Author: Rick Mc

Canadian trampoline and tumbling athletes are in South Africa for competition.

Before the meet, they bused out to a rural gym.

Jamie Atkin:

… Up until recently they had virtually no equipment. The trampoline you see below is around the size of a single bed and those are blankets wrapped around the springs for padding. They also had a mini-tramp.

Not long ago the club was gifted with two brand new Eurotramp Trampolines with end-decks and mats as well as a brand new DMT and landing area. This is beautiful equipment and these coaches and kids sure love it all! …

… we took a 5 minute “Coke Break”. They have been sponsored by Coke and they proceeded to pass around 600 ml bottles of Coke to everyone and we posed for a photo before the kids downed it all. …

read more on the Airdrie Edge Travel Blog

Thanks Brett.

University of Minnesota.

Goldy Gopher apparently never saw it coming — a sucker punch smack in the nose above his heartwarming bucktoothed grin.

An annoyed fan — a University of St. Thomas math professor and a devoted University of Minnesota booster — socked the fuzzy-suited mascot after tiring of his antics during a men’s gymnastics meet Saturday night.

The mascot-mauling left the professor red-faced, regretful and banned from the University of Minnesota’s Sports Pavilion and Williams Arena for a year …

Star Tribune

What a shame.

Men’s gymnastics needs every fan they can get. 🙂

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) has brought a disciplinary suit against Gymnova, a Marseille (FRA) based company specialising in the design, manufacturing and distribution of gymnastic apparatus.

The incident occurred at the Trampoline World Championships in Metz (FRA) in November 2010, when as the official supplier, Gymnova is accused to have delivered trampolines of a poor quality. …

FIG

Merde.

Gymnova is the official equipment supplier for the 2012 Olympics.

(via Gymnastics Examiner)

Gymnasts are vulnerable, especially male gymnasts, especially during the phase of “peak growth velocity”.

During that phase coaches are advised to reduce hard tumbling and vaulting. Land on soft surfaces. And be very cautious when the athlete reports pain near growth plates.

Certainly there is a great deal of individual variation in growth. Many gymnasts are “late maturers”.

Those images are taken from an excellent report by Istvan Balyi & Richard Way, The Role of Monitoring Growth in Long-Term Athlete Development November 20 2009 (PDF)

Some conclusions:

Monitoring growth before, during and after the adolescent growth spurt is very important for coaches to be able to create an individualized plan to optimize athletes’ development.

• Growth measurements are needed to monitor growth.

• Plotting growth will help to identify the onset of the growth spurt

• Before the onset of the growth spurt standing height should be measured on every birthday, or at the beginning of the annual training cycle in clubs.

Most coaches are not measuring growth velocity in 2011. … They should be.

GymNiceTic – Dutch gymnast Celine van Gerner looks good!

56.066 AA with one fall.

Celine van Gerner, Dutch European Trials BB, Opmeer 5-3-2011

Click PLAY or watch her Beam on YouTube.

Becky sends us this link.

1. This is amazing.

Click PLAY or watch him on YouTube.

2. This is dangerous.

Get some coaching, dude. You’re going to hurt yourself.

And NO, I’m not linking to your double back.

Blythe Lawrence caught up on the major happenings of late. A few stories I missed:

• Daniel Keatings returned to AA competition at Scottish Championships.

• She’s the NCAA’s no. 1 all-around gymnast. But before coming to college, Penn State’s Sharaya Musser battled a life-threatening MRSA infection.

• Record crowds in Utah: More than 15,000 fans showed up to watch the Utes take on the no. 1 Florida Gators in Salt Lake City Friday night.

• Chrystal Chollet-Norton steps down as coach of Rutgers

• Dutch injury woes

• coach Bob Nelligan in Bermuda

• Remembering Frank Bare

• 25 cents from the sale of each stamp will go to support German athletes

details on Gymnastics Examiner – The gymnastics month in review

Kerensa is a Canadian gymnast with a goal to compete in the NCAA.

Click PLAY or watch her Bars on YouTube.

Update. Click PLAY or watch a recent Beam routine on YouTube.

See her recruiting site on GymDynasty.

You can get a site like that for your gymnast by contacting Sara Gill via GymDynasty.

The latest tutorial by JAO.

Training back hip circles with an emphasis on getting into the tap swing in the level 5 routine.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

In addition to the cast to ‘hollow’ position, I like to have beginners do some from cast to ‘archy’ position. (The timing of the late drop is easier.)

Simultaneous with these drills, it would be ideal that the gymnast is learning backward uprise to backward hip circle on straps bar.

If you’re not confident to spot the ‘airplane propeller’, the alternative is to do backward hip circle series without spot until the gymnast can do 2 or 3 in series with speed and tight body. That will take longer, however.

The South Korean female artistic gymnastics squad has hired a Chinese coach to prepare for next year’s Summer Olympics, South Korean officials said Tuesday.

Chen Shijing will join South Korean gymnasts at the National Training Center in Taeneung, northern Seoul, later Tuesday, according to the Korea Gymnastics Association. Chen had been a coach at a Chinese national training center built by Li Ning, a three-time Olympic gymnastics gold medalist. …

Yonhap

They hope to qualify for the London Olympics with a full team.

That’s via the Chinese Gymnastics Blog.