360: Top 5 Tips

The 360.

One of the staple movements within freestyle calisthenics and one of the first every freestyle athlete wants to add to their calisthenics armoury! In this post we will show you five steps to help you get your first 360 - get ready to start spinning! We have a video below followed by more detailed information on each step. Check it out and any questions be sure to get in touch or leave them in the comments!

Step One - 360 Jump

The first step is figuring out what side you rotate before attempting a 360. Without thinking ( I get this is hard because you will be reading this first! ) jump in the air and turn. Whichever side you naturally turn is the side you are going to stick with for 360.

Step Two - Swing

Next step is to focus on your swing. What we do here is drive the knees up and kick out to start momentum. The second part is to make sure you push down on the bar when you are on the back phase of the swing. This will ensure you don’t just swing away, instead it will help you focus on going up and staying close to the bar before you begin to rotate.

Step Three - Pushdown

Find a lower bar first! This section will help you to get comfortable with the rotation. Starting over the bar, we push down towards the opposite hip that we are rotating from. When we rotate we bring our hands up to regrab the bar.

Step Four - 180 / 270

So this is kind of two steps in one! What we are doing with people when they get to this stage is getting comfortable again with the rotation and a feel for the spin. 180 is essentially turning half way, and 270 is three quarters of the way. This will help to understand how much you need to spin, what force you need to generate to push down, and the height you need to stay close to the bar. If anything needs looking at in this section, you wouldn’t move into a full 360 yet, so it is a good way to tick the boxes from the other steps before going for the full 360. If for example you are swinging too far in these attempts, then you need to focus on pushing down during the swing etc and correcting that before you move into attempting the full 360.

Step Five - Full 360

So at this stage, you are ready to start full sending! At this point you are trying to ‘connect the dots’ between all the other steps and have them flow together into one effortless movement. Have fun!

If you found this information helpful be sure to check out our seminars below!