Stand with your shoulder slightly more than shoulder width apart. Raise up your arms wide and to both sides.
Cartwheel
Prerequisites
none
Optional
none
It's a cartwheel. Uhhh...yeah.
Two types of cartwheels
Tricking Cartwheel
The Tricking cartwheel travels from side to side and has no twisting rotation.
Gymnast Cartwheel*
The gymnast cartwheel travels forward and has an 180 degree rotation, making you face the way you came from.
*This guide will cover the tricking aerial but most tips will also apply to the gymnast version.
Spot the ground and bend your knee slightly so you can reach out for the ground. Your other arm should reach over your head.
Swing your backleg up straight while you place both hands on the ground. Your jumping leg should still touch the ground.
Try to keep your legs as much apart as possible. As you see, the landing leg is already on the way down again. Keep spotting the floor.
Place your foot into the ground and push off with your arms.
Use the momentum of the second leg to pull your body upright again.
Done! Cartwheel!
Tips
In tricking we often do bend arm cartwheels to make them as fast as possible and to get more push from the arms.
The tricking aerial is a great setup for cart_fulls, frontflips and other fronttwisting techniques. The gymnast cartwheel combos nicely into any backflipping trick. They also have each their own progression line. Tricking aerials lead to Mega Aerials and the gymnast version to Aerial Switch.
Try to be as light on your hands as possible if you want to progress your cartwheel into an aerial.
You can also use one hand. This will progress into the palmkick.