Breaking Down: Triple Turn With Free Leg Held at Horizontal

Mexican gymnast Ana Lago is back from a bad ACL injury a few years ago and is practicing some seriously good moves. Ana is quite good on floor and won a medal at the Pan Am games a few years back - I think she won gold. Too much hasn't come out with regards to her or for almost any of the Mexican gymnasts for that case.

Ana posted a video of her performing the triple turn with ease and elegance on her Instagram account. It was seriously good, she is probably going to do a turn out of it to get that one tenth bonus. Given the way the CoP works this move is likely to get credited as an E - similarly to the triple twisting with leg held at 90°. That move is the one that Aliya Mustafina is training and now performing.

If she performs it at the Worlds the move is likely going to be named after her and that's a big achievement when only two elements are named after Mexicans. The one move that I do know is the Magaña - a triple back tuck off the uneven bars.

FIG Rules | WAG Code of Points - BB - Devaluation of Element #5.513 (D)

The FIG has a YouTube channel these days and has been uploading videos showing some of it's devaluations. The element number 5.513 has been by far the element every gymnast has added to their balance beam routine - almost every. Element 5.513 is a salto backward stretched with both legs together, also commonly referred to as a layout on beam. It is valued in the CoP's as an E element but will be devalued to a D element if the gymnasts is deemed to deviated from the requirements of the element.

The move was emblematic of the Chinese gymnasts in the 90s and performed by almost every nation now. The emergence of the layout on beam can surely be attributed to the modification of the CoP after the 2012 Olympic games. The newest CoP added a whole new method of determining connection values and series bonuses that weren't around before. Before a gymnast that wanted to win a beam title needed to either have a highly valued element or an extremely complicated routine, an arabian or a full-twisting back tuck. The complexity used to fall on the judges hands as the rules weren't very clear on what a connection was, which lead to many controversial 'fantom' tenths being rewarded - best case of this was Nastia Liukin's balance beam routine in the 2008 All Around final.


In FIG's video release they show a lot of gymnasts that have legs separated going into the jump and don't float down but rather pull their body's down in a piked form. The gymnasts are clearly 'cheating' the jump and are making it easier for themselves to land. A gymnast should try and get as most height and let the jump float on down instead of forcing it down. If you take a look at all of the examples you will see just how evident it is.

The sad thing is that there are only a handful of gymnast out there that are performing the element how it is supposed to be done. I can think of Maria Kharenkova, Angelina Melnikova and Anastasia Grishina but not many others.

Example of a well executed layout at around the 22 second mark the element is being performed.

Breaking Down | Positions - Tucked, Piked and Stretched/Layout

Every jump/salto has a position a gymnast's legs are in and that position is what determines the difficulty value awarded. The positions that exist in gymnastics are: tuck, pike and stretch and mostly called layout. The tuck is generally considered the easiest to perform and stretch is the most difficult to perform. The CoP has specific angles that each position must be within to be awarded credit as that type of style.

Tuck
The tucked position requires that the hip and knee angle be less than 90°. That means you are between straight and 90°, imagine yourself with your bent knees on the floor and the rest of your body straight. That position is the most easiest and probably the most commonly performed by less experienced gymnasts.

The diagram below will show exactly how the position should look according to the CoP.

Left -.10 for 90° angle and right -.10 plus cowboying deduction.

Deductions, the code is very strict these days and will deduct one tenth if you are in the squatting position. It will deduct three tenths if performed in a 135° angle, a less than pikes position with bent knees. The judges will also deduct if the gymnast 'cowboys' the jump, that means their knees aren't touching but rather open like if they were riding a horse. Pretty harsh but once you realize this you will understand why gymnasts  rarely crack 9.0 in execution.

Pike
The piked position is one in which the legs have less than a 90° hip angle. The knees aren't bent and they are at a greater than 135°. If you see the diagram below you'll recognize it very easily.

I find that a piked jump receives less deductions although they have the same deduction possibilities. They are a tenth if 90° hip angle and three tenths if greater than 90° hip angle. That means that the judges want to see a pikes position that has the legs closer to the body than not.

Stretch

The stretched position is by far the hardest position to perform and the most deducted out of all the positions. The requirement for this position is that the body is in alignment, straight at 180° when vertical. 

While the deductions only include a one tenth deduction if body alignment is out of sync by more than 10°. In actuality the judges find deductions in this position for leg separation, lack of pointed toes, bent knees, etc. It is very easy to find something wrong with a layout position and that is very evident in the scores for the people performing the move.

Note: D-Panel is in reference to the judges that are evaluating the gymnasts' performance on the difficulty level. The E-Panel refers to the judges that are evaluating the gymnasts' execution of the elements. 

Video

The video below shows a piked backflip in action. If you notice the gymnast is at a less than 90° hip angle which means she will not incur any deductions for hip angle position.

Back Somersaults - Gymnastics (Slow motion)

Breaking Down: Code of Points

Breaking down the code of points, sometimes abbreviated as CoP, in depth would take hundreds of pages and I certainly won't be doing that. I will be breaking down the code in a way that will help everyone 'out of the loop', with basic knowledge, understand gymnastics better than not. I can't work miracles but I'll try and be as specific as possible and will gladly answer any questions that are directed in the comments section. Please take note that I am breaking down the code of points for women only, while some of this information transfers over to the men's field it is much more complicated and with varying rules. Please take a breath and continue reading!

According to the code of points (CoP), I will use CoP from now on, every element, or sometimes referred to as a skill, is given an alphabet letter name that translates into a decimal score. That means that an A element is worth 0.10, a B element is worth 0.20, a C element is worth 0.30 and so on. The current CoP's has left it open for higher values being created if they deem a new skill merits it. Currently the values go from A to I or 0.10 to 0.90.

Note: The latest revision to the CoP has not updated the diagram below, it should show I is worth 0.90.

Each performance is given a difficulty score, that score is determined by adding up the highest 8 elements, 2.5 points of required elements and connection bonuses. The execution score starts at 10 and deductions in the performance are removed from the 10. The difficulty score is added to the final execution score to determine the score of a gymnast. That means an uneven bars routine with a D-score of 6.2 and an E-score of 9.0 results in a final score of 15.2.

The fact that the judges only take the highest 8 elements does not mean that a gymnast can only do 8 skills. A gymnast can do as many elements as possible within the time limits of the apparatus. The drawback of doing more elements is that the judges can find more deductions. A gymnast might still perform more if she wants to gain connection bonuses.

The vault is the only apparatus that lacks the use of alphabet letter name values, instead it uses a direct value for each vault. For example, the most performed vault is the double twisting Yurchenko and it has a value/difficulty score of 5.8. That means that it can score a maximum value of 15.8 if it had zero deductions - extremely unlikely.

The CoP has composition requirements for uneven bars, balance beam and floor exercise, which all gymnast must comply with to receive the composition points, 2.5 points. The universal requirement is that a gymnast must perform a D valued dismount. That means if a gymnast complies with that requirement they receive .5 under the composition requirements. If they perform a C dismount they will only receive .3, and zero for an A or B dismount.

That appears to be the bulk of the necessary information to understand the CoP. Everything else is very specific and can be reviewed by checking a copy of the CoP. I will deconstruct a performance in a later post that will hopefully help you apply the information learned in this post to an actual performance. You guys are one step closer to becoming educated gymnastics fans!

Bonus: Below is a video of the only element the CoP has classified an I value. It is a double twisting double layout salto from a back entry. Performed by Victoria Moors and named after her - commonly referred to as the Moors.

A salto means a jump but is usually only referred to jumps that rotate more than once - usually excluding twisting jumps that don't flip/rotate. In the US the term salto is referred to as a somersault but the CoP uses the term salto and to be honest it is easier to spell.