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A great video interview with Dr. David L. Marshall, Medical Director, Sports Medicine Program, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

Click PLAY or watch it on Clubhouse Gas.

I completely agree that PREVENTION is the best strategy to reduce slow onset injury. (For the coach to PREVENT overuse, he needs to be experienced enough to anticipate likely causes, though.)

The good doctor says he sees the most problems with lower back and wrists.

That’s strange.

Boys do have a lot of wrist pain. But we have at least 10 times more lower leg chronic pain than back pain in my gym.

I saw this video linked from a thread started by Buckhead on the Chalk Bucket forum. It includes an interesting discussion on the pros and cons of Tiger Paws and the Ezy Probrace, to help alleviate chronic wrist pain in gymnasts.

Linked from the My Daily Near Death Experience crossfit blog: Soviet Gymnastics

Montage of when gymnastics was beautiful *sigh* …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

She visited Georgia this past weekend:

… The Gym Dogs are still trying to land the commitment of Shayla Worley, who is considered to be the top eligible recruit in the United States.

Worley participated in the Olympic Trials this past summer and was considered a lock to make the 2008 U.S. Olympic Women’s Gymnastics team behind Nastia Liukin and Shawn Johnson. However, the Orlando, Fla., native broke her right leg the day the selections were made and didn’t make the team.

The 18-year-old made her official visit to Georgia this past weekend and is still deciding among Georgia, Florida, UCLA and Utah. …

At least three set for signing day – Online Athens

Shayla will be a superstar in College, I’m sure. Artistry is more important than difficulty at that level.

You would think she’d choose Florida.

… Three gymnasts – Christa Tanella, Kati Breazeal and Noel Couch – said they have told Georgia associate head coach Jay Clark that on signing day, Nov. 12, they will sign letters of intent to attend Georgia. …

Altadore had one last weekend.

A ton of fun. No damage done.

The worst gymnastics team sleep-over I can recall was at another gym. We picked a night when the Red Hot Chile Peppers were playing in the stadium next door. (Our idea was a sleep-over / free rock concert.)

Unfortunately the kids opened the doors to better hear the music. And concert fans decided to come into the gym. To use the washroom.

We had to evict them quickly.

David Durante, 2007 U.S. National Champion and Olympic alternate, has been named an assistant coach at “The Farm”.

Stanford’s already the runaway favourite to win NCAA Championships 2009. Now they get an internationally experienced champion added to their coaching roster.

Nice.

… “I’m very excited to be coming back to Stanford,” said Durante. “Thom and JD have done a great job with the program and I am honored to be a part of it again. I am looking forward to helping in anyway I can so that we can bring a National Championship back to Stanford this year.”

“Dave is a tremendous addition to the coaching staff,” added Glielmi. “Being just off the international competition circuit he can relate to the demands of training and the nuances of elite level competitions. He is a great technician and communicator, but his love of the sport and Stanford are the intangible that are so apparent and appreciated by the athletes and coaches.”

Go Stanford

He doesn’t say if he will be training with the Team.

original photo – flickr – shareatt1

Cata10, Crisloregym, Ioanavol and Mikeyy, Romanian gymnastics fans, put together a new site:

… we are trying to keep it updated with the latest news and to constantly add some interesting information about Romanian gymnastics (and not only).
Hereby some of our (near) future plans:

– Keep a close eye on the evolution of the national teams, both junior and senior

– Continuous update & news

– Realize the biographies of gymnasts from the national teams

About us

Most post are in Romanian. But some are in English, including this one:

… 5th October, there was a show on the National Romanian TV channel TVR1 dedicated to our great champions. Ecaterina Szabo, Daniela Silivas, Simona Amanar, Maria Olaru, Andreea Raducan, Monica Rosu, Sandra Izbasa and Steliana Nistor were present in the studio, but also their coaches, Mariana Bitang, Octavian Belu and Nicolae Forminte. Nadia Comaneci and Lavinia Milosovici participated via the phone. The moderator was Cristian Topescu, the one who, one Olympics after the other, commented the great evolutions of our girls.

Nadia congratulated everybody present there and announced the admission of Octavian Belu in Hall of Fame next year. Lavinia Milosovici seemed sad, probably still very affected by the health problems of her little girl. Our champions, present in the studio, looked all very beautiful and spoke nicely, although some were a bit nervous. …

“Ten for the score of 10″

larger original – Gabriela Dragoi

I’ve linked to the site from the right hand navigation under blogs: FanGymnastics – Romanian gymnastics blog

(via difficulty plus execution)

Kevin put together a nostalgic retrospective:

This montage is about gymnastics in the summer Olympics. It also includes men’s gymnastics. The music is by Yann Tiersen, a fantastic composer. … It’s crazy to see how much gymnastics has evolved since this time, and how much we’ve raised the bar difficulty-wise.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

The Olga Korbut clips are still shocking.

inspir8tion posts some of the very best pics on the internet. One sample:

larger original

see the inspir8tion gymnastics photo collections on flickr

We often see kids sent to gymnastics because parents know it’s one of the best ways to develop strength.

That happens even in China.

Olympic champion Chen Yibing was so delicate as a child that his parents sent him to a gymnastics training camp at the Tianjin Amateur Physical School to build him up. …

A story of ‘weak child’ to king of rings – China Daily

I was disappointed that Chen did not do his “pull to Maltese mount” on Rings at the Olympics. But we may see it again. He’s talking about training through to 2012.

It was the same story with Olympic Trampoline Champion He Wenna:

… “He Wenna was a tiny and weak when she was in the kindergarten, so I sent her to a local sports school to improve her health conditions.”

The coaches at the school found she had a gift for gymnastics, and she was sent to the provincial team for training in 1995. At the team, she switched to trampoline in 1998. In 2002, He Wenna joined to the national trampoline team. …

Daughter’s trampoline gold delights mother – China Daily

Leave a comment if you know of other gymnastics “success stories”. Children sent to gymnastics because of supposed physical deficiencies.

Jennifer Isbister sent me a copy of Little Big Dreams, a Chinese documentary about young boys training at the (now infamous) Li Xiaoshuang Gymnastic School.

I’d seen clips from it on YouTube montages.

This particular boarding school is by far the most “infamous” in the western media because they keep inviting film crews. It seems to be featured in every Chinese gymnastics documentary.

… Every year, more than 100 children, aged between three and ten years old, come from all over China to the famous Li Xiaoshuang Gymnastic School to train to an incredible standard, even though some have yet to learn even how to tie their shoe laces. All of these children have left their hometowns to travel to a boarding school faraway to pursue the Olympic dream, which their families hope will lead them to fame and fortune. But only the very few will ever achieve the highest standard to become world-famous Olympic gymnasts, and they must sacrifice their childhood and family life to get there.

Digital Rights Group

It’s a harsh life for these young boys. They train 330 days / year. Only 3hrs of regular school / day.

Out of 10 children, only 3 or 4 will make it to the Provincial Team by age 9 or 10.

Sport schools are becoming commercialized in China. Parents of first year students at Li Xiaoshuang must pay high fees once their child is accepted. The extended family and sometimes even the village contributes.

One coach in the movie uses a “cane”. That sounds shocking to me now. But when I was a student in Canada in the 1960s getting the “strap” on the hands was a regular part of discipline. I cannot even recall when corporal punishment was discontinued in my city.

related posts on Chinese sports schools