The Beaming Gymnast Sanctuary: August 2015

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Friday, August 28, 2015

Flashback Friday: Heather Dorniden

It's hard to find a good quality video of this inspirational athlete:

When you fall down? Get back up.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

So I learned this photo posted earlier was taken of a facility in Yemen.

Yemen, in recent time, has been experiencing a crisis in leadership and stability. It is on the verge of a civil war; and made vulnerable to being a safe haven for al Qaeda and IS.

Rick McCharles had blogged about gymnastics development in Yemen a couple of years ago. He linked to this article written almost exactly three years ago:

As the first gymnast sprints down the fraying stretch of carpet toward the vault, his gruff coach shouts encouragement in Arabic: “Jump big, like you dream!” Hurdling himself onto the vault, the gymnast’s height on his takeoff is impressive. Later on, as he tends to the blisters on his hands from the dozens of conditioning drills he executes each practice, he admits with a shy smile to the big dream that motivates this dynamic explosion off the vaulting table – to one day compete in an international meet.

It is sad to see the setback and downward slide of a country like Yemen.

*UPDATE* 12:30pm 8/26/2015

Gaar Adams, who authored the above article, left a comment on Nick Blanton's page:

Nick Blanton posted this up yestereday; and I've been waiting for him to respond to find out the origin/source/backstory of this photo.

Syria? Iraq? In a war-torn country? Natural disaster? Where? What?

Sunday, August 23, 2015

Region 1 Congress, San Jose August 21-23

Justin Howell's lecture on Round-offs, last session on Saturday- filled up to standing room only capacity.

It's been quite a while since I've been to a Regional Congress. Long overdue for me. The last time might have been back in the SMGC days, when I was not interested in being a team coach. Speaking of which, I had lunch with a former co-worker; and also ran into these former SMGC students, now coaches:

Rachel is now at the gym Lilly was at before she moved to Chicago. Angie had a brief opportunity to work with Eddie Umphrey before Eddie gave up his head coach position to be with his fiancee at Airborne.

Speaking of Umphrey, I brought my cohorts over to Chainey's house for some dinner to meet the new addition.

Prior to seeing them, I asked Chainey if he'd been working out. He says he runs about "3 blocks" (direct quote) and does some push-ups. That's about it. So this is what he looks like as of yesterday:

I used to get into arguments with people all the time back in college- people who were adamant in their belief that Chainey was taking steroids; or that he must lift weights. Nope. None of that. The only weight he lifted was his own body. Nor did he do a lot of extra strength training- mostly routines. He's just a genetic freak of nature.

I did a lot of videoing, in part to bring back and share with the staff back at home base. Not sure how much I will share on YouTube and this blog.

My co-workers did not bring their video cameras; but I shared my digital camera (the Casio that can also film in slo-mo and back to normal speed all in one shot) and my iPhone 4 while I used my iPhone 5 (64 gb). 2 extra battery packs. After each lecture, I'd have 45 minutes to dump the memory into my laptop and would recharge while filming the next lecture.

What kind of perplexes me is how many coaches- even if fairly new- seem unaware of so many drills and concepts that seem easily acquired through the internet. I guess some coaches don't waste as much time as I do on YouTube; or run detective searches through blogs and social media for content.

I was disappointed that Neil Resnick was not present yesterday for his lectures.

Everyone has something to offer, though; and I enjoy listening to anyone express their thoughts and views and share their ideas about anything related to gymnastics.