There are certain skills that are landmark skills – skills that mark major progress in a gymnast’s career. Double backs are certainly one of those skills. Training for double backs can begin long before a gymnast is ready to turn them over on floor or regulation equipment. Developing the technique, timing, rotation and air awareness for double backs starts with gymnasts learning to do timers for double backs. The first place gymnast usually do timers for double backs is on trampoline like the first video below demonstrates.

Double Backs Timers on Trampoline

This double back timer does show both the back Tuck (very open tuck in this case) to a back drop and continues doing the back pullover out. Gymnasts first learn doing the double back timers without the back pullover out and then add it in. while this is certainly a demonstration of what a double back timer consists of, there are numerous technical improvements that need to be made to this one, including set, speed of rotation and body position.

Double Backs Timer Tumbling Uphill

This video demonstrates another type of time for double backs, tumbling uphill onto mats on floor exercise. Again, while this demonstrates the general method for doing uphill tumbling double back timers on floor, the technique could use improvement for the power, set, rotation, tuck and even the height of the mat.

Timers for Double Backs

Like many of the higher level optional skills, double backs require significant time and work to master. Trying to learn double backs in one summer or even one year is often not enough and gymnasts and coaches should plan ahead and work work to master double timers, at least a year before they expect to learn double backs.