At his recent clinic at GAGE, Al explained his elaborate “trench” pit. This it the 5th version and he’s finally happy with how it works.
Note the free standing elevated chalk box.
Those segments are 8ft long, wide enough to leave a 2ft channel.
The white base spotting box is the minimum height you’d possibly ever want to use. The yellow pieces can be stacked as high as needed for the height of the gymnast. This day it was set so the tallest girl in the gym could swing.
The blue mat in-between is custom made to fit.
Construction is layers of rigid foam, glued together. Then topped with carpet bonded ethafoam from an old roll strip.
Al’s gym makes their own covers having purchased a $1600 industrial sewing machine.
A contractor friend of mine priced out one of the yellow sections at less than $200 including handles and perhaps even a zipper closure. GAGE has dozens. Each is light enough to easily be moved by two small kids.
Al finds this system far superior to the below ground channel pits.
Leave a comment if you’ve an opinion. Or any alternative this useful.
2 comments ↓
It’s a good combo of platform and pit.. it would be nice if one side could extend out over the pit to facilitate spotting of single side releases (geinger, jaeger, etc), or to hand spot tkatchev work and let the athlete land on the opposite side… but I suppose Im one of the rare few who hand spot everything and I need to learn a different approach… just havent found one that is “better” for me.
Still don’t quite know what’s up with the gloves. I don’t ever sweat so much that I slip and I spot a bajillion times a day…
I also think there should be to stand on both sides (front and back) of the bar on each left or right side. Only needs a couple feet.
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