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What I like best about the Great American Gymnastics Experience facility in Kansas City, Missouri are the super safe home made mats.
As we return from COVID-19, most Gyms are training with matting on their foam cube pits. These on top and protecting the pit edge at GAGE are ideal. And easy to clean.
Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.
The American Gym offers some tips on safe pit construction:
… Training pits should be longer and wider than competition matting requirements. Since gymnasts have not yet mastered the skills they will be performing, like they would in competitions, they need a larger margin of safety …
We see it EVERY competition …
Gymnasts competing skills on to hard mats that they’ve obviously rarely done on to competition mats.
It’s dangerous.
Coaches should do a better job of simulating the competition landing in training.
The best I’ve ever seen was T&T coach Tammy Stephenson. She trained landings on to very high, very soft surfaces for most of the year. Prior to a competition she alternated layers of matting stiffened with sheets of plywood.
Reminder. There’s a vast archive of posts on this site.
For example, check your results when you click on the ‘Pit’ category.
Former gymnast Van den Avont was injured in a fall.
He’s now trying to design safer mats.
Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.
Gymnastics foam pits were first. Ball pits soon after.
The invention of the ball pit (or “ball crawl,” as it was first dubbed) is widely attributed to Eric McMillan.
… In 1971, he was appointed chief designer of Ontario Place, an ambitious project that included a park, theme park, and the world’s first IMAX theater on newly built artificial islands just off the Toronto waterfront. Ontario Place was a visionary project, but it was missing something.
Striving for a more kid-friendly environment, the designer created The Children’s Village, a massive playground unlike any other, where youngsters could climb huge rope nets and soft pyramids, crawl through hanging tunnels, and jump on an enormous air mattress. “The Children’s Village opened in July 1972 …
McMillan did not install a ball pit in Toronto, however.
According to McMillan, that honor belongs to the ball crawl he installed in 1976 at SeaWorld Captain Kids World in San Diego, another of a handful of theme parks McMillan designed …
How the indoor playground became a staple in our safety-obsessed culture
Do your Emergency Services know how to deal with a gymnast injured in a foam pit?
Thanks Avril.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. (2010)
