Teaching The Cartwheel

It looks like a sideways bearwalk from the photo, I know. But really, it’s a sneaky introduction to a cartwheel.

Why do we do cartwheels in kung fu? Control? Balance? Focus? Sure, sure. But what’s unique about cartwheels? What position do you put your body in when you do a cartwheel?

Upside-down. And why is it important to know that feeling of being upside-down when you’re a martial artist? Because one day you’ll get thrown and end up airborne with your head going towards the ground. The cartwheel is nice because by the time you get to a full blown legs straight up in the air version of it you’ll be in control of the action. Getting flipped is nasty because you’re not in control of the situation but at least you’ve done cartwheels before so you’ve still got the necessary mental bearings to wind up landing on your feet (or at least not your head).

Cartwheels are daunting to learn. Like all things that are daunting, they need to be broken into steps. Usually, there will be a bunch of students who already know how to do a cartwheel. Great. Tell them the breakdown is so they will know how to teach it to someone else. That usually makes them happy because they can recall the difficulty of trying to puzzle out how to do the move through trial and error. Also, they usually only know how to do one side and when they try the other way, they realize that they have to break down the move in order to get anywhere with it.