Entries Tagged 'books & manuals' ↓

A new book by Steven Low (Author), Chris Salvato (Editor), KC Parsons (Editor), Valentin Uzunov (Illustrator)

At 542 pages you might want to gift a coach the Kindle edition.

details – Overcoming Gravity: A Systematic Approach to Gymnastics and Bodyweight Strength

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Motto of Paralympian motivational speaker Josh Sundquist.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

His book – Just Don’t Fall: A Hilariously True Story of Childhood, Cancer, Amputation, Romantic Yearning, Truth, and Olympic Greatness

(via The Gymnast Life)

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Despite fear mongering and pragmatic cautioning, people are sharing online like there’s no tomorrow.

I’m a big fan of journalism professor / internet pundit Jeff Jarvis, author of What Would Google Do?

His newest publication is Public Parts, the book. It touts the societal benefits of sharing:

… A visionary and optimistic thinker examines the tension between privacy and publicness that is transforming how we form communities, create identities, do business, and live our lives.

Thanks to the internet, we now live—more and more—in public. More than 750 million people (and half of all Americans) use Facebook, where we share a billion times a day. The collective voice of Twitter echoes instantly 100 million times daily, from Tahrir Square to the Mall of America, on subjects that range from democratic reform to unfolding natural disasters to celebrity gossip. New tools let us share our photos, videos, purchases, knowledge, friendships, locations, and lives. …

Click PLAY or watch an introduction on YouTube.

All organizations — including Gymnastics Canada — are struggling with how best to add social networking communication.

They need consult Jeff Jarvis.

Though I had two Facebook friends threaten to cancel their accounts last week, I still feel the benefits of internet sharing far outweigh risks.

(via Buzz Machine)

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BOOK LAUNCH
Monday September 26th, 2011

Alexandra Orlando is an Olympic athlete who dedicated seventeen years of her life to the sport of rhythmic gymnastics, winning almost two hundred medals. She was Senior Canadian National Champion by the age of sixteen— a title she won five times, earning her the reputation as one of the few non-Europeans competing at the highest level in this sport …

Rhythmic Gymnastics World Championships is in progress in France.

… Gymnasts placing among the top 15 in the All-around qualify their country directly for the Olympic Games 2012 in London, while ranks 16-24 will have participation rights at the second Olympic qualifier, the test event on January 16-18, also in London. …

FIG

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Gerald S George:

The importance of form (body shape) should be patently obvious to all professionals associated with judged sports.

Yet more often than not, specific interpretations of correct body shape are incomplete, inaccurate, or both. Rarely does this concept go beyond aspects such as locked elbows and knees, pointed toes, legs held together, deep pikes, wide straddles, and the like. Asymmetrical cervical, thoracic, and lumbar curvatures, improper pelvic girdle alignment, and poor arm-trunk or leg-trunk angles are some of the typical body-shape deviations that slip by seemingly undetected. …

Patterns of Motion

Some variations of shape during giant are “techniques”, some are “errors”. … And a small subset are also judging deductions.

If your gymnast can do a giant without taking a deduction, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good giant.

That excerpt gives you an idea of the kind of content in the G.S. George coaching manual — Championship Gymnastics.

His online Newsletters and Blog are free.

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Gym Rats is a new series of books for kids by Mary Reiss.

The first in the series is already available for $10:

Read about Morgan as she goes through the highs and lows of going for her round-off back handspring for the first time! Meet her best friend, Madison, and be up close and personal as you read their notes to each other. Also, learn some great drills and techniques for your round-off back handspring from Morgan and Madison’s coach …

Gym Rats: Basic Training (Book 1)

Leave a comment if you’ve read it.

Book 2 – Gym Rats: Toe Jam will be available September 17, 2011.

Details on the publisher’s website.

I heard about the books on Chalk Bucket forum.

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This is a repost from my Rec Gymnastics blog.

Attention Recreation Program Directors.

I’m impressed with the 2nd Edition of the CANGYM recreation program developed by Gymnastics Alberta. It’s a significant improvement on the original.

The CANGYM National Badge Program is Gymnastics Canada’s National Skill Development and Evaluation program for Men’s and Women’s Artistic Gymnastics.

This program is intended for use with participants of varying abilities aged 6 and older, including beginner level participants through to entry level competitive gymnasts.

Utilizing the CANGYM badge program allows participants, coaches, and parents to monitor progress in addition to being a motivational tool for athletes. …

Gymnastics Canada

It’s a big binder with supporting documentation available on an accompanying disk. There is no on-line support, however.

CANGYM looks expensive at $110 from Gymnastics Canada. But a club needs purchase only 1 copy. Everything is photocopy ready. In fact, I would say it’s a bargain. I’m not aware of any other badge system as good.

The CANGYM levels are often used for Report Cards.

The program is not perfect for every club, but it’s a great “starting point” for building your own program.

The most controversial part is the CANGYM badge program. Many clubs use it. Savvy coaches break some of the levels into 2 parts, allowing more kids to progress more sessions. Some clubs even produce their own badges rather than use the astonishingly expensive official badges. ($2.53ea).

Overall, I highly recommend the binder as a resource for every recreation program.

details on Gymnastics Canada

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From Ollerup, Denmark.

This work features the first international biography of Niels Bukh (1880-1950), the charismatic founder of the special Danish school of modern gymnastics.

His team of young elite gymnasts traveled around the world demonstrating his gymnastics, and in Japan, his school is still attracting thousands of pupils.

Bukh’s private life and his fascination with the German Nazi party makes him a very controversial figure even fifty years after his death. It includes a DVD with 131 film clips in Danish, English, and Japanese. …

Amazon

A gay Nazi collaborator. Sounds interesting.

Read a review by Wendy Varney.

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UPDATE on this issue from Wayne Goldsmith:

Sport Coaching Brain

Thank Diving Examiner Tom Trapp for the link.

Anyone who claims “There is no such thing as talent” is wrong.

There are some excellent comments on this post, by the way. Ono paraphrases Michael Shermer, Founding Publisher of Skeptic Magazine, in saying that success in a combination of talent, hard work and luck.

Olympic Champion Kyle Shewfelt was not the most talented guy who ever walked into his gym, for example. (That was Bardana.) But he put in plenty more than 10,000hrs, was very talented … and also was the right kind of athlete to win the 2004 Floor title. He happened to have a short back handspring at the exact time it was essential to do 4 tumbling skills in series without going out of bounds. He happened to be an artistic gymnast in a quadrennial when that rewarded.

Good timing.

______ original post from June 30th:

Coach Howard posted the best summary I’ve seen on the theory that many people can become expert at something if they put in 10,000 hours of focused training.

Coach Howard credits K. Anders Ericsson for popularizing the concept, but I first saw it in the 1985 book Developing Talent in Young People by Dr. Benjamin Bloom. (A must read for every coach.)

That all said, I don’t really believe it.

The 10,000hrs correlates with excellence, but correlation isn’t causation.

If I had trained 10,000hrs, I still wouldn’t have made the NBA.

You need both talent and training. Nature and nurture.

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Coach Jeff Summers from Flames Gymnastics, Arizona has written a short book for gymnastics parents about what to do, and NOT do at home.

Get an understanding of the kinds of exercises that can and should be trained at home as well as what should be left to the coaches.

Paperback $15.96 or eBook $9.98 from Lulu

Thanks Jeff.

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2008 Team Olympic gold medalist, 19yr-old Li Shanshan, has a book.

“I Am My Own Queen on Balance”

(via Chinese Gymnastics Blog)

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For coaches, gymnasts and Moms.

SGP – Recommended Reading for June 7

… I like the 7 Mommy Musts for Chaperoning a Bunch of Girls on Mommy Warriors – Fighting the everyday battles of motherhood

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A new text for coaches from Routledge Sport Science is now available everywhere, contributors including Bill Sands and John Salmela, titled The Science of Gymnastics.

Several people have told me it’s good.

• energetic, physical and physiological assessment
• training principles
• diet, nutrition and supplementation
• growth and development issues
• kinetics and kinematics
• angular and linear motion
• angular momentum
• stress, anxiety and coping
• motivation and goal setting
• mental skills training for practice and competition
• the psychology of learning and performance.

Amazon

It’s available in paperback or ebook for $54.95. From that same Routledge link you can preview some pages free. University instructors can request a Complimentary Exam Copy.

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