Appropriate your face direction

The face direction is very important for all skills.
Not only because a head is heavy but also you are sensitive to your face direction.
You can see the importance of face direction at twisting tips.
In this page, a topic is about sensitivity of face(head) direction.
Sensitivity of face has two kinds.
One is a muscle reaction and the other is a sense of air.

– Muscle reaction –

If you face up, you cannot use your abdominal muscle  maximally in terms of reaction speed and power.
For this reason, when a beginner faces up at takeoff, the one may fail to tuck  or lose rotation due to loose abdominal muscles.

He looks forward when piked back flip.

However, if you face up, you can use your back muscles maximally.
So if you do standing back whip or double back layout, you should face up when takeoff and look at  the ground above your head as soon as possible .

He doesn’t look forward when he does layout back flip.

People face up when do a back hand spring, a whip back flip, a double layout, a layout front flip and another skill requiring your back arched after takeoff.
Off course, while doing these flips, you should face up and arch your back.

If you need “straight” form(twisting ,etc.), you should not face up.
Because abdominal muscle is weaker than back muscle, you should face down and squeeze your abdominal muscles for straight form.

He doesn’t face up when twisting.

– Sense of air –

Because  semicircular canals and eyes exist, we are very sensitive to head’s movement.
If you change its position only little bit, you must feel much different feeling even though you do the same skill.
Therefore, it is difficult to change the position of your head after you learnt a skill.
It’s important to learn skills with the proper position of your head.
Of course your body feels gravity or rotation or twist.
But your head feels much more.
For example, even if you are rising, if your head goes down, you don’t feel that you’re rising.
Partly because of this, if you wait the timing of tucking, you tend to feel like get more height.
(cf. Not Tip 3 : Delay the timing of tucking to get higher flip)