Category: biomechanics

revisiting Aly’s tumbling pass

The Olympic champ is still the only person ever to have competed this line.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Fujitsu “Judging Support System”

Fujitsu will be working Worlds 2021, of course. Analyzing more routines for their database.

A webinar has been posted online:

FIG and Fujitsu to discuss AI “Judging Support System”

Watanabe speaks in English in the video. He’s really improved over the past few years.

He points out that other sports are using video analysis. Tennis and baseball, for example.

But judging support is only one goal of the project.

Steve Butcher details other uses.

Fujitsu expects all 10 Artistic apparatus to be ready for 2024. (Progress seems slow, to me.)

By end of 2022 the “Training Support System” should be ready. I’d love to have a chance to test that in the gym.

The very first use of computer video analysis should have been to display height and distance of a skill relative to the height of the athlete. Vault post flight, for example.

Fujitsu is doing a good job analyzing Ring strength holds, however. The system can do better than most FIG judges.

Personally, I’m disappointed in the graphics rendered by the software. It’s embarrassing that every representation has feet apart, for example.

I WISH Fujitsu could output something 1/10th as good as FB CURVES 3D GYM.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Biomechanics for coaches

FIG posted a presentation by world expert Gareth Irwin (GBR).

An overview of the benefits.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (1 hour)

Kohei – 2014 Floor

I’d argue Kohei Uchimura singled handedly reinvented how male gymnasts land.

Easily the best in the world in his prime, many emulated Kohei’s exaggerated technique.

I love it as he turned the science of safely reducing huge impact forces to zero into an art form.

At the same time WAG was foolishly deducting low chest position. Dangerous!

Of his many stuck routines over many years, Blythe chose this as one of her decade-defining routines.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

‘shaping’ for layout backward

Backward “gainer” drills are great for many reasons. Including the hip action on takeoff and shape for a hollow layout.

Chellsie Memmell, by coincidence, is an ideal model at the beginning of this video tutorial.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

standing 1/1 on Beam

One of those IMPOSSIBLE skills.

Torque twisting from the Beam means lateral travel. Therefore gymnasts who torque need to jump enough sideways to offset that lateral travel.

Judges are often too severe in evaluating this skill. Landing with the trunk angle at 45 degrees would be optimal in my opinion. While piloting in the landing, the gymnast could adjust from 45 as needed to STICK a solid landing.

YET judges are quick to jump to “chest low” deduction.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

2021 EU STICKS compilation

NOTE that backward salto landings typically result in chest position in a range between horizontal and 45%.

That’s mechanical, medically and physically a good way to absorb those huge impact forces.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

HOW to Nagornyy

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

Read his interview with TASS following the competition.