Author: Rick Mc

Two Olympic Champions.

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Straddle Tkachev is Gabby’s best skill, I reckon.

Made for the 2012 Paralympic Games, this ad features a disabled runner making his way past wheelchairs, emergency vehicles and an accident scene, before breaking away into a fast run. It’s an inspiring metaphor for people’s ability to overcome challenges, and one of HuffPost’s most totally favourite ads of the year.

Best Canadian Commercials Of 2012

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If you haven’t listened to the new Gymnastics talk show yet, Episode 16 would be a good one to try.

This week we talk to 16-year-old Elizabeth Price of Parkettes. She’s coming off a stellar year, being named alternate to the 2012 Olympic Team, then winning back-to-back all-around titles at the Stuttgart and Glasgow World Cups. Next month, she’ll be joining Kyla Ross, Vanessa Ferrari, Asuka Teramoto, Larissa Iordache and Elisabeth Seitz at the American Cup.

We are joined by special guest-host, World and Olympic medalist and 2011 NCAA beam champion, Samantha Peszek. She gives us her thoughts on the latest news, including Beth Tweddle on Dancing on Ice, Lloimincia Hall’s new floor routine and weighs in on Spanny’s week-one NCAA recap.

Episode 16: Elizabeth Price

related – Sophomore gymnast Lloimincia Hall channels religion in performances:

… Hall’s floor routine against No. 3 Florida, which earned a near-perfect score of 9.95, provided the knockout blow in the final performance of the upset. She finished second overall in the meet with a score of 39.45 and is nationally ranked No. 10 all-around.

Behind her performances is one goal — showing her devotion to Christ. She closed her Florida floor performance by bringing her hands together in a prayer pose before transitioning to Tiger claws. …

“She doesn’t need her music,” LSU coach D-D Breaux laughed. “She improvises all the time. We never see the same routine in practice that we see in competition.” …

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Ensure that technique is good, hips are stretched, shoulders in front of the hands, before starting to lower the feet.

For the gymnast in the video, I would raise the height of the feet. Her shoulders are not yet over and past her hands.

That was linked by Coaching Gymnastics in the New Millennium.

The comments on that post and the YouTube page are interesting. Tammy Biggs likes to train elevated bridge with feet together AND feet shoulder width (for flyspring).

Couch Gymnast posed this question:

What do you think is the most critical issue in need of addressing with the Code/rules this year and why?

By far the most popular answers were:

• tie-breaker rule at Olympics
• two-per-country rule

Next was the issue of “Artistry”. Rewarding better those WAGs who include interesting and appealing composition and choreography.

My own answer:

Execution scores are “boxed”. The range between average gymnast and best-in-competition too small.

FIG keeps talking about better rewarding “Artistry”. If they simply applied the current Code of Points as written, those gymnasts with good line, technique and form would be rewarded. Problem solved.

The whole point of separating Difficulty judges from Execution judges is so that they would have more time to record the execution deductions. Yet E panels are less discriminating now than under the old Code.

Uncle Tim:

For quite some time, the judges have been rather generous with their execution scores, but it sounds like things are about to change. Steve Butcher, the newly elected head of the Men’s Technical Committee, told International Gymnast that “both [the men’s and women’s] technical committees are working very hard to see their execution deductions applied more stringently in the upcoming cycle.”

read the rest on Couch Gymnast – TCG 2013 Retrospective: Code Concerns

related – Of Feet and Gymnastics….

MelTproductionss put together this excellent documentary about serious Women’s Artistic Gymnastics training.

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That’s Silvia’s Gymnastics in Pennsylvania.

(via kittycatcat5 on Chalk Bucket)

The NEW Head Coach at Berkeley is off to a rip-roaring start.

Through two meets, Cal holds a team scoring average of 195.000 and has matched their win total from last season through only two meets of the 2013 campaign. The ranking is their first since January of 2008, when they were ranked number 22. The last time they were ranked as high as 17 was in March of 2003 under former head coach Cari DuBois.

“We’re really trying to build off these first two meets and keep that confidence going,” said head coach Justin Howell. …

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A recap of our first meet of the season in Haas Pavilion and the first gymnastics meet televised on the PAC-12 networks! Unranked Cal upset three top 25 teams with a score of 195.425 for first place. …

Nice to see the “saved” California Golden Bears program doing so well. 🙂

… too tiny to see the computer screen from the floor, baby Jonas does nine pull-ups in just over a minute. For a kid this motivated, potty-training will be a breeze. …

HuffPo

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Thanks to Sharon Finney Doyle for the link.

Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee

… word quickly spread that there were superheroes descending outside the building, and adults and children alike gathered to wait for Spider-Man or Captain America to appear. The three men behind the exciting surprise were Steve Oszaniec, his son Danny Oszaniec and Jordan Emerson, who all work for commercial window cleaning company, American National Skyline. …

A similar event happened just recently, on January 10, at All Children’s Hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. …

Superhero Window Washers Cheer Up Children at Hospital

(via tywkiwdbi)

By Nick Blanton.

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