Author: Rick Mc

Mike Wilson on the Truckee River doing 60 foot double and triple backs.

Click PLAY or watch it on Vimeo.

Thanks Terry, for that link.

What kind of Photoshop trickery is this?
🙂

there has been no digital manipulation involved. …

Mighty Optical Illusions

(via Flip Catch)

Tom Forster.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.
http://videoplayer.flocasts.org/player.swf

Artimex Sport is a Romanian company with a gymnastics apparatus division.

They sell a number of different kinds of wall bars out of the U.K.

Prices look very competitive.

Artimex Sport U.K. – Gymnastics

Gymnastike:

Here are 2011 Gyminfo Preseason rankings:
Rank/Team/Points/1st Place Votes

1 UCLA 1035 32
2 Alabama 950 3
3 Florida 948 3
4 Oklahoma 881 2
5 Utah 853 1
6 Stanford 818 1

Those come from Troester.com. Click through to see the full list.

… I’m still predicting a UCLA v Florida show down at Championships.

#Jeju #JejuOlle

I was recently in Korea, much impressed with the quality of the outdoor fitness equipment on Jeju Island.

The best I’ve seen anywhere. Only problem … I never saw anyone using it. Not even children.

Here’s Brittany Crowe working out in Canada.

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.

OK, … it’s a fairly short highlight reel.

Bars has been the weakest apparatus for Romania since … Nadia. And I’ve never heard of any national team effort to improve. Why don’t they bring in a Bars specialist coach?

Or put younger kids in proper grips?

Porgras was third on Bars at Worlds 2009. And made Finals again this year.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Bea posted more medal winning routines at Worlds and Olympics on Gymnastics – No Ceiling – Best Romanians on Uneven Bars

There’s not much that happened this week not linked in one of these two posts:

• Gymnastics Examiner – gymnastics week in review

• THE ALL AROUND – Weekly round-up

http://view.picapp.com//JavaScripts/OTIjs.js

In the USA,

At 9 p.m. EST/8 p.m. CST, Liukin guest stars on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” the hit reality series that challenges overweight contestants to get in shape. …

At 10 p.m. EST/9 p.m. CST, the annual “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show” airs on CBS, and includes current and former U.S. team members Sasha Artemev, Alexy Bilozertchev, Chris Brooks, David Durante, Morgan Hamm, Wes Haagensen, John Macready, Steve McCain and Derek Shepard.

IG