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In my opinion, Annie Leibovitz is the best magazine cover photographer in the world.
That she agreed to shoot Artistic gymnasts for the April American edition of VOGUE magazine is a huge tribute. Another sign that media coverage of gymnastics in Beijing will be bigger than ever before.
much larger version – NastiaLiukin.com
The accompanying article by Eve MacSweeney will not impress gymnastics fans.
Thanks to difficulty plus execution for breaking this story.
Well known coach / author Rik Feeney has a wonderful new offer on his website GymnasticsTrainingTips.com:
Every month a new gymnastics calendar will be sent only to those who request it. Click the … link to request your free calendars now.
Here are (much smaller) versions of the first two distributions:
more of Rik’s books, articles, artwork, etc. on GymnasticsTrainingTips.com
With the regular College season winding down, it’s time for backseat coaches and fans everywhere to start predicting the winners. Last week I announced that Georgia will win team.
Anything can happen with close-scoring NCAA judging. But today I’m predicting #1 ranked Ashley Postell from Utah will be Champion.
After losing her first all-around competition of the season two weeks ago against Florida (she finished 5th), Ashley is now in perfect position to win it all at Championships in Athens, Georgia.
Postell first fell on her bars routine. After completing a maneuver on the lower bar, Postell lost momentum and slipped off the bar right onto her feet.
“I knew something wasn’t really right when I was doing the skill before I fell,” Postell said. She said she broke in new grips this week and wasn’t comfortable with them during her routine.
Postell later got on beam and was flowing through her routine before slipping after a pass midway through the performance.
“Ashley doesn’t struggle like that typically, so if she does, you know it’s not her night,” Marsden said.
Postell’s fall on the bars ended a streak of 49 straight routines without a fall. After her vault performance earlier that night, she was just 14 routines shy of Suzanne Metz’s team record of 63 straight routines without a fall that extended from the 1994 to the 1995 season.
Marsden approached Postell after she fell on beam and asked her if she wanted to sit out the floor exercise. She agreed that it was the right thing to do.
Postell’s closest competitors include Ashleigh Clare-Kearney (LSU), Kiara Redmond-Sturms (Oklahoma), Jessica Lopez (Denver), the dazzling Corey Hartung (Florida), Jami Lanz (Oregon State), wonderful Kristina Baskett (Utah), Anna Li (UCLA) and many others.
That shocking, terrible competition in Florida Oregon puts Ashley in a much better position psychologically, I feel. It’s mentally easier to “come back” than to “hold the lead”.
In fact, a week later, Ashley won the all-around AND three aparatus, leading her team over previously unbeaten Michigan. Wow!
As a coach, I get very nervous if an athlete has no problems leading up to the biggest competition. I prefer them to have to struggle somewhere along the line. It helps to refocus on the goal.
The World Champion may benefit in the same way as will Ashley. As did Carly Patterson in 2004:
Yet with that one big mistake on her first event at the American Cup, Johnson became human again. “Actually, she seems to have had a huge load lifted,” Teri Johnson, Shawn’s mother, told IG. “She seems much more light-hearted and back to the old Shawn. I think it’s really great to have some of the spotlight dimmed for a while.”
A similar situation emerged in 2004, when Carly Patterson began the year by winning the all-around and every event at the American Cup. After tying for first with Courtney Kupets at the U.S. National Championships later that season, the spotlight’s glare was at least shared. But when Patterson fell off beam (both days) and placed third at the U.S. Olympic Trials, she could finally relax and focus on Athens.
“[Carly] felt like trials was a blessing in disguise because she was on a winning streak, as well, and that it would have to come to an end,” says Natalie Patterson, Carly’s mother. “It was better to end at trials, which gave her that much more motivation to come back and prove what she was capable of doing. People talk when things like this happen. They write you off as the pressure got to her. This only gave Carly a stronger vengeance to come back and prove herself.”
Fueled by a deeper resolve, Patterson won the 2004 Olympics over then-world champion and main challenger Svetlana Khorkina. …
Now Johnson has something to prove as well. “Personally, I think this is the best thing that could have happened for her,” Teri says of her daughter’s runner-up finish at the American Cup. “Don’t get me wrong. I never want for her to ‘lose,’ but I do think she will be hungrier now. I’ve always told her that knowing how to lose is as important as knowing how to win. You have to experience one in order to fully appreciate the other.”
Johnson’s loss at the American Cup was also her gain – Dwight Normile – IG
If you have your own favourite for NCAA Champion, please leave a comment.
A great challenge, though possibly damaging for the wrists:
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
As an alternative, he could walk forwards and backwards on parallel bars.
Click through to GymnasticBodies.com, edited by conditioning guru Coach Sommers from Arizona, for more very tough conditioning ideas. Thanks Coach!
(via Straight to the Bar)
I’ve never been a big fan of handstand trainers for bars and horizontal bar. Not that I have anything against the devices, but alternate drills work just as well, in my experience.
I do have friends who love them:
The Handstand Trainer will develop and strengthen, in your gymnasts, that tight “hollow body” shape so critical in our sport’s basic technique! It will also develop the ability of your gymnasts to “planche” and to “push” back from that planche …
robbie emailed to let us know of this version used in Belgium:
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Coaches, leave a comment if you like handstand trainers. Perhaps I can be convinced.
Clinton Portis was NFL Rookie of the Year in 2002 with the Denver Broncos. Clearly he’s a better Running Back than gymnast:
Clinton Portis Washington Redskins – 16×20 Autographed Photograph
UPDATE: Word is … the photo was taken mid-cartwheel. (see the comments)
all of our handstand posts
original – flickr
One of the great Posters and Fun Photos set posted by the Wordsmith from Nantucket.
A shout out to Helen Reddy.
This gymnastics montage got to me. I’m not sure why.
Editor gymnasticsbabie tries to sum up Women’s Artistic Gymnastics in the time it takes to listen to a great hit song by The Fray.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Competitive gymnastics is tough.
UPDATE: gymnasticsbabie started a new blog: Addicted2Gym
In my city, Calgary, Canada, we’ve seen a steady increase in the number of programs.
The New York Sun reports the same thing happening in the Big Apple: Beams & Handsprings, Now for Adults
The world’s largest adult program is in NYC: Chelsea Piers. But the article reports on others including NYC Elite, Brooklyn Gymnastics Center and Aviator Sports.
I feel we’re still just at the beginning of offering trampoline and gymnastics training to non-gymnasts. It’s a huge market. Our closest competitors are the CrossFit clubs.
original – flickr – The Wordsmith from Nantucket (California)
There’s more discussion on this topic on the Gym Chat forum.
Shout out to my first assistant coach Greg Kolodziejzyk. In the early 1980s, he and I once taught every Rec class in a club of 300 kids.
Greg is still the best Recreation gymnastics coach I’ve ever known. An imaginative genius … who rarely stuck to the rotation schedule.
A guy this talented did not stay in coaching. He made a fortune in the early days of the internet selling fonts to Adobe. Went on to more successful business ventures.
But these days his passion is extreme adventure. He wants “To conquer the world by human power.”
He has several sites including these two:
Adventures of Greg Pedal the Ocean
Here’s a Discovery Channel interview describing Greg’s world record attempt to cross the Atlantic by pedal power.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
You’ll see he’s still in the testing phase of the home-made craft. Greg’s trip is scheduled to start in December this year, and is expected to take around 40 days.
UPDATE: Just talked to Greg. He is looking at other itineraries, perhaps even Canada to Hawaii. (Much better weather. I’m just saying …)
Good luck buddy!
(via Straight to the Bar)
One more thing about Greg Kolodziejzyk. He had the worst “hands” of any gymnast I’ve ever known. Good on horizontal bar, he could rarely train more than 2 or 3 turns in sequence. For competition he psyched up, hit a good routine invariably, and walked away with both hands streaming blood.
We tried everything to protect them. Or toughen them up. But nothing ever worked.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 