Common Mistakes With Backflips
This year, our crash contest took the internet by storm, and we couldn't help but notice that there was a common theme occurring. Skiers love to backflip, why would you not, but we saw the same issues coming up over and over again. Are you making any of these mistakes when backflipping?
Let Dean take you through some of the most common mistakes with backflips so that you can improve your technique (and reduce your hospital bills).
*Warning: Some of these crashes made us cringe real hard!
When it comes to not landing backflips, there are 3 main types of skiers. The Under-rotator, the Over-rotator and the Non-Committed. Lets dive into each of these skiers to understand the error of their ways.
The Under-rotator
Under rotations often lead to catching your tips and going for a belly slide!
Under-rotating can suck and often leads to face slides / belly slides/ double ejections! But what is the reason why skiers are struggling to get that backy around?
- Rotating with your head rather than your feet.
Is the flip meant to be coming from throwing your head back and leading with your upper body? Hell No! It should be coming primarily from your feet pushing up off the jump to generate the rotation and pop.
- Failing to drive your hip forwards on takeoff.
Many skiers find themselves popping off the take-off too late as a result of not properly driving their hip forwards. Along with the hip drive, it's important to tighten up your body when rotating. Ensure that your feet don't drop down and instead that they follow you with your rotation.
- Lack of Confidence.
The Over-Rotator
@DavidSaurer_ knows all too well what over rotations are like!
Over rotation is one of the hardest mistakes to come back from, especially on serious over-rotations. Most causes of over-rotations can be drawn back to the takeoff. If over rotating is your issue, focussing on your take-off is about to become essential.
Getting your body position and line-of-sight on point will help to sort this out! This also leads back to why it is so important to open up your hips on take-off. Over-rotations are often a result of having bent knees while taking off, as this causes your weight to be thrown over your tails.
An easy correction for this is to ensure you keep looking forward on the lip, unlike our unfortunate guinea pig, who found himself gazing way into the stratosphere hoping for greatness.
In cases where your over-rotation is not beyond all hope, stretching out your body as much as possible, as early as possible will slow your rotation and give you the best chance of saving it.
Non-Committed
Notice how our mate here is already trying to spot the landing.
Fear of the unknown when learning a new trick, especially backflips can be difficult to overcome. Backflips require you to enter a darkness and lose vision of the jump for a brief second until you come back around.
If like some of our skier pals here, you're struggling to get inverted all together, here's some tips so that you can get inverted soon.
- Head to a trampoline facility and practice your backflips. At many facilities, there are professional coaches who are trained to help you go heels over head and become more comfortable with doing so.
- You can also practice backflips at swimming pools with diving boards. Again, we recommend to seek help from a coach so that you can gain confidence with this safely.
Making mistakes and crashing when learning new tricks is a natural part of progression. Hopefully with this, you can now correct your technique and have the perfect backflips on lock down!
Ollie Barbour
Ski Addiction
Helping You Ski Better
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