Author: Rick Mc

It’s not easy to make a back-to-back Olympic gold all-around medals DULL.

But this 10min video is almost unwatchable.

An exclusive interview with Nastia Liukin & Carly Patterson and their coaches Valeri Liukin and Yevgeny Marchenko about their Olympic Memories. The four discuss their personal experiences while they watch Carly’s 2004 and Nastia’s 2008 Olympic All-Around floor routines.

Watch 2009 GK/WOGA Insider – Olympic Memories on YouTube.

Ward Black, a former gymnast for the University of Michigan, wrote a scathing, funny and important article for International Gymnast.

Few Come Out Swinging at Winter Cup

Any gymnast wishing to make the U.S. men’s national team, or make a world championships or Olympic team: Master pommel horse. …

Seventy-seven gymnasts competed this past Thursday in two qualifying sessions at the U.S. Winter Cup in Las Vegas. Sixty-seven competed pommel horse. Evaluating just the B-Panel execution scores: One man (Tim McNeill of Berkeley) scored above 9.00 on pommels. Eighteen scored 8.30 and above. And 48 athletes scored BELOW 8.30. …

… Pommel horse form is horrendous, proper technique is questionable and routine consistency is out the window. …

This guy did not compete, however.

Sasha Artemev – Inside Gymnastics

… Something is amiss in the men’s Junior Olympic program, and/or at the NCAA level, and/or with the Men’s Program Committee. American men did great pommel horse in the past. Why not now? …

IG – Few Come Out Swinging at Winter Cup

The USA was slow to adopt the pommel mushroom. Slow to allow boys to compete the horse without pommels.

Perhaps that’s a factor.

Leave a comment if you have an opinion on why American pommel is so weak at the Senior level.

USA Gymnastics named the 2009 U.S. Men’s Senior National Team following the conclusion of the Winter Cup Challenge. The 15 members retain their national team status until the conclusion of the 2009 Visa Championships in August.

Guillermo Alvarez
Alexander Artemev
Raj Bhavsar
Chris Brooks
Kyle Bunthuwong
Chris Cameron
Joseph Hagerty
Jonathan Horton
Steven Legendre
Danell Leyva
Tim McNeill
Sho Nakamori
David Sender
Justin Spring
Kevin Tan

USAG

Note that 2007 Champion David Durante has retired.

Members of the National Team pose at the conclusion of the 2009 Winter Cup Challenge – Photo by Steve Lange

Shawn Johnson …

confirmed to Inside Gymnastics that she plans to return to competitive gymnastics after the conclusion of Dancing with the Stars. “Definitely,” she said of her return to the gym. “After the show, I’ll get back in the gym, start with gymnastics again and see where it takes me.”

Inside Gymnastics

Getting good at gymnastics is not complicated.

Psychological preparation -> Physical preparation -> Technical preparation.

Kids improve steadily.

But in Women’s Artistic Gymnastics we see many girls “stall” progress at about age-14.

Why?

Physical changes to the body, for sure. But an even more important problem, I think, is that gymnasts age-14 start to suffer from chronic pain.

What can we do about it?

From a good overview article by Dr. Anthony Luke:

Prevention is the best medicine

Many sports injuries are preventable. Proper training is one of the most important keys to preventing injury in young athletes. Adequate adult supervision along with properly educated coaches and referees can help ensure children learn the proper techniques and rules for optimal play and safety. More specifically, setting appropriate limits for the amount of training is necessary to prevent burnout and overuse injuries –and to allow enough time for recovery of nutrition, fluids and energy. The playing environment should be safe …

tumbling on trampoline reduces the chance of overuse injury

Look and Listen

Parents and coaches should be especially careful when managing sports injuries in young athletes. If the child complains of pain, swelling, or disability with no injury – or constitutional symptoms, such as pain at night, fever or weight loss – these should be considered warning signs to promptly seek medical attention. Early medical care can often help avoid complications from an injury that can hinder a child’s ability to have fun and enjoy sports. …

I see many gymnastics coaches ignoring reports of pain from kids. This is very risky, long term. If your gymnast (later) cannot compete due to injury, you LOSE.

Why do children get different injuries than adults?

Young athletes get different injuries than adults mainly due to the growing process. Growth refers to an increase in size, either of the body as a whole or of its parts. Growth and maturation make a young person’s anatomy and physiology different and are controlled by timed hormonal changes. … With kids now starting some sports activities as young as three years old, parents and coaches should pay close attention to growth spurts, in order to modify training appropriately.

Puberty is the period where the most growth and maturation occurs. Puberty typically starts by 13 years of age in girls and before 14 years of age in boys. Girls may grow as much as 8 cm per year, while boys may increase by around 12 cm. These values can be useful to help identify the peak growth spurt in children. …

Knol – Pediatric Sports Injuries

The Couch Gymnast, as part of an ongoing series called Cartwheels in….., highlights Artistic gymnastics in Costa Rica.

Couch Gymnast – Cartwheels in….. Costa Rica

Learning handstand on Parallel Bars can be dangerous. Especially falling over on to the bars.

Typically it happens as in this video posted by the gymnast’s Mom.

… Nothing but bruises and damaged pride. Took me a couple of minutes to get my heart started again, but I survived, too. 5 minutes later he tried again, without mishap.

Mom – Chalk Bucket

It does seem most boys crash once or twice before finally learning how to save the handstand by pirouetting out.

We train handstands on the end of the parallel bars, finishing with a handspring. Safety on that skill is our highest priority with beginners. (Boys and girls train swing and press handstand.)

Nice. Some interesting skills.

Click PLAY or watch his 2009 Winter Cup Prelims on Gymnastike.

Gymnastics Videos on Gymnastike

I know Guillermo had the goal of competing in Beijing. It’s GREAT to see such a classy gymnast stay in the sport after not making the team for 2008.

I went looking for a (possibly hilarious) video montage of the showboating Cuban-American gymnastics coach Yin Eloy Alvarez.

But I could not find one highlighting his …

… curious rituals. He would give his gymnasts a kiss on the back of the head before their routines, make a unique sign with his hands (perhaps a religious “sign of the cross?”), and follow his gymnasts’ routines with a thunderous roar, fist pump into the air, and often a huge leap and run towards his gymnast. I remember first seeing him as I coached and judged at numerous boys’ gymnastics competitions, and I would notice how his behavior would often take center stage among all who were present at the competition, regardless of what else was going on at the time. …

Andrew Thornton – Universal Gymnastics

Instead, I was surprised to find a subdued coach Alvarez in a series of 27 instructional videos explaining basics to the general public. Here’s a sample:

Nice work. Thank-you coach.

One of the demonstrators is his now famous son, Danell Leyva.

As of February 9th, 2009.

Stanford moves up to 4th. They rocked their Season-Best Gymnastics Performance this weekend.

Nebraska edged Oklahoma. A minor upset.

GymInfo – Women’s National Ranking for Team Total – Troester

More NCAA commentary on Gymblog.