When people find out that I "tumble" they imagine me swinging around two bars spaced one higher than the other, and they picture me dancing around on a big square piece of carpet placed on top of springs. They imagine me running at full speed a stationary thing and placing my hands on it and vaulting over. They imagine me doing a little dance on a 4 inch wide block of wood. The truth: I have never stepped foot on one of those 4 inch wide blocks of wood, nor have I ever touched a vault, or done a so called "floor routine", and as s far as bars go, the most I have ever done is swing around my trampoline frame after we have taken it down for the winter. When I say I "tumble", I mean I am a power tumbler. Let me guess, you have no Idea what that entails. Power tumbling consists of 3 events, Floor, Double-mini, and Trampoline. When I say floor I don't mean I do a dance across a square spring floor, I mean I do flips down a long runway made out of fiberglass rods, covered in foam and carpet. I'll show you a video later. You probably have 0 Ideas about what a double mini is. Lets just say it looks like this:
You jump on the first angled part, do a trick, then you jump on the second flat part, do a trick off the trampoline and land on mats. It's super fun and I love competing it! When you hear the word "trampoline" I'm sure you picture that black bed, round thing sitting in your backyard. The kind of trampoline I bounce on is defiantly NOT the run of the mill, back yard trampoline. The kind of trampoline I am talking about is rectangle, and stands about 4 feet high. It costs thousands of dollars, and can send you up to 30 feet high. (I don't jump quite that high, with fear that on my descent to earth, I would miss the trampoline.) It is extremely powerful and lets just say, I wish I could have one of these in my back yard! Now you might have an Idea about what power tumbling is, but I can assure you, you have never seen anything like this before. Now I would ask you if you want to see what power tumbling is really about, watch this video. This is Kalon Ludvigston, from Idaho. Watch this and it will blow your little mind. I promise you, you WILL NOT regret it!
CLICK HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Shocked right? I know it is pretty amazing! That amazing guy that you just watch flip through the air like a barbie tossed in the air, and land on his feet is Kalon Ludvigston. He is the world champion from Idaho. I get to see him do that every month at my meets. I have gone to a few camps that he has done and he knows my name. Pretty cool right?! Now as you can see Power tumbling, and gymnastics are NOT the same, even though they are both run by USAG. I might be bias to power tumbling because, well I'm a power tumbler. But in my opinion, even though I LOVE watching gymnastics, power tumbling is way better!
