M2M Day 104: I’m weirdly convinced that my next backflip will be perfect
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For February, my goal is to land a backflip.
After my session on Friday, while I was packing up, my coach, Elijah, came by to give me one more piece of advice: “You should spend some time this weekend watching more backflip tutorials on YouTube. Maybe, in one of those videos, the instructor will explain the backflip in a way that helps you better make sense of everything we’ve practiced so far. Something might click.”
Today, while following this advice, something did indeed click.
After about 90 miles of YouTubing, I came across a video titled “How to Get a Higher Backflip”. While this video isn’t exactly a backflip tutorial, it does discuss some common backflipping inefficiencies, which I immediately related to.
The instructor described two main inefficiencies: 1. The fully-squatted windup, and 2. The untucked leg-whip.
I’ll explain both of these inefficiency in the context of my personal backflip…
1. The fully-squatted windup
When I go to do a backflip, the first thing I do is jump straight up as high as I can. The higher I get, the higher my axis of rotation is, which gives me more time/space to complete a full rotation before landing on my feet.
Thus, I’m trying to jump as hard and as high as I can. But, it turns out that my maximum effort jump (or, at least, my current interpretation of “maximum effort”) is a bad idea.
In my mind, to maximize my jump, I squat to 9o degrees and then explode upwards.
This is not good.
Because I’m bending so far down, I’m unnecessarily increasing the distance between where my body is and where I want it to be in the air. In other words, I’m needlessly lowering the height of my axis of rotation.
Also, because my body is starting parallel to the floor (i.e. tilted 90 degrees past standing), I’m unnecessarily adding an additional 90 degrees to my backflip.
Thus, with this windup, I need to rotate more, but lower to the ground.
This is clearly a mistake, and one that I hadn’t fully internalized until I watched the “How to Get a Higher Backflip” video.
As a comparison, here’s a still frame of Elijah at the lowest point in his backflip. The different is pretty striking.
Clearly, much of the power is coming from explosive calf muscles, and not from the bigger, slower leg muscles.
2. The untucked leg-whip
Last session, I started doing this weird “untucked leg-whip” thing.
Basically, rather than jumping up and bringing my knees into a tuck, I’m instead trying to swing my nearly-fully extend legs around my body.
I think this is what people do when they are trying to “do a backflip” (but, of course, to do a good backflip, I need to teach my body to do something a little bit less natural).
In the “How to Get a Higher Backflip” video, the instructor explains that “if you just whip your legs around, you will probably put a lot of strain on your calves and shins”. Since I woke up yesterday with completely acheless abs and very sore calves, my body knew what was up.
Instead of trying to swing my legs around, I need to pull into a tuck and let the rotational momentum carry me around.
While these two insights aren’t necessarily new (these are ideas Elijah and I reviewed during Lesson 1), something clicked today.
It’s hard to explain the feeling, but, while watching this video, I was hit with a wave confidence and clarity: I feel this odd certainty that, on Tuesday, when I attempt my next backflip at AcroSports, it will be nearly perfect.
For the first time, I feel like my brain finally understand what it needs to ask my body to do.
Of course, I don’t have the best track record of effectively controlling my body with my brain, but I still have this feeling about things… I guess we will find out on Tuesday.
Read the next post. Read the previous post.
