Recovery for Gymnasts Webinar

Why!

Original photo by

ROLF VENNENBERND/EPA

Inspired by:  Victory Gymnastics Academy

Saving Money on Mats

Al Fong:

Some of the mats I have are actually older than most of the parents of my Level 4 athletes. I hardly ever throw away an old mat. I refresh the tired ones by reinforcing the old foam with new foam pieces and then recover them. I discovered a long time ago that finding an industrial sewing person who works with car upholstery and vinyl could help me maintain the life of a mat that normally most gyms would discard. Since then I bought my own industrial sewing machine and found sewing people from my parent ranks and gym staff who had sewing experience. With the money I saved by recovering old pieces, I paid for my sewing machine 20 times over!
I still buy new landing mats, resi mats, panel mats, etc...but I can now design and build my own special mats to fit my style of teaching.
It can be challenging finding a place for all these mats, especially at the end of the day when it's time to make the gym orderly for the next day. It's very important to keep the gym clean and organized because it says something about your team and your coaching.

Hand Placement During Round Off?

Nick Blanton posted the following:

I choose "A" as the preference.

Sympathy or Results

Source

Volvo Gymnastics Stability and Precision?

Rick links to this:

If I had the gymnasts that could do it, I'd stage it so the one Van Damming would be standing on gymnasts who could show off the stability and precision of gymnastics body shape tension hollow walking.

Sunday Funnies

How Robin became agile and acrobatic.....

Vault Idle Stations for Body Tension and Shaping

Quite often, you just make do and improvise with whatever equipment you can get your hands on.  The boys pommel horse area is close to the vaulting resi.  So when they're not there...

Chest Up?!

It is very irksome when judging standards and compulsory requirements actually become counter-productive to good gymnastics.   Troubling when it comes at the expense of safety consideration and lack of understanding on technique.

I consider the smart coaches the ones who look at the big picture and will take the deduction hits for the long-term wellness of their athletes and development of superior technique down the road.  I believe there are occasions when compulsory routine standards are not in alignment with ideal technique.


Rick Charles on safety and efficiency in landing over making it look pretty- avoid injury over avoiding potential deduction:

Too much deduction on landings for “chest position” is an error. 

It happens a lot in WAG NCAA. Judges kill terrific vaults, ignoring multiple technical and form breaks for weaker vaults. 

The goal of a landing is to bring huge impact forces to zero. Efficiency on the skill of landing will help reduce landing injuries.

via supermura.tumblr

Uchimura is as good as any gymnast who ever lived. Check his shoulder position. 

Kohei is using every possible shock absorber, including trunk and hip flexion. 

Any set of rules that deducts this performance is ethically, medically and biomechanically wrong. Indeed, young kids should be taught to land like Uchimura from a young age. 

Deducting “chest low” is like deducting a gymnast for lack of foot point on the sprint for Vault.

Below is related info from an earlier post I never finished, but thought I'd include here since I abandoned the draft and don't plan to add anything else.

Dr. George on Leg Impact and Landing.


Swing Big! links to Mary Lee Tracy videos on some ankle pre-hab.

Post by Blanton's Gymnastics Consultancy.

Related previous post(s).

UCLA RIsing

Christy Linder writes of her fiancee:

Soooo excited to share this finally!

Jason wrote, sang, & produced this song RISE for this year's UCLA Gymnastics home meet opening video (with only a tiny tiny bit of help from me). He also directed & produced the video as well. It gives me chills every single time I watch it... and for whatever reason I get nervous every time it plays on the jumbo tron at Pauley Pavilion

Please watch at 1080P with your speakers turned UP!!!

 Christy helped coach team developmental at BGS for a while.  Now she has an official photo gig with the UCLA Bruin Gymnastics team.

Christy's photo blog is here.  Check out her post and photos of the season opener against the Florida Gators. 

Happy MLK Day!

If you can't fly 

 

LATimes

 

Source

 

Source

then run....

April 17th, 2011; Cleveland, OH, USA; UCLA gymnast Brittani McCullough running down the runway during her first attempt in the vault during the 2011 NCAA Gymnastics Championships at the Wolstein Center. McCullough finishes with a score of 9.6125.

If you can't run 


 

Source

then walk...

"This is a gymnast walking on  Relevé on a low beam I like this picture because the gymnast, Olivia (development) was having a difficult time staying on Relevé and finally got it. She was very proud of herself and i caught this moment on camera."  Source

If you can't walk 

 

"Crutch Buddies"

then crawl....

Source

But whatever you do

A +....

Monday Motivation

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sunday Funnies

International Gymnast, January 1994

Check out this post on inclined leg raises.

Utilizing gravity to provide the resistance is an interesting thing.

When I was in college, rehabing my shoulder, I modified the traditional free weight internal rotation exercise where you lie on your side by keeping the weight in the same plane at 90 degrees and moved my body instead of the weight, back and forth from supine to prone.  That way the gravity resistance remained constant.

Minishot Chin-ups

4 year old min-shots with a bit of assist on chin ups...thought it was cute:

The Need for Speed

One of my favorite running drills:






I often go for time (move legs as fast as possible within allotted amount of time); but when first starting out with little ones, I first check their form and positioning; and will call out numbers.  So for example, when I say "one", they lift one leg only and hold the pose.  If I say, "two", they switch their legs twice; "three", 3 quick switches.  And so on.  (I guess I'm not the only one who does this.  :-) ) If I say, "thirty", they do 30 leg switches as fast as they can without short-changing getting the knee to drive up and forward.  Here's another progression (the wall march):

Workout Wednesday with Eddie Umphrey

Developing Handstand Tension

Source

Seek the Owl

Yurchenko Drill Stations

The Art of Blending & Spontaneity

 "I have real calmness and confidence in what I'm doing to know that It's never a mistake unless [you let] people know it's a mistake."

-WWE superstar, Chris Jericho

Go with the flow...blend, adapt. Improvise.

Source

Sunday Funnies

I Just Got Pantene-rolled!

How on earth do you tie together a feel-good drama to a hair product?

Well.....kinda like this:



That is one long commercial!  If you're rolling your eyes, just look at it like this:  At least it wasn't an ad promoting the virtues of soft drinks or fast food.

On this day in history...

Kort pulled Esperanza, age 5, out of her Perfect 10's class for a moment on Monday (January 11, 2010) to evaluate her on potentially being invited to Hot Shots. He decides he wants to talk to her mom and asks her: "What's your mommy's name?"

Esperanza: "Mommy."

Two Teachers

“If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.”
― Confucius

Shaping Handstands

Adding a Little Twist

This drill from Rebecca Sykes interests me because the twisting method is one Wade introduced me to where you set and instead of pulling both arms down on the thighs (or rather, pull the hips up toward the hands), you pull both hands down over one thigh.


I think I might have mentioned the story before about how we had one level 5 gymnast bouncing layouts well enough on trampoline that Wade asked me to teach her the twisting method he described to make sure I understood it well enough to teach.  So I told the kid what to do.  We didn't tell her she would be twisting.  I just basically told her how I wanted her to pull her arms down, and to keep them there tightly.  The kid landed a full and then asked, "What did I just do?"

It's a great way to introduce twisting, in my opinion, because it's simple.  No complexity with one-arm dropping first, starting out wide set, or anything else (not to say I don't like other techniques and styles).  Just simplicity.

The hands go over one thigh, like you're sticking your gluing your hands to your pocket.  From there, you can also just flex the arms and bend at the elbows if you're ready for more.

Tony Retrosi also recently posted these series of trampoline drills:

Trapeze Flyaway

Trapeze and swinging rings are a good place to learn the art of tapping.  How much carry-over does it have as far as bar work goes? 

I've heard of having gymnasts work flyaways on short trapeze or rings attached to the high bar.  There's less likelihood of pulling back into the bar.

 Here's an interesting route to acquiring a layout flyaway:






Hmm...Not really convinced in the merits of this approach.  I see problems with head throwing and shoulders closing.

Okay, I found a DGS product:

The trapeze-type motion of the bar forces your body into the tap position on the back swing, the extended position at the bottom of the swing and the pike position at the top of the swing. Try it and see how it improves your beginning swingers' tap swings!

Their product video doesn't really promote the virtues of good habit/technique flyaway training with the Tapeze, however:

Sunday Funnies

Chin-ups in a Tuck

I made the mistake of not setting a time limit:



Rules should be:

1. As many as possible in a minute
2.  Chin all the way over or it doesn't count.
3. Don't drop the block (encourages control on the way down) or it doesn't count (including the last one).

If allowed to do those ugly kippy type of chin-ups (and yes, I call overgrip chin-ups and undergrip as pull ups), she can probably do double the number of reps she hit here.

Gymnast Care