeping your chest aligned with the beam is imperative if you want to keep your balance. Everything that you do must be centered on a geometric plane perpendicular with the balance beam (illustration). Finishing a trick also requires you to lift your chest. Take a back walkover for example. If your chest is still down by the time both your feet have landed on the beam, your body is as loose as a wet noodle and you'll easily lose your balance. To avoid this, lift your upper body so that you are solid. |  |
| And finally, on floor. Body position is always emphasized on the floor exercise, particularly in the dance elements. But chest position is sometimes essential to tumbling. For example, lifting your upper body as you land an aerial cartwheel (illustration) not only makes it look nicer, but it also makes the trick more solid and sharp. In back tumbling, keeping your chest up (so that your body is in somewhat of a hollow position) will help speed up your tumbling and give you the "set" that is needed for backs, layouts, etc. In forward tumbling, keeping your upper body slightly arched will give you the snap you need to do front handspring fronts/bounders/layout fronts/etc. |  |
So as you can see, your upper body plays a major role in a large portion of how well you perform. Understand the optimal positions to help in your skills - watch others, analyze, and pay attention to what your body is doing. When you become aware of what you need to do, you should soon see some improvements.
