Year: 2011

At a Saskatchewan Provincial training camp at QCK in Regina we wanted to build a high stack of mats for practicing flyaway drills to flat back.

Wesley Chirima had a system I’d never seen before.

He and Mark Kurmey threaded rope across the cables of a pit low bar.

Next they folded a 4 inch landing mat over the set-up to create the base of the stack.

Finally, they added an series of mats to make it as steep as possible, at just the right distance for the gymnasts.

Fun. Safe. Easy. No spotting required.

This was an ideal set-up.

Director Dave Adlard has announced the tentative dates for summer 2011: July 24-28

Click through to the website for details – HPTCamp.com

The goal of this camp is FUN and MOTIVATION for the kids. Super high coaching level.

It’s in Coeur d’ Alene close to the Spokane airport.

A highlights edit.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Anna Li … ??

At 1min 20 you can see some of the Bar connections she’s working on. Looks like fun.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

http://videoplayer.flocasts.org/player.swf

Anna knows how to HIT Bars. If she can get close to a 7.0 start score, we’ll be cheering her in London. I could see her competing Beam / Bars.

Could the use of platelet-rich plasma help reduce the number of Achilles tendon injuries in gymnastics?

One older Canadian gymnast tells us it worked for her. She linked to a YouTube video doctor’s description of the procedure.

Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is blood plasma that has been enriched with platelets. As a concentrated source of autologous platelets, PRP contains (and releases through degranulation) several different growth factors (cytokines) that stimulate healing of bone and soft tissue. PRP has received popular attention due to its use in treating sports injuries in professional athletes. …

When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is …

From a recent NY Times article:

… Its appeal only soared higher when professional athletes like Tiger Woods and the football players Troy Polamalu and Hines Ward reported that it cured them.

It is a new procedure, based on an idea that once seemed revolutionary: Inject people with their own blood, concentrated so it is mostly platelets, the tiny colorless bodies that release substances that help repair tissues. …

Now, though, the first rigorous study asking whether the platelet injections actually work finds they are no more effective than saltwater. The study, reported in the Jan. 13 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, involved people with injured Achilles’ tendons, fibrous tissue that connects the calf to the heel bone.

“We are sorry for the patients,” Johannes Tol, the lead researcher and a professor of orthopedic research at the Hague Medical Center in the Netherlands, said in an interview this week. “There still is no good treatment.” …

read more – Popular Blood Therapy May Not Work

That doesn’t mean coaches shouldn’t still consider the option. Many have reported success. But there’s no evidence yet that it actually works.

Note that there’s a slight risk of testing positive for a doping infraction after this treatment.

Leave a comment if you’ve had any personal experience with PRP.

NCAA Collegiate Schedule | CollegeGymFans.com | NCAA Friday | NCAA Saturday | American Gymnast videos FREE

… ANNOUNCED a new Recreational Gymnastics blog

New and interesting elements that were performed at the 1987 USSR Gymnastics Championships.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Gymnasts shown are Shushunova, Pryakhina, Sarkisyan, Zadorozhny, Schepotchkin, Porplenko, Kharkov, Rodion, Martsinkiv and Tikhonkikh.

The first triple back in competition was not Liukin, but Yuri Porplenko, seen in that highlights reel.

He did it first at the USSR Cup in Jerevan, Armenia, April 1986.

(via Rewriting Russian Gymnastics)

If the Men’s Collegiate Gymnastics program is one day canceled by the NCAA, people will be asking … why didn’t somebody do more to save it sooner?

Couldn’t somebody find a way to popularize guys that look like this?

Blythe Lawrence posted The Discussion: How to better market men’s NCAA gymnastics?

If you were hired as a consultant for men’s NCAA gymnastics programs, what would you tell them to do to improve exposure and meet attendance?

Several felt that a key strategy would be to “piggyback” on the success of the women’s program. (University of Illinois-Chicago runs combined meets now.)

The first thing I’d do (as God) is combine MAG and WAG Championships.

Ron Noe (Stick It Media):
• marketing plans for the teams
• promote the “stars” … (e.g. Ruggeri, Legendre, Wynn)

Anne Phillips (Gymnastike):
• school and other local exhibitions
• improve media exposure
• make meets more fun
… watch the beginning of the Alabama v Boise highlights video last weekend to see what she means by “fun”

Martina Eggeling (Gymnastics United) pointed out that we need “personalities” that can interest the school and general public. Men’s gymnastics has always lacked stars with charisma.

Alexei Nemov, Fabian Hambuchen. … Who else is in that category? … Uchimura?

Click through to Gymnastics Examiner for the full Discussion on this important topic.

Men’s collegiate gymnastics meets are actually more thrilling and interesting than the girls. … But nobody knows because nobody goes.

And that’s a shame.

The most dangerous skill in gymnastics in my opinion is …

Cast to stand on low bar, jump to high bar.

Many gyms have one broken arm / year on that sequence.

TumblTrak posted a good video on how to introduce the skill a year or two before you put them up on the regulation bars.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

For more information visit tumbltrak.com or call 1-800-331-4362

related post – JAO – jumping to high bar

As of January 24th, here are the top 10 teams:

more rankings on GymInfo

Stick It Media has the best summary of what happened last weekend – Stanford Tears it Up With 364.40 in Win Over Cal

Cal’s Dennis Mannhart, from Switzerland, is the #1 ranked all-arounder, so far, with 89.90 average.

The highest all-around has been Jake Dalton 90.750 (Oklahoma).