Shoulder Flexibility

I’ve been taking private gymnastics lessons, one or two a months since last November. I’d always wanted to do those cool gymnastics tricks (front handsprings, back handsprings, back flips, aerial cartwheels, etc.) After eight lessons, I have a solid front handspring, and I’m close to a back flip and an aerial. My back handspring is not at all ready for prime time, but I can do them on a trampoline. I’m fairly pleased with my progress. In my most recent lesson (last week), we figured out I could do a roundoff after about five minutes of instruction. That was satisfying.

I said this before in a previous post : It’s really important to get a coach with stuff like this. You can sometimes make impressive gains on your own, but there’s no substitute for having an expert telling you what you’re doing wrong. Try this for anything you want to get better at. Are you struggling with a computer language or some other skill at work? Find someone who knows better than you and ask them. Even offer to pay a tutor. Come up with a set of questions or skills you want to learn, then set up a meeting with a co-worker or paid tutor who is willing to teach you. You might find you’re not even asking the right questions.

One thing I never would have thought about is my shoulder flexibility. I had very stiff shoulders, which my gymnastics coach spotted right away. I’ve been stretching them daily since November, and they’re a lot more flexible now. I have very good leg flexibility (almost down to the splits), but never stretched my shoulders. This deficiency was masked from my view, because in my mind “I’m pretty flexible.” I never would have thought to work on this. My front handspring (which I could already do to a reasonable standard before I started stretching) has gotten much better. The push off the ground isn’t at the proper angle unless you can reach your arms far enough above/behind your head.

The moral of the story: get a coach.