A book review by site editor Rick McCharles
Excellent.
Floor Exercises
Methods, Ideas, Curiosities, History (2005)
by Istvan Karacsony and Ivan Cuk
Forward by Arkaev
This is an advanced text including tumbling skills like double front and triple back. (It assumes you have background knowledge of basics, biomechanics and sport science.)
I enjoyed the informative and entertaining history of Men’s Floor Exercise, learning a lot about the evolution of Pommel work on Floor, for example.
The computer generated illustrations are quite well done. And accurate.
Spotting and progressions are good. Biomechanics is included, but not in any comprehensive way.
If I have any criticism at all, it’s the sports science context. Scientific language and wordy detail might confuse and obfuscate the content for coaches. Sport scientists do not state opinion, only FACT.
The book details, for example, 3 common “tuck” positions:
True. But a non sport scientist coach like myself might opine that #2 is the worst of the three. In fact, an error. I’d require that gymnast to “fix” the hand position, … or change to the piked position.
Once my gymnasts can consistently get a good grip on the shins, we’d vary the amount of tuck depending on the skill, and the phase of the skill. All this preparation work would be done on tramp.
The two main reasons so many gymnasts end up grabbing behind the thighs:
1) poor set
2) moving to the apparatus from tramp too soon
I digress. That’s only once example of where a scientific text is reluctant to weigh in with opinions not yet verifiable by research.
This book has some interesting statistics on knee pain coming out of a 1991 study by Karacsony (138 gymnasts from 16 nations). About a third reported lower patellar pain in a year. Boys are most vulnerable age 14-15. Taller kids more vulnerable than shorter.
It discusses Scheuermann’s disease and the much more common Osgood–Schlatter’s syndrome.
A career plan for training tumbling is included. Also a good deal of content on physical preparation.
The best section of all is the chapter on connecting salto skills (Tempo Jumps). In fact, that’s the most complete coverage on the topic I’ve seen anywhere.
Finally, the authors are very critical of modern choreography on this apparatus. Three gymnasts are mentioned as conspicuous good exceptions: Milissandis, Nemov, Shewfelt. That’s the reason I posted their Floor routines last week.
Karacsony is on the Men’s Technical Committee. He’s a super coach and a very intelligent man. It makes me wonder why that group doesn’t legislate more artistry in Men’s Artistic Gymnastics?
About Istvan Karacsony
About Ivan Cuk
editor of Science of Gymnastics Journal
These authors, both University educators, have 4 apparatus books for Men’s Artistic Gymnastics (FX, PH, R, V) and are working on the other two.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to get your hands on them as there’s no world wide distribution, as yet. Leave a comment if you know where to get them.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 