When having conversations with parents about an athlete potentially attending a tumble class at our gym, one of the questions I hear asked is whether our tumble classes have some type of structure to them or if we simply let the athletes work out and tumble on their own?
While at this point, I am not surprised to hear this question asked, when we first started running tumble classes years ago, I was certainly taken aback by it.
After all, I thought, if a tumble class was not structured, what type of class was it?
On occasion, we run ‘Open Gyms’ where athletes are able to come in and work on whatever “floats their boat”.
An Open Gym is where athletes may come in and work on whatever skills they would like.
These could be tumble-oriented, but they may also be stunt, jump, dance, literally whatever the athlete chooses to work on.
Clearly these are unstructured.
I have also heard of tumble classes run entirely by younger athletes who may/may not have any formal training on the instructional side and are run in a manner that may not be the most tightly structured class one may come across.
Another version of this is where a team may go to a facility to work on tumbling or where an “instructor” may visit the team at their facility and run a “class” that may not be highly structured at all, but simply an environment where the instructor provides general tips on how the athletes may improve their tumbling as the instructor observes the athletes tumble.
All of this is admittedly a bit foreign to me as the classes held in our facility are extraordinarily structured.
In our typical tumble class, regardless of age or skill level, the first thing the athletes do at the beginning of class is run a number of laps around the mats to warm up.
Then the athletes spread out around the mat and are taken through a variety of stretches.
From there, the athletes line up at the front of the mat and are taken through a series of progressions that vary by type of class (dictated by age and skill level).
A tumble class with us is a one hour class.
The first 30 minutes of class is dedicated to all of these aforementioned activities whose sole purpose is to make sure the athletes are properly stretched and warmed up and ready to proceed to the next 30 minutes of class.
The next 30 minutes is aimed at working on the tumble skill development of the athlete.
Depending on the instructor and what the athletes are working on at that moment in time is what decides the combination of Tumble Track, mat work, station work, etc. that are all aimed at the athlete progressing toward their next tumble skill.
Our classes tend to be divided by age and skill level, though we do have some tumble classes that are All Ages/All Skill Levels, but yet still highly structured.
Although we certainly would not judge others’ approach to running a tumble class, when asked if our tumble classes are structured, our answer will always be a resounding “YES!!”.
