Category: bars

Hana Říčná and her kids

Hana, David and Sandra were, where else, at home for Mother’s Day.

FIG posted an interview. David is graduating from Stanford. His sister Sandra is headed to The Farm.

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

QUIZ – Do you know what the Říčná Salto is on Bars?

Hana Říčná … represented Czechoslovakia at the 1988 Summer Olympics, finishing seventh in the team final and 29th in the all-around final. She won two medals at the World Championships, a silver on beam in 1983 and a bronze on the uneven bars in 1985. She also won a silver medal on beam at the 1985 European Championships.

Říčná moved to the United States in 1994 and is the head coach at Rise Gymnastics in Coventry, Rhode Island. Her son, David Jessen, is an elite gymnast who represented the Czech Republic at the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Tonya Paulsson – Backward Giant 2/1 pirouette

Tonya competed at the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics for Sweden.

Tonya’s training as are a number of clubs in Sweden.  This is a new video.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

Belgium has been training

… she and teammates Maellyse Brassart and Senna Deriks board together in an apartment building near the national team training center.

“Actually, we’re pretty lucky because we can still train at our gym, so that’s good.

Our whole senior team can still train in the hall. But after training we just go back and make our food and we don’t leave the building.” …

At 169 cm, Derwael is the tallest woman to win the World Uneven Bars title in more than three decades. She credits a part of her success to Belgian national team coaches Yves Kieffer and Marjorie Huels, who have worked with her for the past seven years.
“Without them I wouldn’t be standing here now,” she said. …

Determined Derwael biding her time before Tokyo

Click PLAY or watch her 2019 Gold on YouTube.

when MEN competed ‘Inbars’

IMHO – Inbars should be valued same as Stalder, Endo. 

It’s not a skill we should be encouraging. 

Growing up in western Canada we never called piked Endo or piked Stalder ‘Inbars‘.

Most often we called them stooped Stalder, stooped Endo.

Sometimes Stalder piked, Endo piked.

The WAG Code currently calls them Clear Pike Circles.  That’s better than Inbars, in my opinion.

These swings are a problem for WAG in 2020 for several reasons:

  • risk of lower back injury due to force of compression at the bottom
  • deduction for flexed feet getting into and out of the swing
  • deduction for lack of hip flexion
  • difficulty in getting back to handstand

They aren’t a problem for MAG and haven’t been since the men’s Code devalued to same as regular Stalder / Endo. We no longer see them in MAG competition.

But there was fugly era when MANY male gymnasts competed them for difficulty.  Very few men had the genetic limb length and physical ability to do them well.  It was painful to watch.

I coached only one who trained them, Davide Bardana. He’s also the best I can recall.

Kyle Shewfelt, years later at the same club, competed them as cleanly as any male gymnast of the day.

Click PLAY or watch Kyle on YouTube. Pirouette angle deductions weren’t as important in that Code as they are today.

 

cleaning Beams and Bars

For sanitizing Beams and apparatus including Bars in the era of COVID-19, Katrina Brandt recommends a spray on disinfectant.

 

Carly gets her Kip at home

Wow. 

Carly’s one of the youngest gymnasts I’ve ever seen do Kip on her own.

She trains at Silverton Gymnastics in Oregon.

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

MostepanovaFan YouTube channel

Early followers of the gymternet recall the excellent MostepanovaFan channel launched 2008, one of the best in the early days of YouTube.

She’s back uploading. Be sure to subscribe.

Other good online resources of the day included Aunt Joyce’s Ice Cream Stand, Spanny Tampson’s Big Fake Smile, and Blythe Lawrence’s Gymnastics Examiner.

Click PLAY or watch a Bars release montage from 2010 on YouTube.

Thanks George.