THE LEARNING OF
BACKWARD SUMMERSAULT
THE LEARNING OF
BACKward SUMMERSAULT
2023/10/28
In 2018, after a devastating illness called pneumothorax struck me, which caused my lungs exploded inside my chest, I was forced to quit my college after unable to keep up with the schedule (although the real reasons are a lot sinister, involving some sort of power struggle between teachers and students in college). I terminated my hopes and dreams of becoming a designer completely.
I can't even sit up without significant physical effort for a few months, my life grinded to a complete halt. couple of months later as my health condition started to recover, my mental situation still remain incredibly depressed, without the solid direction of life and resume my college study, I decided to try something new.
To begin, Here are some of the definition of movements in gymnastics:
Summersault (空翻): a movement (as in gymnastics) in which a person turns forward or backward in a complete revolution in the air bringing the feet over the head and land on the ground.
Backward summersault (後空翻): Also known as backward somersault, Generally speaking, a back somersault is considered easier than a forward somersault because it requires less rotation and control over the body
Cartwheel (側翻): a gymnastics move in which you stand sideways, put one hand and then the other on the ground, flip your legs straight up into the air, and then land your feet one at a time as you stand up straight.
Cartwheel roundoff (側翻內轉): a round off is similar to a cartwheel, except you get a running start and you land on both feet facing the direction you started from.
Cartwheel roundoff backward summersault (側翻內轉後空): basically, this move combines all of the above and utilize the launch power from the cartwheel roundoff to achieve greater heights for the backward summersault.
Aerial cartwheel (側空翻): an acrobatic move in which a cartwheel is executed without touching hands to the floor.
後空翻
Backward summersault
側翻
Cartwheel
側翻內轉
Cartwheel roundoff
側翻內轉後空
Cartwheel roundoff backward summersault (combo)
側空翻
Aerial cartwheel
By some unique opportunity while hanging out with my friends, I decided to join a gymnastic class. People often associate the image of gymnastics with the torturing training of young Chinese children. To master this sport, you need to begin training at around 3-4 years old, as for me it is a bit too late in terms of professional training.
I have a dream when in my elementary school days to become a person who can master sick moves like aerial flips to show off in front of everyone. Sadly, I don’t have a chance to learn at that time. When I finally introduced the sport, I was already 21, which greatly limit the possibilities of my body to learn new moves.
The gymnastic class focuses on a couple basic moves for adult to learn, such as basic handstand, aerial cartwheel, and backward summersault. I start my journey by attending the backward summersault class, since handstand requires strong upper body muscle to support my own weight, aerial cartwheel required the master of the basic cartwheel which I’m terrible at.
The first couple of class I experienced the feeling of flipping in air at a safe environment, with a large trampoline and safety harnesses to catch my fall if I’m unable to land. The basic move of summersault can be dissected into four parts: Jump, pull up, roll, land. Which landing aren’t a problem now, due to the aid from the trampoline and harnesses.
Although I had a massive injury on my lungs, my core strength and legs are still amazingly strong due to years of cycling. So, I mastered the basic move in a short period of time. However, the ego gets the better of me. One day, after a Saturday class, I decided to try out one flip on my own, without the coach’s supervise. Which almost ended badly as I jump way too low and the miscalculated launch angle, I nearly landed on my neck, as my hair scraping over the landing mattress. After that close call I knew I wasn't ready. I went back to square one, took my time to master the basics.
After a couple months of training, I can do the flips effortlessly on the trampoline without harnesses, and I can try the summersault with harnesses on the ground. However, leaving the trampoline means I had to learn landing by my own feet, which is even harder than I thought. I often ended up landing too soon on my toes or too late on my ankles. Which is painful even equipped with harnesses protection. But still I keep on trying again and again despite the pain.
Meanwhile, I attend the aerial cartwheel class after my miserable failure at the handstand class. My dream to learn something amazing became gradually realized one step at a time. Aerial cartwheel requires two different strengths to master: flexibility and speed, there is a girl on the class who mastered the move effortlessly due to her amazing flexibility, though she barely had any muscle power at all.
As for me, I keep failed again and again for months, even though I succeed out of luck once, I just keep failing repeatedly for around three months (and then I success another time and fail afterwards for months).
At that time, I developed some feeling towards someone in the classroom, but my poor social skills lead to an awkward situation between us. And I am so bad at participating group social events, resulting greater isolation between me and other classmates, which further degrades my interests on participating classes. After a injury caused by a badly ankle twist, I quit all classes despite never learned any moves. However, these training provides a basic foundation for further events down the road.
Two years have passed, I attend two jobs ended up with bad results, crushing the dream of working in the bicycle industry. I’m back to square one: lying on my bed depressed, lack any motivation and goals in life. Suddenly, I noticed a horrifying suicide of my friend at my previous drama club. After I attend the funeral of him, I decided to go back to my drama club to found some work to do.
This drama club is special because they focused on teenagers and students who rejects by schools and society, they are called “against wind theater troupe”. I joined them when I graduated high school, which I join because one actor can’t perform at the drama contest due to his schedule. When I entered my first college, I quit the group because of the distance between schools and the troupe.
After I’m back, I had the chance to attend acting classes and a lot of different activities. I also got a chance to perform on stage after the whole pandemic crisis.
While in rehearsal, a couple of senior members which ages are similar to me decide to retake the college entrance exam, which also motivates me to give it a shot as well. Even though the last time I study on academic subject was around six years ago, and I had a really hard time focus and study on various subjects. After two weeks of lousy study, I miraculously got a score even better than before, especially English.
However, due to the procrastination and forgetful personality, I completely forgot to apply for the college admission, which means I completely failed the college exam by sheer stupidity. I was so devastated that I developed some sort of illness related to the balance function of my brain, even the neurologist in the hospital can’t figure out what happened to my brain. I completed my stage performance in a situation similar as a drunker who can’t walk properly.
Luckily, the strange illness disappeared after I finished the play, and I decided to attend the advanced subject tests to redeem my mistakes.
After the stage play, our troupe launched a unique program in October. This show is about a story of a Taiwanese pilot in 1920. However, the show not only requires us to memorize lines and act on stage, it also requires us to learn new skills for the performance such as acrobats and tap-dances. The training brings back the backward summersault as a challenge to overcome.
What’s more, the director's background is in Chinese Opera, those acrobats training methods are ruthless and brutal. Without those safety features in the gymnastic club, even though I was practicing moves far easier than backward summersault, I still endured massive pain and tears in the duration of training.
In that time, I miraculously succeed my test, admitted to CCU foreign languages and literature department. However, the university is in Chiayi, and my troupe is in Taipei, to prepare for the show in October, I travel between Taipei and Chiayi every weekend, our performance has young boys from the National Taiwan College of Performance Arts, they are around the age of grade 12 or 13, but they master a lot of advanced movements of summersaults. This is the first time ever I can exchange experiences with someone who truly have those rad skills in front of my eye, and for this unique opportunity, I learned a lot of technique of those moves, even though I still can’t do it by myself.
When I was in high school around ten years ago, I joined our high school’s cheerleading team, but I've done it so badly that I ended up kicked out by the coach. So, when I finally get back to college, I decided to prove myself that I can overcome my trauma of bad memories in the past. I got a chance to participate in our cheerleading school team experience sessions, at here I can continue my backward summersault training.
Hence, I decided to join the school team, at the same time sharping my skills to prepare myself for the October performance. However, as a freshman in college, I still want to create new social connections with my classmates and people from other departments, join the cheerleading departments competition might introduced me to a lot of new friends. So I made a verbal agreement with the seniors in the cheerleading team that when I finished attending the competition, I will join the school team afterwards.
Although at the end. I felt that I’ve made the wrong decision to join the cheerleading departments competition. Because during the time here we won’t practice those advanced moves I've dreamed about, and we spend more time on practicing dance choreography, which was fun by the way, but my October performance still got loads of moves to memorize as well. These practice sessions drained a lot of time and energy out of me at that time.
As the days gone by, my poor social skills still got the better of me, I messed up the relations with the teammates in cheerleading department competition. After I finished the performance and the school competition, I gave up on any further motivation on cheerleading, and the dream of learning the backward summersault.
After October, I’ve had a unique chance to become an actor in our department’s graduation play, even though the journey is tough and chaotic, with endless conflicts between groups and staffs. I still had a good time performing on stage. The previous experiences of being an actor let me utilize my knowledge to work with actors and directors closely, even though at the end, my social skills still leave some unpleasant frictions with some people.
Overall, the event is pleasant and unforgettable for me. I even had a chance to improvise some action on stage, include doing a cartwheel on one scene. However, the cheerleading school team’s practice still awaits me to come back.
Because of the verbal agreement I had between the senior members of the school’s cheerleading team in September, I still have to go back to practice after the graduation play. Due to the learning gap during the whole November and December, my skills are terrible compared to those who joined at October.
With immense pressure to keep up, I began to felt lonely and miserable of being an outcast, every time I tried to be a base lifting girls, I failed so badly that even the girls are hesitated to practice with me.
I decided to formally quit to avoid something truly bad happened in the near future, such as accidentally dropped girls on the floor. when I handed out my quit registration, the seniors decide to talk to me. He criticized me for not trying hard enough before giving up. But what he said was the truth, I really didn’t give out my best to overcome myself. If I quit now, I just repeated my high school’s failure all over again.
Without the bravery to quit, I got so depressed that I decided to endure the painful reality, until maybe some day, they might feel that they're sick of my stupidity enough and decided to kicked me out.
Aside from the base training of lifting people, cheerleading requires tumbling to add points in the competition. So, I decided to follow the route to become a tumbler. Meanwhile, my fellow teammates from the cheerleading competition began his training as well. My ego forced me to do better in tumbling in every way, especially when I have previous experiences in the gymnastic class. If I fall behind in this criterion, it just shows me how pathetic a person I am, beaten by a person in months of practice, despite I've got years of training beforehand.
Sadly, my skill are unmatched compared to him, which let me felt completely devastated in the team. When he enters the next level, which is a cartwheel roundoff followed by a backward summersault combo, I felt extremely sad and emotional of my ability to improve myself. I still stuck at the basics of doing the cartwheel, not to mention the extremely unstable backward summersault.
The next competition is just around the corner. At May, our team are going to participate the University Cheerleading Championship competition. Before that, we have an internal competition to select the teammates to be qualified for the event. With my current situation, my only hope is somehow, miraculously learning the cartwheel roundoff backward summersault combo independently without any protection, overcome the odds and acquire my slot on the competition.
Sadly, the reality is way harsher than my blind optimism. I trained myself so hard until the day before the internal selection, I hurt my ankle. Which automatically disqualified me to participate the competition.
Effortless backflips on the mattress.
The whole competition training days are extremely distasteful for me, I felt completely useless most of the time. When there are times that requires me to be on stage, I become a human mattress to catch the fall of a huge pyramid collapse. Though, I still continue my backward summersault training.
One day, I successfully done an independent backward summersault on top of a mattress, which makes me become one the few people in our grade to accomplish this goal.
Furthermore, I successfully tried out the cartwheel roundoff backward summersault combo with two people’s protection, I finally catch on the progress I've hoped before.
My very first attempt of the combo (with double protection)
However, I am still extremely unstable at doing backward summersault alone on the ground, not to mention complete the combo independently. After the competition I went in to a hibernation state, followed by the tedious work of final exams and the extremely time consuming FLLD camp, which again, I failed miserably by my shitty social skills.
Accident fall during a tag game in FLLD camp.
At the end of the summer vacation, all my skills and muscle were completely defaulted, due to my laziness and the lack of proper exercise. Our team arranged a ten-day devil training session for all of us before September to transformed everyone back to shape.
At the first training day, I've done an cartwheel without properly warming myself up. Then, I immediately regretted after the extreme pain under my legs. To be short, I just pulled my muscle, badly. Which means that the next ten days I won’t have the ability to do any tumbling training which I used to be great at.
However, when the team were practicing, I still forced myself to do flips despites the extreme pain I felt. I don’t want others to judge me as lazy or weak. Unfortunately, these types of thoughts won’t change the fact that I can’t do the moves successfully. I just fall on my face again and again with no avail.
Failed to jump high enough.
As the new semester started, there was a French exchange student called Touk, he attended the experience session hosted by our team. Most of our teammates don’t have the ability to communicate to him with English fluently. All of a sudden, my skills became vital for the team. I’m glad that I finally had a chance to do something worthy, even though it’s just a couple hours of translation for the experience session.
What’s amazing about Touk is he possessed with extreme strengths and acrobatic skills. He surprised all of us by doing an independent cartwheel roundoff backward summersault combo in the first day.
Sadly, he is not going to stay in our team, despite we had such a good time during the experience session. Now, everything is back to normal for me, I'm still an outcast in everyone's eye. I'm desperate to found my value in this team. After my injuries recovered, I resumed my combo training.
After witnessed a devastating failure of my friend Zaal. When he was attempting on the combo, a slight distraction causing him to lose all his rotation momentum during the launching phase. He ended up landing on his neck. Luckily, Zaal didn't hurt his cervical vertebrae(頸椎), just pulled some muscle near the neck.
I’ve made a friend with a senior student in the team. His name is Bro, who is very kind and enthusiastic in the arts of tumbling. Furthermore, Bro is passionate about coaching. So, under his guidance I began to familiarized myself to the fine detailed movement in the combo. He created a detailed image in my mind for a successful landing.
After ten days of training, I finally got some of my strengths back, though the idea of quitting still lingers on me every minute. Luckily, I’ve eventually managed to overcome all the hardships and challenges. Besides, I haven’t completed my dream of doing a perfect summersault in front of the audiences.
Minor protection done by Bro.
Touk's amazing performance
Handstand training for building my muscle.
Zaal's horrific combo attempt failure
After a few attempts, I can finally do it with only Bro's single sided protection. Though, through out the practice there are still some near misses. Luckily, I landed safely every time by Bro's professional guidance.
Bro graded my performance every time I attempted, giving me a sense of joy similar as playing a video game. In order to achieve the highest score, I have to focus on every detail movement in the combo. Eventually, I achieved around 90 percent of landing accuracy, which means that basically, until now I have had done most of the combo by myself without the need of his protection.
However, the psychological fear of performing the move without any protection are far greater than the move itself, when you are standing on the stage alone, the wide, blue cushioning mattress looked like an endless sea of terror. You know that there are nobody there to save you when things go south.
My first independent attempt of the combo.
The CCU anniversary event is our team's next event. Our coach wanted me to perform the combo in the show. The chance of proving myself finally arrived at the horizon. For five years, all my efforts paid out, I’m going to achieve my dream. However, the coach also wanted me to do a basic backward summersault independently, which recently I have not trained well enough due to all the combo attempts.
The harsh thing about practicing the combo is that it will change your reflexes to perform the basic backward summersault. The jump differs the most, while you are attempting the combo, you don’t need to jump as high as the basic backflip to successfully complete the move, the cartwheel’s momentum will spring you high up in the air and finishes the rest for you. The timing on the landing are also radically different. You could easily fall on your face when you don't do it clearly. What’s worse, when I've got the news about what I need to perform, I can’t even do the combo independently by myself yet, due to the psychological fear of landing. In my mind, I still requires protection from Bro, and the basic summersault are too unstable to perform safely at this point. with only two weeks remaining, the pressure of the show began to boil.
The devastating news of all, is that we are going to perform twice, first at the gymnasium, which have thick cushioning mattress to protect us. then at the sports field, where only a thin layer of foam mat placed for us to stand on.
These tumbling maneuvers requires soft grounds for me to safely jump and land without hurting my leg, or preventing the worse situation: fall on my face. So, when I noticed that I have to do these moves on hard ground, I began to panic. I haven’t had the ability to do these moves on the cushioning ground independently yet. How low are the odds are, me obtaining the courage and skill to do it on foam mat, in such short amount of time?
I began my practice routine on foam mats, which hurts me a lot due to my shoes doesn’t fit. These shoes are also unsuitable to withstand the impact of the jumping on the foam mat, so my leg, ankle, and my toes started to hurt badly. Eventually, I injure them all in the following days.
However, I still have to keep pushing despite all the hardships. The pain of the feet is far better than fall flat on my face in front of everyone. At the weekends, I finally got the chance to practice on the cushioning mattress, where I can safely adjust my moves without the worry of extreme pain. However, the performance requires me to do the summersault at a precise moment within a tight space.
The challenge started from doing flips independently, gradually evolving into doing flips combined with dance movement, then flips and dances in tight spaces, finally, do it all while following the rhythm accurately.
These challenges are one harder than the other. With such short amount of time, I have to overcome all these requirements within a single week, which is nearly impossible compared to how long I've manage to learn the basic summersault. Still, I need to learn them all and get used to the stage pressure.
In order to survive, I forced myself to practice the move again and again for a hundred times to simulate the exhaustion during the performance, I hoped that when I'm under fatigue conditions I still possessed the body instinct to do the moves safely. However, despite my efforts, I still can’t control my body at a stable and a predictable manner.
On Sunday we've started to rehearse with music and choreography for the summersault sections, despite the odds, I still decided to do it without full preparation. Since if I don't have the guts to do it now, I won’t be able to do it in front of thousands of audiences. With poor movement and an anxious mind, I began my summersault without proper preparation. Flat on my face is the ironic result.
I landed on my face, literally, with bloods bleeding out and numbness everywhere, I knew I’ve screwed up. The fear and trauma started to occupy my mind.
At that moment, all I wanted is quit, there is no way that I can overcome such traumatic experience in a single week. But I already trained so hard until this moment, there are no turning back now. So, I began to forcefully overwrite my memory by continue doing summersaults a hundred times, over and over again without rests, until I used up all my energy to perform a single jump.
Monday, the team practice returned to the foam mat room. I took out some thick mattress to continue my training. However, with one slight distraction, this time I landed on my neck. Though I didn’t suffer from severe injuries. Once again, my mind was shattered by fear. These two accidents developed a PTSD of backflips in my heart. For a long time, summersaults represents my hopes and dreams, the tricky move that motivates me to push harder. But all of a sudden, the dream of the past became the nightmare of the present.
The coach let me decide whether I want to give up these moves if I can’t overcome on the performance, which I felt it would be a pity when my dream are at the doorway to success. Still, I keep on practicing. To solve this dilemma, I have to step outside of my comfort zone, by accepting others and showing my vulnerability. I began to ask for help from our teammates, whom once I've feared to communicate with.
The ego drives me the whole way until today, it seems so foolish to believe that rivalry and competition could make me a stronger person.
In the team, those who once thought they’re lesser than me, helped me reshaped my basic body position. Those seniors who I once felt hostile towards me, began to teach me how to calm my mind and have faith in myself, and the coach also supported me emotionally to overcome my fear of dangerous landing.
These people all supported me whether what I’ve behaved before. In the end, I decided to put everything behind me, all the fears, distrusts, arrogances, and traumas.
At the day of the performance, we were surrounded by hundred and thousand of audiences, I have no hesitations, no doubts, and no fear. I began my backward summersault. I Jumped, then pulled up, followed by a roll, and finally, I landed safely.
With teammates and friends supported me, and the audiences cheered on, I’ve done my flips flawlessly. After all, what's left in cheerleading if you don’t truly enjoy the stage with everyone?
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