Entries from January 2010 ↓

High resolution version linked from GymnasticsTrainingTips.

Click over to Gymnastics Examiner for highlights from the last week, including:

Do you like the new sticking rule for women’s floor?

Nowadays elite gymnasts are deducted for lunging backwards out of their tumbling passes. Amy Van Deusen at About.com Gymnastics would like to hear your thoughts about this. …

Ana Claudia Silva changes gyms

The 2008 Brazilian Olympian, 17, has signed a contract to compete for Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo Club this season, as has 2009 World team member Khiuani Dias. Other Flamengos include Diego and Daniele Hypolito and Jade Barbosa. …

Spotlight-ready

Stanford freshman Ashley Morgan is the daughter of baseball’s two-time National League MVP Joe Morgan … Says her Hall of Famer dad, “I’m more proud of her than I am of anything I ever did as an athlete.” …

Why Paul Hamm deserved to win the 2004 Olympic all-around gold, once and for all

Andrew Thornton dissects Yang Tae-Yung’s high bar performance from the 2004 Olympic all-around final. … Yang’s start value on high bar was incorrectly tabulated…

details and links – The gymnastics week in review

I’m not completely convinced by Andy’s conclusion in the Hamm scandal in Athens. But he’s right that Yang Tae-Yung was over-scored by 0.1 in the start score on Horizontal Bar. Yet another blunder for the Men’s judges in that meet that went unnoticed until now.

Thanks Andy.

Flavius Koczi, 2009 Romanian International, Foor Exercise (note the second pass — a back 3.5 to immediate Rudi — extraordinary!)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (starts at 30sec)

I actually don’t like this routine. A classic example of overuse of one kind of skill.

Still, Koczi was named one of 20 Gymnasts to Watch in 2010

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It reminds me of another strange routine: Zhu Sang Sang – Floor – 25 turns

If you count up all of the turns, twists, and jumps, she actually does exactly TWENTY-FIVE 360-degree turns in her routine! That HAS to be a world record. That was a quad turn at the beginning …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

This was linked by Andy Thornton in a post dedicated to every gymnast who has ever competed backward layout with 3/1 twist … to punch front.

related posts:

• quadruple twist FX – Kent Caldwell

• tumbling – triple and quadruple twist (Artemev)

A great interview with Barb Gibson of UW-La Crosse, an NCAA Division III program:

Gibson’s Eagles have won 13 NCGA national titles, including the last two, 17 WIAC titles, including a sweep of the 2000s, and can count 26 individual national champions and 155 All-Americans. …

Gibson was determined to keep family first when she took over the La Crosse program in 1984. She essentially made year-to-year contracts with herself.

“I was a young mother, I wasn’t sure how I could continue to be a mom, a wife and a coach all together,” Gibson said. “So my approach when I first started was, I’m going to take one year at a time, see how my children are doing, how we’re enduring the long hours of an athletic career.”

Gibson said she’s had two NCAA Division I job offers – she declines to reveal the schools but said they were in the Midwest – over the years but turned them down because of the roots she and her family put down in La Crosse.

“I really think my family was always my priority,” she said. “I knew going to that next level was going to mean giving up a lot of time in the summers for recruiting. I was always trying to find that work-life balance.”

What keeps Gibson going?

“The kids,” she said. “These are very committed athletes, they’re very passionate about their sport, they’re just great students, great kids. I still love my sport, I love to teach, I love to coach.” …

read more – College gymnastics: Despite successes, UW-L’s Gibson wants more

One of the main reasons I like the Perfect 10 scoring system in the Women’s Collegiate program is that it’s much easier for the media and general public to understand.

Early season dual meets can actually draw fans at some schools.

From ugadawg8 on College Gymnastics Board …

Over 163,000 people have attended NCAA gymnastics meets through three weeks.

click for larger image

Georgia has sold out all their home meets.

see more – Interesting Attendance Figures

Some schools average less than 100 spectators. Growing the fan base at more schools is one of the highest priorities for the NCAA. They’re hoping that live TV coverage of the Super 4 Team Finals will help do that.

… Whatever happened to that proposal? Is CBS TV going to do it?

9.975 is the highest score on Beam in the NCAA so far this year..

Click PLAY or watch UCLA’s Vanessa Zamarripa on YouTube.

Clean and simple. So different than the trick wobble, trick wobble, trick wobble of International beam.

shawnjohnson.net has had a makeover. Twitter features prominently.

@ShawneyJ

(Looks good. But how can any new design in 2010 not have an RSS feed? Bill Gate’s new site designer forgot RSS, as well. It’s finally been added.)

One of her “favorite videos” is World’s Greatest by CdO90. I’d started to forget what made Shawn the best gymnast of the last quadrennial. This edit brought it all back.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

shawnjohnson.net

Yesterday’s episode of MIOBI was one of the best, so far. … OK, that’s not saying much.

But, for once, some of the themes were positive.

… At the Rock, Sasha is hosting the annual Open House Night and decides to make it “fun” this year, encouraging everyone to enjoy themselves by dressing themselves in costumes and preforming routines purely for entertainment. Nicky and Kaylie are assigned to do a duet performance, which proves to be difficult, considering they have conflicting opinions about everything. However, the couple soon come to a truce and Kaylie comes up with an idea for their performance. They do a re-enactment of a Spanish bull fight and the crowd goes wild.

Meanwhile, Emily is convinced by her mom to tell the story of her life through her performance, which results in a little girls asking for Emily’s first autograph.

There’s a story line about the injured Payson finally taking an interest in something outside the gym. And even a swipe at internet haters.

Emily’s performance suffers after she Googles herself and sees that bloggers are judging her negatively online.

Wikipedia

Episode 14 is online free if you live in the USA at ABCfamily.com. And online here if you live outside the States.

This is post # 5000. Quite an archive of information, photos and videos.

Blythe Lawrence again lists 20 gymnasts — “some already big names, others not as much” — who she’s watching this year.

10 women. 10 men.

One of her picks is VERY artistic.

Click PLAY or watch Jesse Silverstein’s P Bars on YouTube.

Click through to see videos of the others:

Gymnastics Examiner – Twenty to watch in 2010

I’ve not used this kind of product. Leave a comment if you’ve an opinion on whether or not it works.

Roll the RipGuardian in a circular motion, then flatten. Place RipGuardian directly on your rip. Spread it out on all ends so that it evenly covers your rip/blister. Using athletic tape, cover the entire section of RipGuardian. Place your wrist bands and girps over the tape …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I’ve never seen anything like this.

It’s part pole dancing. Part contortion. Part Chinese pole. A bit of hand balancing. Even some tumbling.

And check out the extreme dismount!

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

This is called Mallakhamb.

… a traditional Indian sport in which a gymnast performs poses and feats while hanging from a vertical wooden pole or rope. Mallakhamb also refers to the pole used in the sport. …

Here’s the rope version. It’s like Silks with a rope. Painful!

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Cirque Tribune)

Part 3 in a series on StickItMedia.

Sadly, our all-time favorite, Oklahoma’s Russ Czeschin, has graduated. Czeschin was a four-time All-American on floor (3 times) and vault (1 time), and he stretched the tape measure to a whopping 6ft 3″.

The NCAA’s tallest man mantle has been passed down to Penn State senior Matt Greenfield, who tops out at 6ft 2″. Greenfield is an All-American Scholar Athlete, and is primed to do some great things in his final season. …

… read the complete list of gymnasts 6′ 0″ and taller – Who are the Tallest in Men’s Gymnastics? – Part 3