Hi all,

I am 22M. Started taking tumbling about four months ago with absolutely zero gymnastics background. My aim is simply to get a clean, straight cartwheel, starting from lunge position. It has been a struggle, but I have gotten the hang of the hand-hand foot-foot rhythm of the cartwheel, and am now working on just getting my kick higher to eventually get a more vertical cartwheel. However, when I was recording myself going from lunge to cartwheel on the floor, I realized that when I leaned down and turned sidways place my hand on the floor in line with my lunge foot, my lunge foot would unconsciously scoot itself out of line, so that my lead foot would be way behind where I would place my hand, resulting in an outward cartwheel instead of upward. After some digging, I read that the explanation could be that I have severely limited sidebending flexbility. I wanted to post this here to get your thoughts on this, and possible stretches to help improve this area. Could it also be a technique thing? Keep in mind that I have no problem kicking my leg overhead: I mainly train handstands (also as a beginner), and have done a kickup overhead to falling forward (no wall) several times at this point.