I’m starting to really enjoy Saturday morning sessions. There’s only a handful of us, and it’s usually just myself and a bunch of kids younger than me so it’s a very different environment. This week we did a warm up and then started working on handstands, my personal favorite. I’m not actually being sarcastic this time. I love handstands. Gymnast, remember? I’ve been doing handstands since I was like 3 years old so the idea that they can be considered a workout is fun for me. While I was working on mine, I offered some advice to one of the kids (K1) and before I knew it, I was teaching a miniature handstand class. Normally, I don’t consider myself a good teacher... mostly because I lack patience. But these kids were cool and I was in a relaxed mood so I worked on their handstands with them, holding their feet up so they knew what a good handstand should feel like, and giving them pointers.
K2 asked me how you get from doing a handstand against the wall to doing a good free standing handstand. I have no idea. I have no recollection of when I learned to do a handstand. That’s how long ago it was, which makes it a lot harder to teach. Usually when I teach something, I try to remember how I was taught and then add to it. In this case, I kept doing handstands and trying to figure out why mine were good and then attempting to relay that information to the kids in a way that made sense. I guess I said something right because K1 got a couple of really good ones before we were done. Maybe I’m not such a bad teacher after all!
After our handstand class, we built a little fort and worked on shimmying around it and climbing up and down and jumping across and climbing up. My arms were still pretty sore so I was happy to move on to vaults during open gym instead of climbing around. I worked some safety vaults and then I decided I wanted to try it without my foot, apparently called a speed vault. This took me a while. Not to just do it—that wasn’t too hard. But to do it right and to do it smoothly, that was the challenge. The best part for me is I’ve started really getting a feel for things and I can tell when I do something well. It just feels right. A couple of times, I could tell just by the way it flowed that I did a good one. I was also working on my reverse safety vault (the one for getting away from zombies) and strangely enough, this one is much smoother than my safety going forwards. I even did it a few times without my foot. Again, way smoother than going forwards. Weirdo.
Accomplishment: speed vault
Things to work on: stationary handstand (I tend to walk around on my hands when my hips shift)
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