How to do Summersaults on a Trampoline
Created | Updated Oct 16, 2002
For some reason some people think summersaults are hard and others think it's easy. That is until they actually come to do one. Then the people who think it's easy find it hard and those who think it's hard, find it easy.
You should never learn summersaults without a qualified instructor as crippling injuries can occur. I've never actually witnessed this happen, but I have to give the warning anyway.
Learning summersaults is gradual thing. You are basically training your muscles to do several things at once when your brain says SUMMERSAULT. What you are actually doing is creating a program. In a computer program you can create macros with a title which will automatically do several different things. This is essentially what you are doing when you are learning how to do summersaults.
So, what you need to do to do a summersault correctly is, as you are bouncing, lift your arms up to touch the ceiling (which you should not do literally) and kick your heels back. You should not throw your arms forwards as you are less likely to be able to land it. You have lifted, kicked back and now you need to tuck in your knees and hold on to them for a split second with your arms. Now kick your heals back out, lift your arms, and you should land on your feet to carry on bouncing. Wahoo. Back summersaults are exactly the same, only you kick your heels forwards instead of backwards. Easy peasy. Now all you need to do is practice. Pretty soon all you will need to do is think summersault, lift your arms and do one. It's as simple as that.
