Why is my gymnast so clumsy?

Such a great question I get from parents quite often.

I think a thorough assessment is always the route to go with this, as each gymnast is different.

In general, I find two major items: 

1) There is a lack of dorsiflexion (flexing) of the foot, so the gymnast cannot "clear" their foot during the swing phase of the gait cycle/walking and ends up "tripping" over their own feet or a raised object in their path. 

2) It could be an oculomotor/vestibular issue where we are overtraining to "target focus" and not training our peripheral vision enough. So an example would be to "spot" an object in front of you when setting for your back tuck-this is target focused vision training. However, we also have to use our peripheral vision to see our knees rise over the object we are spotting to make sure we actually get a high enough set and this is something we have to train.

So when walking, gymnasts tend to focus on their target and forget/don't use their peripheral vision and end up again, tripping over raised objects. There could also be other reasons as well, but these are the two common factors I find! What are your thoughts? Does this sound like your gymnast?