Here’s the conference I’d most like to attend this year:
Birmingham, England Apr. 30th – May 1st, 2010
It’s multi-sport, but has very strong gymnastics representation.
“This is unique opportunity for coaches working with young performers”, said Hardy Fink, Canada, Director of Education and Academy Programme of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG).
Prof Keith Russell (CAN), Prof Adam Baxter Jones (CAN), Prof Joachim Mester (GER), Prof Joan Duda (USA), Prof Nicola Maffulli (GBR), Prof Neil Armstrong (GBR), and David Hemery CBE.
Chairs: Professor Craig Sharp, Professor Colin Boreham, Professor Fred Yeadon, Professor Lew Hardy, Dr. John Atkinson, Mr. John Aldridge and Professor Greg Whyte.
Kelly's wedding with best man Kyle Shewfelt
Kelly Manjak (CAN) will be presenting on Coaching Issues.
Manjak coached Kyle Shewfelt to the Olympic gold medal … in Athens as well as a fourth place finish on the vault. Manjak and Shewfelt worked together for 16 years …
The deadline is March 5th for Canadian eligible coaches to apply for the 2010-2011 Level 4 NCCP cycle. (MAG, RG, TG or WAG). Contact your Provincial office.
Instead of using elite demonstrators, the performances are realistic to the level of the girls appropriate to each drill. (The clips are not so intimidating when you bring your laptop into the gym and show a drill to your kids.)
Bottom line: GymDrills.com is an excellent new resource for WAG coaches. A good investment for club owners:
• Free per 7 Days (Trial)
• 3.99 USD per 1 Month (Monthly Membership)
• 35.00 USD per 1 Year (Year Membership)
Gymnastics Canada is tentatively scheduling a combined Men’s Artistic Gymnastics Level 2 Technical and Practical and 3 Level Technical Coaching Course immediately following Elite Canada 2010 (March 1-4th).
Either in the Gatineau / Ottawa region or Montreal. This is a tremendous opportunity to complete both Level 2 and 3 Technical in a very concentrated period of time!
Confirmed instructors are Dr. Keith Russell and Guy Lavoie so instruction will be of the highest level.
This is a video of the 2007 Jr MAG Tirrenia training camp, hosted by the European Union of Gymnastics held in Italy every year. This DVD was produced specifically for the Swiss Gymnatics Federation, and thus has only partial translation in English. Majority of DVD is in German and some French, with very limited english translations. However a lot of the concepts and ideas are understandable even without a translation. …
DVD CONTENT
PHYSICAL PREPARATION – (3min)
POMMEL HORSE- presented by Valeri Belenki (GER)(Former Olympic and World Champion and member of the German coaching staff) (8min)
PARALLEL BARS – Valeri Belenki (GER) (16min)
HIGH BAR – presented by Rudolph Bouché (FRA) (professor of sport and technical framework at the Training Center of Antibes) (12min)
GymSmarts is far and away the best and biggest publisher of gymnastics DVDS.
Here’s there biggest sellers from the past year. (In case you didn’t get the ones you wanted for Christmas.)
SETS
Mas Watanabe’s Tumbling Set
Tony Gehman’s Advance Tumbling Set
Mas Watanabe’s Bar Set
Mas Watanabe’s Vaulting Series
Beth Gardner’s Preschool and Rec Gym 1-3
SINGLE DVDs:
Tammy Biggs – Leaps and Jumps
Tammy Biggs – Beam Complexes
Mary Lee Tracy – Core Strength
Mary Lee Tracy – Circuit Training
Tammy Biggs – Flexibility
Tony Retrosi – 5 Bar Skills
Tammy Biggs – Round-off
Tammy Biggs- Flipping Drills
Tammy Biggs – Aerials
GymSmarts is Tom & Reiko Beach. Click through to their home page if you want more information. Most DVDs are $30.
This excellent site is posted by Enrique Trabanino from Cincinnati Gymnastics Academy, Mary Lee Tracy’s gym. He is a former National Team member from El Salvador.
He sells his gymnastics coaching Clinics on DVD for $25 each.
There are some free “teaser” clips on his Videos page. One sample.
Looks great.
There are more free Bar training tutorials on his YouTube Channel. (If you’re a Bar coach, you need to see those. Awesome.)
SUBSCRIBE to Enrique’s channel if you want him to post more video.
I’ve finally had time to look at a wide assortment of the Women’s Artistic Gymnastics video clips on new GymDrills.com website put together by Will Vaughn.
I like it.
I wish more coaches would document their favourite drills on video and make them available to the world.
The quality of the drills is high. The quality of the video, average. Some demonstrators show minor form and technical errors.
I was pleased to find some drills I’d never seen before.
The biggest problem with the site, as with (to a lesser extent) the similar American Gymnast Gymnastics on Demand is the navigation. It’s not perfect on either site … but GymDrills has one killer feature. Fill in the SEARCH box with “Pak” and only those videos tagged with that word appear on the resulting list.
The 5 star rating system on each video will be useful when enough users rate them.
I do have a few quibbles with GymDrills.com.
I’m not a fan of the Microsoft .WMV video format. But they do play on a Mac if you get the free Flip4Mac plugin.
The database has great potential for growth too, I think. Seems GymDrills can continue to add new clips into the future. At some point registered users may be able to upload clips.
I like that videos from other sources (even GymnasticsCoaching) have been included. They are free to watch, even if you are not a paid member.
Cost of access to this site is inexpensive:
• Free per 7 Days (Trial)
• 3.99 USD per 1 Month (Monthly Membership)
• 35.00 USD per 1 Year (Year Membership)
If cost is a big barrier to you, sign up for the free week and watch every video during those 7 days.
I’d love to see GymDrills offer, as another option, a Freemium business model in future.
… offering basic services for free, while charging a premium for advanced or special features …
A good sampling of videos could be free. Other videos and services (e.g. chat room) should be available for paid members.
Certainly as of today Gymnastics on Demand is a better service … but it costs $9.95 per month as compared with $3.99 per month for GymDrills.
As you see, my camera is very bad in low light. Actually the gym has some nice indirect natural light … but my camera still did not work in that facility.
A good article from coaching legend Mas Watanabe on his GymSmarts Community blog:
The other day I was watching the workout of our level 5 and 7 teams during my break.
The level 5’s were working on vault and they were doing the front handspring drill. The drill was to develop good blocking action by using the under arm swing when they punch the board. I was impressed because the entire group was doing the same under arm swing and all the girls were reaching their hands to the table very quickly. Most of the girls were getting a quick turn over of the body from the board and getting a fairly good blocking action.
Of course their handspring vaults weren’t even close to perfect, but the consistent emphasis of good technique was very evident.
Then I looked over to the bars, there were level 7 girls doing back giants, but some of them were still working on their three-quarter giant.
Here too, I was very pleased to see that all the girls were trying to use a proper tap swing to make the giant. Some of their body positions were not good yet, but the tapping action was there. Also, the girls who were struggling with the three-quarter giant were also using the tapping action to kick stronger and lift the swing higher.
I could tell that they will eventually learn a good back giant if they continuously try that way.
Educating all the staff so they teach the specific technique on key skills is not so easy. Many of the younger coaches do not have much coaching experience. …
I’m currently teaching a 9 day gymnastics coaching course in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Do you know it?
Very close to Calcutta, India.
Though Dhaka is a frantic city of millions, we’re housed in the green, tranquil BKSP Multisport Training Centre. That’s 104 acres of lush sporting paradise.
Many foreign coaches have been brought in to Bangladesh. We live in this building.
Right now we have a British Archery coach here for 7 months, two new Judo coaches from Iran, a Canadian gymnastics coach. Coaches from China, Korea, India. All over.
We are treated royally, let me tell you.
Bangladesh is a fast growing economy, devoutly Muslim … but with no security problems. Inside BKSP the religion is SPORT. More than any other place it reminds me of the American Olympic Training Centre in Colorado Springs.
The gymnastics facility is spacious though the equipment is 22yrs-old from Senoh, Japan. A pit has been “roughed in” but is not yet finished.
I learned of a terrific opportunity this week. If a foreign coach pays their own transportation, BKSP might be able to “host” them. Free meals and board. An Artistic Gymnastics coaches is needed to assist the current coaches. There are boys and girls in this gym.
Kids train 22hrs/wk. Two trainings / day. The school is on site. Most of the gymnasts board at BKSP, as well. It’s an ideal set-up.
If you want to travel … and build your coaching resume at the same time … email me at Rick_McCharles AT hotmail.com for more information.
They are looking for a minimum 3 month commitment.
I’m leading an Olympic Solidarity course for the International Gymnastics Federation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 1-10.
One of the mandates of the International Olympic Committee is to help grow Olympic sport around the world. To this end they budget money to support the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in building sport programs.
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