Handspring Front 3/1 twist 7.4

I had assumed FIG MTC had stopped increasing the start values for new more difficult vaults as a safety precaution. I was wrong. This Vault was valued out of 7.4. Stoica and the MTC were there. It looks like that will be confirmed.

(Nastia was there too, Shawn at home training to compete 3 apparatus at Covergirl Classic.)

… The biggest news of the Korean Cup was the unveiling of South Korea’s Hak Seon Yang’s new vault, a handspring 3/1 stretched.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

That was linked on Full Twist, a post including some event Finals results.

Leave a comment if you have seen Hoon Ji Kim’s routine on H Bar 7.1 D score, execution 8.775. Or Zhang Hongtao Pommels, execution 9.350.

Read more on THE ALL AROUND – Korea, China dominate Korea Cup

Anna Li – new Bar routine

Here is the top American Bar Bar worker right now, so far as I know. And she is working more difficulty. Anna’s signature monster Tkachev has not been added yet, for example.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/NjE5NDk5NzA0?related=1

random Couch Gymnast

Like many of us in July, Brigid the Couch Gymnast is away from home – in St. Petersburg, this time.

She posted an assortment of links, all interesting including this from Russian Head Coach Alexander Alexandrov:

“The Americans have a good team. Maybe their current gymnasts are not as pretty as Nastia Liukin, but they are pretty powerful and have good routines. And they have a pretty big choice, something we unfortunately can’t say about our team. And as far as China is concerned, well, you can only say one thing: China is China.”

Team USA has depth. And discipline. They will be the favourites in WAG Team and AA at World Championships. …. On the other hand, China is China. They are the only other nation that can challenge for Team, I think.

Alicia is doing Floor at VISA Championships. Three apparatus puts her in far stronger position to be named Captain of the American World’s Team.

I was charmed to see this, Meryl Streep doing a Cartwheel.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

A must read – Couch Gymnast Miscellany……

3/1 front – H Bar

Sergei Rumbutis (Russia) from way back when.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Sergei now coaches in Sweden. His daughter Julia competes.

Via the WTFgymnasticsvideos YouTube channel.

leg split on Tsukahara

As a judge I almost always deduct for this error.

It results from the feet being apart on the board. And the athlete using torque to generate the twist in the preflight.

From the earliest stages of training, we should focus on making that split as small as possible. And bringing the legs together as quickly as possible.

“Fly Round-off” drills from a trampoline, for example.

Beam No-Spotting system

Coach Howard:

… Gymnasts must master skills on one piece of equipment in the beam equipment progression before they are allowed to move up to the next piece of equipment. …

Essentially in a no-spotting system, the burden to move up to the high beam falls completely on the gymnast and their mastery of the skill. …

… In our system, we have a three strike rule. Gymnasts cannot fall more than three times, when moving up though the equipment progressions, or they have to move back down and start all over again. …

read more on Gymnastics Zone – Beg Coach To Do Skills On High Beam

You need a patient Beam coach, for this.

Certainly there will be individual exceptions to “the system”.

Korean Cup Gymnastics

Held July 9th & 10th at Goyang Gymnasium, Andrew Hunt sends us some highlights of the Day 1 MAG competition:

Vault

Bouhail – first up, popped up a big tsuk double pike but rotated quit slow and took a big lunge forward. Looked like an ankle buster. Very nice dragelescu though and he finished 2nd overall.

Korean Gymnast- (Hak Seon Yang?) – 1st vault – hand-TRIPLE full (I think!!?), absolutely huge height, fast twist, broke out of it the twist to a small hop. Never seen anything comparable it was awesome. It was big off the block and he wrapped it like he was going for a randi then all of the sudden he broke out of it leading me to think it was just a double full. I trained gymnastics for 15 years and competed in college and I’m well versed in international level gymnastics and even I couldn’t tell how many twists he did. D and E scores were flashed quickly so I missed that but the total score was a 16.8….so obviously it couldn’t have been just a double full. Then he did a nice tsuk/kaz triple and finished with a 16.6 – over half a point higher than the rest of the field. I’m patiently waiting for it to show up on youtube so I can get a replay of it.

P-Bars

First guy up was from China – Wang GuanYin – Ridiculous set – peach half, peach, front uprise diam, dimitrenko, piked morisue, piked belle, tipelt, healy, straddle 5/4, double pike. 7.0 D score and he hit it really clean. It’s hard to make dimitrenko’s and piked morisue’s look that smooth but his were excellent and I’m still not sure how anyone can actually do a front uprise diam. He scored a 15.95 or something similar and I thought that was tough judging. He was first and immediately outclassed the field. Won by almost a point. …

Roman Kulezca (spelling?) had a nice interesting set with a tipelt front and the new bhavsar tipelt variation but in general, the European guys looked tired. Adam Kierzkowski fell on a front somme 5/4 to support and had a wild peters that he bailed on turned back into the bar…looked like a back full catch in support but in no way was it on purpose.

As for the Americans, both Melton and Silverstein hit clean and looked comfortable but lacked the difficulty to really challenge but I’m sure that was never the point of their assignment. They both gained valuable experience and looked like they were really soaking up the atmosphere. It was definitely a good showing for them.

High Bar

First Korean guy had a beautiful set going with huge kolman and nice lines on his elgrip work but faced it on his double double.

Chinese guy had a nice set but very typical Chinese high bar style. Kind of labored, lack of extension on his releases but nice difficulty and acceptable form. Full tak-yamawaki, half tak-kovaks, endo to eagle- layout yaeger. He got hammered by the judges and went 14.8 which I found to be a little too harsh.

KimJiHoon – Beautiful set – nice lines, big kolman and kovacks. Rybalko eagle immediate layout yaeger, really nice and smooth. Rybalko half (2/1 quast) the best I’ve ever seen preformed….the only one I’ve ever seen to catch above horizontal. It was a phenomenal set…D score I think was 6.9 and he went 15.6ish for the win which was well deserved.

… Overall, I was quite impressed with the high bar line-up. Eagles on average were caught quite high, lines were excellent, releases were big and there was a lot of variety.

Full Twist has the list of competitors, MAG and WAG.

arrived Gymnastrada, Lausanne

This is my 3rd Gymnastrada, and I couldn’t be happier to be back once again. It has all of the FUN and EXCITEMENT of a major “competition”, but none of the downsides. There are NO competitive events at all. NO judges.

From 10 to 16 July, Lausanne will be hosting the world’s biggest gymnastics event!

About 20,000 participants, of all ages, from all parts of the world and members of 55 national federations will meet to share their passion. …

homepage – wg-2011.com

Meet the mascots Jim and Cathy

Dominating the city’s skyline, Notre-Dame Cathedral is one of the main landmarks of Lausanne.

… “Jim” (standing for gymnastics) & “Cathy” (standing for the cathedral) in honour of the event.

Opening Ceremonies kick things off tonight.

LIKE World Gymnaestrada Lausanne 2011 (WG-2011) on Facebook.

iPod at a competition?

At competitions this year I saw many gymnasts wearing headphones on the competition floor.

But I was surprised to see one girl actually on the Beam in warm-ups wearing them. … That’s going too far, for me.

Exclamation Points has a good post on this topic – Using Headphones at Competition

Leave any iPod opinions you have on that post.

Cool Surfer Girl is wearing them here.

See the full size original of that popular photo on flickr.

Aim2Walk Lokomat training

We thought Mike Outram was paralyzed for life. But Mike’s made amazing progress partly due to his stubbornness, partly due to training in a glorified “jolly jumper“. This video is from March.

Click PLAY or watch him on YouTube.

Michael Outram, is a Windsor gymnastics coach who had a spinal cord injury due to a trampoline (multiple forward somersault into pit) accident. This is Mike after his 5th session at Aim2Walk using the Lokomat taking his first steps on the treadmill without the assistance of the robotic legs. The repetitive, task specific motion of the Lokomat helps the brain and body recall a normalized walking pattern. To learn to walk, you have to walk!

The Lokomat is the most advanced piece of robotic equipment available for gait training and neurological re-patterning. …

Friend Michael Outram on Facebook if you want to send congratulations.

Thanks for the update, George.