Happy Birthday R & A!

Missing you two more than you possibly know.

TBT

I miss these two to pieces.

Team Birthday!

August 30, 2010

"I ♥ to watch you do gymnastics."

August 30, 2010

The 6 words parents should say to child athletes:

Fixing Crooked Round-Offs

(Sorry to use you as the example, Abigail!)- From her winter break vault session where she almost killed herself and gave me a couple more strands of white hair.  Claire B.  is lucky my files got wiped- I KNOW I recorded and pointed out to her what she could not feel:  Her front leg crossing centerline.

This is a quick fix solution- but not a permanent one.  The gymnast who suffers this should be retrained not to cross-step her round-off (which IS a common problem):

Porpoise Swan Dive?

The photo of Abigail in this post is a screen capture from the following clip:





I believe this was over last winter break.

Freedom of Flight

1972: Olga Korbut of the Soviet Union in action during the gymnastics competition at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. The pretty gymnast won gold on the balance beam, the floor exercises and was also a member of the winning all-round team aswell as a silver medalist on the uneven parallel bars. She captured the hearts of the world with her impish style and brilliant smile. Mandatory Credit: Allsport UK/Allsport

Here is another really great gymnast:

Rescue Spotting

Will she catch her Gienger release?  Or will her coach catch slow her fall?

Sometimes a gymnast will say, "Spot me." And when I do just that, get slightly perturbed when I didn't physically touch her.  "You didn't spot me!"  Ah, but I did.

 Great spotting is an art that takes practice.

There are several different kinds of spots.  Some involve actual physical manipulation on the part of the coach, essentially carrying the athlete through the correct pathway of the skill; others involve some physical guidance or assist on the part of the coach, but with the athlete doing most of the skill, herself; then there's a "shadow" spot, where the coach is there primarily as "moral support".  And should anything go tragically off course, there is "rescue" spotting.  This involves the spotter jumping in there to prevent a potential catastrophic injury from an unplanned fall.

This post focuses on the latter.

So how effective is actual rescue spotting?  What are the chances of a coach actually doing it?  Dr. Sands did a study on rescue spotting.  Here, he also defines different spotting purposes:

Prayer & Faith

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one 

-Bruce Lee

Resolute Purpose in Being

When you sit, sit; when you stand, stand; but whatever you do, don't wobble.

-Way of the Peaceful Warrior (from a zen saying)

Abigail (2012?)

New Level 5: Clear hips, sole circle, stalders

In the new level 5 compulsory bars, gymnasts will have the option of doing either a clear hip, sole-circle, or stalder (horizontal requirement).

Tom Forster and other coaches have held to the belief that stalders are not anymore difficult than clear hips.  Some coaches also believe flexibility isn't a major factor in acquiring them.

Mark Folger:

Have you ever wondered if toe shoots (sole circles) may be easier for some of your gymnasts to learn than clear hips? Do you have talented gymnasts who struggle with free hips? My personal experiences would have me answer yes to both of these questions. I have talented gymnasts on my team that seem to struggle with understanding the technique required to perform a good clear hip, which leads to poor performance of that skill. Over the last few years, I've increased my efforts to teach sole circles and stalders. The results have been good and I now believe, without a doubt, that some girls are destined to be more successful with toe shoots and stalders than with free hips.

The new competitive structure for the 2013-2017 cycle will create more opportunities for gymnasts to use these skills earlier in their career. As coaches, we want our athletes to be successful. Including toe shoot and stalder training along with clear hip training will create more chances for our gymnasts to succeed in the mid-levels of our sport and to carry stronger in-bar skills into the higher levels. To help with that effort, I've posted some of the drills and progressions I've been using for these skills.

~~~

A few more notes 
*We spend approximately 75% of our time working sole circles and stalders in the straps. 
 *If the skills can't be performed well in the straps, there is no need to try them on a regular bar. 
*Straps allow for lots of repetition with little wear and tear on the gymnasts hands. 
*From a coaching standpoint, seeing 3 or 4 toe shoots or stalders in a turn on the straps is better than seeing 1 per turn on a regular bar (at least in the learning phase). 
*When we run into problems with these skills on the regular bar, we always go back to the strap bar to fix them. 
*We begin working "monkey giants" on a low strap bar at level 4. 
*The girls in these videos are level 7, 8 & 9. 

An option for level 5 bars (2013-2017) 
A sole circle backward to clear front support, stalder circle backward to clear front support or clear hip to clear front support are the 3 choices available in the first half of the level 5 compulsory routine in the new 2013-2017 structure.

Check out his series of progression drills.

At Wade's suggestion of 30 stalder basket swings (he calls them "tick-tocks") per day in straps, I had Abigail doing this in October of 2011.  Within a couple of weeks, with minimal coaching, and not even working 30/day, this is where she got to:


 I'm hoping over the summer that the girls are able to seriously pursue this skill; and maybe a few- like Abigail- will one day be able to compete it, and connect it into other skills.

Forster-Resnick Bar Boot Camp:


There are two methods for toe-on entry: Single leg and double leg drop. My preference? Double-leg:


It generates much better potential power.

 Good tutorial by Enrique Trabanino:




I'll post more on stalders, later.  I don't want to make a long post even longer...(Might keep adding links below)

Further study:
Stoop Circles Spot
Stoop Circle 
Stoop Circle to Reverse Hecht (*Ahem*Somewhat Thea*Cough*)
Inbar Work for Uneven Bars - Tom Forster
Stoop Circle to Handstand
drill for toe on #1
drills for toe on #2
Drills for the Toe and Stalder
Toe Circle Drills - Kellie Mizoguchi
toe-shoot drill
Mancino Mats Big Hill used for toe-up transition drill
Stoop Sole Circle to Catch High Bar
Stoop or Stalder to Catch the Upper Rail

Never tell her the odds!

"If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair."

 -Samuel Johnson

 Abigail was told throughout her level 8 season that the likelihood of her getting her yurchenko down in time to compete it before season's end was an unrealistic expectation.  No coach in his right mind would even want her to compete it, due to safety issues.  To do the vault consistently well and to do it safely takes a year or two worth of time investment.

But as Harrison Ford said in The Empire Strikes Back, "Never tell me the odds!"; and in  Raiders of the Lost Ark, "It's not the years Honey, it's the mileage'.  Toward end of season, Abigail was cramming in a lot of mileage in the space of a very short period of time...and getting some results. 



Her determination and focus is to be admired.  Through the course of her Monday workshop, with Regionals on Saturday, I had to remind her, "Abigail, it is unsafe and unrealistic to expect to compete this vault this weekend.  When's the last time you did codys? If you were to compete this, you need to have started flipping them already.  Just when did you expect to start flipping?"  She said she was thinking today.  She actually had shown some promise on a few of her timers toward the end.  So I thought, "Why not go ahead and flip her today?  It can't hurt...Why hold her back when that, at least, was possible to do?"  So I hand-spotted the next few timers to get a feel for how much of the flipping I'd actually have to do for her.  Kort came out to the floor around this time and was impressed by one of the timers she showed him.  He told her she could flip that day.

 Even though we both knew that Abigail would not be ready by the weekend to safely compete the skill, how can coaches- who constantly preach about believing in oneself; about never giving up- be the ones to crush dreams and tell a kid that some things are impossible, so quit trying?

Now that regionals are over with, she can go back and lay down a stronger foundation that is not rushed, for her level 9 vault; and be thankful that she's given herself a year's head start....

There might be a tinge of disappointment in not being able to get this vault in time for Regionals; but certainly there is no shame; nor should there be any feelings of failure here.  There should only be pride.  She's better off now than if she had never tried.

"I may not be there yet, but I'm closer now than I was yesterday."

- Unknown

..............
 "The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it." 
 J.M. Barrie

Using No Limitation as the Limitation 

 In order to know your enemy, remember your childhood, when you were pure potential and could learn anything within human capacity. You had within you the seeds of being a physician, an attorney, an engineer, an expert craftsman, a dancer, an artist, or an Olympian. It never occurred to you that learning was difficult. You were free from assumed limitation. 

 Four-year-old Jenny decided that she wanted to learn to fly. It seemed elementary enough to her- even birds could do it. She stood on the couch and jumped, her arms flapping. Her first attempt was not entirely successful. 

Jenny reasoned that since birds have feathers, this must be the missing ingredient. She found a feather in the yard. Holding it in her little hand, she leaped again into the air. She told her father that the feather had “definitely helped.” 

 In letting his daughter attempt to fly from the couch, my friend was allowing her to explore safely her natural powers and limitations. In this way she was able to gain a balanced, realistic view of her abilities; not one imposed upon her by other people’s expectations. When I asked her father why he hadn’t just saved her some effort and explained to her that “little girls and boys can’t fly,” he replied, smiling, “How could I know? I might have been wrong.” 

When you were very young, you were free to learn, open to anything, like Jenny. As you grew, however, you began to get impressions that you were “good” at some things and “bad” at others- because you were praised and blamed, or because you misunderstood the situation. 

It was in kindergarten painting class that I made my first picture of a tree. It looked like a green lollipop, since it was my first try. Then I looked around at the paintings of the other children, and to my disappointment, their paintings looked like trees. I didn’t understand that they had drawn many more trees than I. I didn’t realize that, if I continued to practice as much as they had, my trees might look even more leafy than theirs. But I gave up too soon. Then and there, I decided that I was not a good painter. 

Little Sammy formed a self-concept in another way. He was reaching for a glass of milk. Being three years old, he misjudged the distance and knocked the milk over. His mother, momentarily upset, said, “Oh, clumsy child!” This word “clumsy” was new to Sammy. He figured it had something to do with milk. 

 On another occasion, it happened again- but this time, with juice. “Clumsy!”

 “Ah,” Sammy reasoned. “It doesn’t mean milk, it means spilling that makes me clumsy.” Sammy formed the idea that he was clumsy- and soon, he had several dozen glasses of spilled liquid and a few falls down flights of stairs to prove it.

 The undesirability of a low self-concept may seem obvious, since it limits our achievement. Yet an unrealistically high self-concept has its own unique problems. A young child who is praised for everything gets used to being praised. Praise represents positive energy and attention which all children crave. He will strive to maintain this praise as much as possible. He may even develop precocious abilities. This child’s sense of self-worth will depend upon achievement and success. He expects himself to succeed- and projects this onto the world, so that it seems everyone else expects him to succeed too. There can be tremendous psychic pressure not to let the world down. This pressure can create brilliant students, star athletes…and suicides. 

 Unrealistically high or low self-concept is debilitating. The best self-concept is none at all. 

               -Excerpted from The Warrior Athlete by Dan Millman.

Hardest Workers of the (Previous) Week

For the week ending 3/16/2013

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

Three 7s and an 8 walk into a bar....

I'm posting these (last workout) in the hopes that these gymnasts can study their form and execution and do better for it at this weekend's meet:











Good luck 7s and 8s! (...and for God's sake, work on those landings, for the love of mercy!)

Pre-Meet Bars Highlights

 From Thursday:


From yesterday:




Today:







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

Yurchenko Reboot

 Kort had begun Shaz on Yurchenkos a while back because he didn't think she'd be able to get her tsukahara vault in time for level 8 season.  But then she had taken a break from them, due to some pain in her wrist.  So Kort had her back on tsuks. 

Over the weekend, she asked Kort if she could go back to working on Yurchenkos because she felt she had been making progress before she had to rest her injury.  Kort agreed.

After a couple of days, she asked to try her timers on the real table, from a half run. 

Belated birthday to the Shaz and her mom; but uploaded in time to celebrate her dad's birthday.

Apple Ding Dong's Back Flip on Beam

Thea makes for a terrible cameraperson:

 
FYI:  "Apple Ding Dong" is Abigail's Honey Boo Boo nickname when I ran it through the Honey Boo Boo name generator.  

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...

First Attempt

Sunday workshop...

And they got better after that!

 Also stepping it up another notch on her overshoot from the last time we worked it:  Getting it done from a cast handstand!

Nice example of one-arm drop technique

This was done shortly after the Level 7 season (April 6th, to be exact), allowing her to play around with it:





This is really, really well done. The following turn she fixed her shape on the cast swing down. What I like so much about it is that the release isn't rushed and you can distinctly see the one-arm drop technique. I don't want her to do too many beyond this, unspotted, however (best clarified by Mark Folger in this fine post).  Also, his comment here:

I love the one arm drop drill, although what I do would more appropriately be called a one hand release drill (the arm doesn’t drop, but stays by the ear). I use a progressive series of 4 one hand release drills to teach underswing 1/2 to handstand. None take long to master. My girls believe that a bail to handstand is the easiest skill of its value in the code of points. For a gymnast with a tight body, it takes very little effort to “fall” from the high bar to the low bar and end up in a handstand. If you teach the one hand release style, don’t have your girls try to turn from the toes or with the torso. Releasing one hand at a time will cause the body to turn, and with very little effort, increasing the chances of keeping feet together, etc.

Yesterday, Abigail did a workshop in which we worked on her basics along with laying the foundational groundwork for some future skills, including the shootover:

Once she develops a consistent swing-down, especially from handstand, I don't think she'll have any problems with this skill (*knock on wood*).

Considering how very little time she's spent on actually toying around with the overshoot, it's quite impressive where she's at on it. (prior to the April 6th clip above, I remember spotting her maybe twice in late 2011 just carrying her slowly from the bar to arrive in handstand....and subsequent to the one day in April, I think there have only been one or two other days I allowed a similar setup, with little more than a handful of turns on their own; she won't need this advance skill until level 9).

Spotting Thea October 4, 2011

Further reading:
Overshoot to Handstand
Overshoot Drill:  One-Arm Drop