Air Time in Aerial (blog post #4)

          Hello everyone! Welcome back to my bog. If you have never been to my blog, the purpose of my blog is to fix techniques in my aerial while in the air. This time I chose to fix what is did in the air. In the book Gymnastics Skills, Tips, and Tricks by Jeff Savage, there are many ideas to what to be working on mid-flight. I mostly focused on my head and arms. Throughout these blogs I have changed a lot about my aerial and have kept those changes. They have made my aerial a lot easier and I can see/feel a tremendous difference. One thins I was curious about was my mind air position. I never really focused on that, I only paid attention to getting over. 

          Author Jeff Savage, talks on body position as well as where your head should be in an aerial. As far as your body position you should be in a basic "straight" position in the air. The straight position is basically a pencil torso with scissor legs (Savage 6). Jeff Savage describes this in detail by saying "Hold your arms to your side, stand straight, hold your body tight by squeezing your muscles" (Savage 6). I believe the straight position is used to whip you around the fasted while making the trick look effortless and clean. The second technique to focus on in the air is your head position. Similar to blog post three, you have to spot, but this time you spot the ground. It is very important important to spot the ground in acrobatic tricks (Savage 12). Savage goes in to a deeper understanding of this by saying "Make sure you look down to see where you are going, At the the top of the move, you should be completely apart" (Savage 13).  I think this idea has a good concept but personally I'm guessing this won't help me. I feel the head position described would make me bend more backwards when the trick is suppose to be in a straight line. I sounds very dangerous.

          After trying these new techniques, there were a few problems. Like I had guessed, having your head arched back makes it nearly impossible to do an aerial. I couldn't take a picture because I put my hands down every time because it felt so uncomfortable and risky. To prevent injury, I decided to stop. For some people, this technique could have been helpful, which is why Jeff Savage wrote about it. On a good note, keeping my hands by my side looked very clean! It felt very comfortable and helped me whip a round fast.  

          My aerial is now very clean with all the changes made through this book! I am very pleased will the the results and feel all aspects of my aerial has been recognized and progressively gotten better. With this, my next blog will be on something other then flipping! Tune into my next blog post when I steer away from tricks and try something new!

What are your favorite stretches? What stretches do you think would be most helpful for aerials?

Savage, Jeff. Gymnastics Skills, Tips, and Tricks. Enslow Publishers, Inc., 2012.