Author: Rick Mc

Arizona Sunrays coach and owner Dan Witenstein.

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… ‘the 3 of clover’?

Kids don’t know the names of the suits of cards in 2014? 🙂

I heard Saskatchewan rocked it. 🙂

I’m planning on attending the World Gymnaestrada 2015. 🙂

We are proud to announce Madelaine Leydin as winner of the 2013-2014 Colonial First State Sports Boost. Congratulations to Maddi and Gymnastics Australia for taking out first prize. …

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Thirty-eight coaches participated (15 for WAG and 23 for MAG) from fourteen Spanish speaking Pan-American countries and one coach from Spain for a total of 15 participating federations – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela.

This list of participating countries is an excellent demonstration that interest in high performance gymnastics and the wish to learn more is universal. Each of the participating coaches had successfully completed Level 1 and Level 2 Academies in previous years.

FIG – Academy participation in Dominican Republic proves universal interest in high performance Gymnastics

Experts included Takashi Kobayashi, Eric Boucharin, Professor Ignacio Grande, Tatiana Aguiar and course leader Hardy Fink.

A funny article from ASHLEY MATEO @ASHLEYMATEO is being circulated.

Here’s one.

NOTHING QUITE COMPARES TO THAT MOMENT WHEN YOU LAND YOUR FIRST BACK FLIP

See the other 50 – THINGS ONLY GYMNASTS UNDERSTAND

Blythe Lawrence gives us an update on how tiny Azerbaijan suddenly decided to become an Olympic contender in gymnastics.

… fan favorite and newly naturalized Azeri Anna Pavlova, who for the past five years has been overlooked by the Russian team masters for big international competitions, even when she could have potentially medalled on vault, by far her strongest event.

The dynamics of The Pavlova Situation in Russia have never been well explained: Whether the Russian head coaches simply chose to focus on the new generation after Pavlova tore her ACL in 2008 or whether there were issues of attitude problems and/or bad training habits is unknown.

Either way, Pavlova showed up at numerous Russian Championships between 2010 and 2013, performed well on beam, often won vault, and was never selected for major teams. She earned her living competing for foreign clubs, like Haguenau in France, as well as in the German Bundesliga league, before her nationality switch to Azerbaijan was greenlighted by the International Gymnastics Federation late last year. …

Examiner – Grow your own Olympic team

WAG coach needed at Stjarnan Gymnastics Club. Full time starting August 1st.

fimleikar (a) Stjarnan.is

details

The day after Gym Momentum Camp 2014 Boston, Director Tony Retrosi took some of the coaches and kids up to his ropes course in Maine.

This was the toughest “element“.

Take Flight Aerial Adventure

That pic was posted by Cygnus Gymnastics. 🙂

A stunned Kim Jacob smiled brightly Monday night as she was presented the 40th annual Honda Cup as the Collegiate Women Sports Awards Athlete of the Year in Los Angeles during the live awards broadcast on the CBS Sports Network.

Jacob, the 2014 NCAA All-Around Champion and the Honda Award winner for the sport of gymnastics, was one of 12 women from 12 different sports under consideration for the prestigious accolade that honors the best collegiate NCAA Division I female athlete in the nation over the past academic year. …

Jacob is just the third gymnast in the history of the award to win the Honda Cup, following Missy Marlowe (Utah, 1993) and Courtney Kupets (Georgia, 2009). …

Roll Tide

47 athletes training for Cirque du Soleil were studied:

… injury, emotional exhaustion, self-efficacy and fatigue were associated with an increase in injury risk (risk ratios between 1.8 and 2.8), but Conflicts/Pressure was not (risk ratio=0.8). Of the several specific psychological aspects that are considered risk factors for injury, low self-efficacy had the strongest relationship. …

British Journal of Sports Medicine – Psychological predictors of injuries in circus artists: an exploratory study

What’s “low self-efficacy“, the factor that correlated highest with injury?

GRETCHEN REYNOLDS in the New York Times explains:

Hoping to discern what traits separated the injury-prone from the impervious, Dr. Hallé and colleagues from McGill University in Montreal compared data from the athletes’ psychological questionnaires with their medical charts. What they found was that a person’s level of confidence could significantly affect his or her risk of sustaining an injury. …

What the Circus Can Teach Us About Sports Injuries

Lesson for coaches = coach for confidence. That means more successful progressions, more repetition and less spotting.

Dr. Hallé:

“Watch someone who is really good” at a task, whether it’s a twisting somersault from a trapeze platform or a 5K road race, and “notice each step that they take.”

… Every activity involves a series of discrete, manageable skills that you can practice individually, she said. “Succeeding at a portion of the task will show you that you have the capacity to succeed at the rest.” …

(via Stacy Clark)