Aerial Cartwheel

Ken surprised me that besides being an intelligent PhD student who is active in swimming, water polo, he is also very much into Capoeira and even break dance. That was partly why he is interested in learning Pilates. Ken feels that Pilates can restore muscle flexibility and core strength to improve his break dance stunts.

One of the break dance stunts that he liked very much was the Aerial cartwheel, which is basically a cartwheel performed without the hands touching the floor or the apparatus. It looks like this. Frankly I don’t know much about break dance, so in order to help Ken improve his aerial cartwheel, I had to first find out what exactly it is. I think Just The Skills provides the best illustration of how to do it, even though the site is a little slow.

Some pointers on how to do aerial cartwheel on Tulsa Gymnastics:

1. Start this from a run and hurdle or from standing. If you are hurdling into an aerial, the hurdle should neither be too long nor too high. You need some forward momentum, but you don't want too much.
2. Push off of your take-off leg to get your height.
3. Kick your back leg as hard as you can to get around to get rotation.
4. Swing your arms will help in both rotation and height. Some people do aerials better swinging the arms down by your side, and others do an arm circle into it.
5. Don't try twisting your body into the aerial. This throws your alignment off and makes it harder to rotate.
6. As your land, lift your chest up. Not only will this make it easier, it looks better than having your upper body flopping over when you land.

Ken asked how Pilates can help strengthen the sides of his waist (the quadratus lumborum, QL) as he feels that this area is weakened and thus he can’t do the aerial cartwheel with ease now.

QL is a muscle with many functions. It laterally flexes (side-bends) the trunk, and elevates the hip. It also helps to stabilize the low back (thus usually involved when low back pain is present). After analysing the movements in aerial cartwheel, I think the strength of QL should not be the main focus of concern. Because in an aerial cartwheel, it is the momentum generated from the kicking of “back leg” (in point 3) that brings the legs overhead. QL is more of stabilising the lumbar area than to twist the body over (as in point 6) which will only distort the form.

I would rather focus on the flexibility of QL (especially on the push off side) so that the momentum of the leg swing will not be slowed down by tight QL. Mermaid is fantastic exercise in lengthening the QL.

I would rather focus on improving core control and stability of the lumbar area, strengthen of hip abductor and stretch the hip adductors to facilitate “kicking the back leg”. Good Pilates exercises are Sidekicks, Leg Circles, Star.