Parents - Progression of skills (2024)

My daughter is 4 and just bumped up to beginning trampoline. She was in preschool trampoline and tumbling but is doing very well so they bumped her. We are okay with that. So this week she was learning front flips, back flips and twist jumps into the foam pit. We don't know anything about this side of gymnastics and there aren't many videos on progressions of skill on line. So a friend of mine whos 5 year old is a level 3 on the artistic side. She was saying on that side they have to do cart wheels, back hand springs and so on before learning to do a front or back flip. My friend who is kind of an anxious mom about safety said I needed to make sure they are teaching her the correct progression for safety reasons. I'm not worked up or anything but as I know nothing about TNT and can't find much about their skill progressions online to know if this is a safe way of doing it. I'm also aware theres more than one way to skin a cat and I feel comfortable that shes learning to do with into the pit with her coach with her there with her. I'm just doing my due diligence as I know nothing.

Here is a picture of her from May at the gyms trophy meet doing a straddle jump We had no idea she could do it that well as the parent seating is quite far from the big tramps

estamey21 said:

This seems a bit risky, especially for someone her age and the type of program she is in. Is she being spotted into the pit, or is she doing flips by herself? Anything involving flips should be broken down into small steps if only to emphasize basic safety techniques. Lots of kids can chuck a front flip and brag about it to their friends, but they put themselves at risk if they haven’t learned “defensive gymnastics” (i.e. learning how to land when things go well, learning how to fall when things go wrong).

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Shes not physically spotted for the front flip but her coach is right with her. She is physically spotted for the back flip. For the back they did at least break it down to how shes supposed to jump back and she would land straight into their arms laying on her back. Then they did that into a backflip.

The mom does have a point about progressions. Our gym (developmental) does a series of progressions to learn the back flip before even doing it on the trampoline. First it is a jump up to a mat behind you. Then jump up and land on your back on a taller stack. Then jump up & land in a tuck position on your back and roll down a wedge mat.

Once coach feels you have mastered those 3, you can move to trampoline but landing in the pit. Once you master a nice jump with back tuck on the trampoline you can move to tumble track. Once the tuck is master they work thru progressions to connect it to a back hand spring.

I know TnT goes quicker through the skills but have they taught your daughter how to properly set for the back tuck or to just chuck it? My DD could chuck a back tuck at age 4. She had to unlearn that and relearn proper jump stretch then tuck to get the nice height and extension needed to expand skills later (layout, pike, double back, etc).

katrid11 said:

The mom does have a point about progressions. Our gym (developmental) does a series of progressions to learn the back flip before even doing it on the trampoline. First it is a jump up to a mat behind you. Then jump up and land on your back on a taller stack. Then jump up & land in a tuck position on your back and roll down a wedge mat.

Once coach feels you have mastered those 3, you can move to trampoline but landing in the pit. Once you master a nice jump with back tuck on the trampoline you can move to tumble track. Once the tuck is master they work thru progressions to connect it to a back hand spring.

I know TnT goes quicker through the skills but have they taught your daughter how to properly set for the back tuck or to just chuck it? My DD could chuck a back tuck at age 4. She had to unlearn that and relearn proper jump stretch then tuck to get the nice height and extension needed to expand skills later (layout, pike, double back, etc).

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From the video i saw they are teaching her to jump back stretched out straight, arms above head into the coaches arms. Then the coach physically assists her in the remainder of the flip. From the floor into the pit.

Front flip shes just chucking herself.

Shinybanana said:

My daughter is 4 and just bumped up to beginning trampoline. She was in preschool trampoline and tumbling but is doing very well so they bumped her. We are okay with that. So this week she was learning front flips, back flips and twist jumps into the foam pit. We don't know anything about this side of gymnastics and there aren't many videos on progressions of skill on line. So a friend of mine whos 5 year old is a level 3 on the artistic side. She was saying on that side they have to do cart wheels, back hand springs and so on before learning to do a front or back flip. My friend who is kind of an anxious mom about safety said I needed to make sure they are teaching her the correct progression for safety reasons. I'm not worked up or anything but as I know nothing about TNT and can't find much about their skill progressions online to know if this is a safe way of doing it. I'm also aware theres more than one way to skin a cat and I feel comfortable that shes learning to do with into the pit with her coach with her there with her. I'm just doing my due diligence as I know nothing.

Here is a picture of her from May at the gyms trophy meet doing a straddle jump We had no idea she could do it that well as the parent seating is quite far from the big tramps

Click to expand...

Hi I’m an adult gymnast from an olympic level T and T club in the UK and my children did trampoline for a short while. The skill progression for T and T is very different to artistic. In my club they do start to teach the little ones front and back somersault at 4 years old on trampoline and i have seen little ones as young as 4 do a front somersault on trampoline and back somersault.
Once you have the basics they tend to move onto these skills as they don’t do cartwheel or back/front handsprings in competitive trampoline. I think the power required to do a front and back somersault on floor is very different to a trampoline. If you search up British trampoline proficiencies it will give you a list of skills which is probably general for most learning trampoline in any country. I hope shes having a brilliant time learning trampoline its such a fun sport

Its normal for trampoline. They never need to do cartwheels or back handsprings, so they don't do them. They go straight into learning flips after the basic positions and drops.
And they never need to do it on the floor so into the pit on on a trampoline is it.

They have different progressions.

Just watched an old video from when my youngest first started.

It had 3 kids in in. One is doing a foward roll down a wedge into the pit with the coach assisting. One is doing a roll into the pit from standing (no jump), and the 3rd (mine) standing then jumping and doing a flip into the pit. Thats basically what the early progressions look like for a front flip in trampoline.
Of course thats not where it stops - they go on to learn the correct arm positioning which helps them go up rather than forward, and they take it to the trampoline and double mini (spotted - sometimes they hold the back of their tshirt - sometime they hold their hand, and then on to just having an arm there to get push them around if needed, and then on to doing it on their own). But definitley no cartwheels or handsprings involved (which is good as mine can't do those things!).