Tuck, Pike and Layout: Body Shapes Compared

The same salto can look quite different depending on the body shape it’s performed in — and that shape often affects both difficulty and how it’s judged.

The three shapes, as the Code defines them

The 2025–2028 MAG Code of Points defines each shape precisely:

• Tuck — the hips are strongly bent and the bent knees are brought to the chest, with at least a 90° bend at both hips and knees.
• Pike — the knees are straight and the hips bent at least 90°.
• Straight — a line from the shoulders through the hips to the ankles is straight (or, during a moving skill, very slightly bent). Commentators usually call this a layout; the women’s Code uses stretched.

Bars skills sometimes add a fourth shape, straddled, with the legs wide apart — the basic Tkachev, for example.

How the shapes feel different

Because a tuck is the most compact shape, it rotates fastest; a pike is slower and needs more hamstring flexibility and core control to hold; a layout keeps the body fully extended, with no folding to help the rotation. That’s why a gymnast usually learns a new salto tucked first.

Does shape change the value?

Often, but not always. Some examples from the 2025–2028 Codes:

The women’s Code treats the same salto in different body positions as different elements, so a tucked and a stretched back salto can both count in one routine — even where they’re worth the same.

Why shape affects the score

The Codes expect each salto position to be shown “so distinctly and conspicuously as to leave no doubt about the intent”. A tuck that’s really a loose pike, or a layout with visibly bent knees, is deducted. Bigger errors can change what’s credited: in the men’s Code, a “straight” skill performed with the knees bent 90° is treated as straight with a large error, and isn’t recognised if that happens during the element. On vault, both Codes warn that an indistinct shape can be credited as a lower-value vault.

For how shape combines with direction and twists, see saltos, twists and shapes.