Hardest Workers of the (Previous) Week

For the week ending 3/16/2013

Congratulations Claire, DeShaz, and....uh....Tessa (represented here by Cami).

Pre-Meet Bars Highlights

 From Thursday:


From yesterday:




Today:







Couldn't get their dismounts because I had to stand in there.

Progress

Made some progress today (only did 5- but that's more than she's been doing, of late). She still is hanging on too long and still needs to get tight and compact into a pancake shape. But this is better.

Shared Workshop on Fun Friday

Earned smelly stickers for a job well-done!

Abigail made one front giant for the first time.  Not bad for someone who has not put in a lot of flight hours, working on acquiring them.

Thea has been working on getting her toe-shoots to handstand stronger and more consistent for the purposes of doing her bar release (a Ray).  I think once she knows exactly where handstand is everytime on a regular toe-hand, she'll be better prepared to tweak the release point for her Ray.

She's done 3-in-a-row before from single leg toe-on; but Friday was the first time she made 3 from double-leg toe-on.  Her first set was good (she should have kept going and not stopped at the target goal of 3-in-a-row), getting a good arch-snap drop and power on the handstand, getting some bounce on the bar.  She did 2 more sets of 3 after this, and I think she can phase away from doing the single-leg toe-on, anymore (more potential to generate a stronger, late drop by using the double toe-on method).

For Claire, I got to finally play with building an improvised trench pit.  Hard to do during regular practice, as we need to hog up quite a lot of spotting blocks and mats.

Now that Claire's got more of a sense of going over the bar, I think she should be okay using our regular set-up.  I don't think I'll have to reach out and yank her onto/over the bar, but can now do more guidance-spotting into helping her catch the bar. 

I guess we'll see, come Tuesday...

Gymnastics Self-Defense 101

I think Claire's been secretly taking some self-defense classes.  

Question: What do you do when someone grabs you from behind?

Answer: Back elbow smash to the face.

"Hee-yah!" *Whap* "Take that!"

Yesterday she slammed it into my left eye (was recovering from a slight eye infection over the weekend in my right, btw); today, straight into my nose. It hurt enough to draw a little blood.

Can't wait to spot her again! She'll bring her grips; I'll bring my mouthpiece.

 Here's a funny clip of her first one of the day:

 I made the stupid assumption that I no longer really had to reach out and yank her over the bar- that she was now at least getting on top of the bar, by herself.  Only this time she didn't, and her body weight pulled me over.  Fun.

Progress...

....And Claire had tons of it today in the gym, including on floor and vault.

She's been working on this curious release for only about two months now, by my recollection (blind change version of Shushunova- full twisting Tkatchev).  It's been an interesting process, so when she finally gets it, I'm going to piece together some of the drills she went through to get there.

Today happened with her starting to get a sense of letting go of the bar and going over it.  I spotted her like this early on; but back then she only had a vague feel for what she needed to do.

This was her last turn today, and instead of reaching out and yanking her over the bar, I spotted her a little less (since she was doing well) to see how much she was doing on her own, coming back over the bar.

You can't really see it from the camera angle, but her left elbow nailed me pretty good in my left eye (and incidentally, my right eye was still recovering from a bit of eye infection over the weekend). I explain it to Kort and what does he say?  "Good job, Claire!"



Here's Anna Li's version: