Category: Uncategorized

… want lies with that?

Increased levels of obesity in North America have paralleled increased popularity of fast food chains.

For informing kids about the risks of fast food, I prefer the film Supersize Me. It’s “infotainment”. Easy to digest for young people.

But for coaches, much better is the book Fast Food Nation.

I recently read it again. Quite a shocker. The history of fast food is fascinating.

They did make a documentary movie of Fast Food Nation, too:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

You might consider using this with athletes:

An adaptation of Fast Food Nation for younger readers entitled Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food was published in May 2006 by Houghton Mifflin. It is co-authored by Charles Wilson.

Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food

Fortunately, we already have kids exercising. That’s more than half the battle. Our gymnasts have some incentive to eat well.

Leave a comment if you have additional ideas for educating coaches, parents and athletes about the downside of fast food restaurants.

Fast Food Nation – Wikipedia

Related post:

Super Size Me – teaching kids about fast food

Everybody talks about improving the lot of Women in Coaching, but who is actually doing anything about it?

At the 2007 BC Coaching Congress we talked about it. And in Canada, a few organizations have been praised:

Rowing Canada

Rhythmic Gymnastics Alberta

Cross Country Canada

Canadian Lacrosse Association

Ringette Canada

Canadian Soccer Association

Best Practices – Women in Coaching

This list was posted by the Coaching Association of Canada who provide financial support, mentorship, resources, and advocacy to Women in Sport.

Is it “fair” to give an opportunity to a female coach not available to a man.

No.

Am I in support of (most of) these programs?

Yes.

But only until historical inequity, especially salary, is corrected. Then we can dispose of all “reverse discrimination” programs.

In Canada our National Coach for Women’s Gymnastics is a man. In fact, all our National Coaches have been male.

But we certainly have high profile female coaches.

From the start, Carol-Angela Orchard’s 30-year coaching career has been studded with milestones. Nothing, however, matched what happened on October 21, 2006, in Aarhus, Denmark, at the world artistic gymnastics championships. For on that day, 17-year-old gymnast Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs smashed a seemingly unbreakable barrier when she became the first Canadian woman to win a world championship medal, the beam bronze.

Watching from the sidelines was her elated coach. “When she landed her dismount, I knew this could be the moment we had waited so long for,” says Carol-Angela, the head coach at the Seneca-Claude Watson Sports Program at Toronto’s Seneca College.

“I have always visualized one of our athletes standing on the podium with the flag being raised. It was such a wonderful moment for me when it finally happened.”

more information – Coaching Association of Canada – Women in Coaching

Performance enhancing drugs are an increasing problem. They are more widely available than ever before.

Kids are going to be hurt.

What can we do to help?

Longtime reader TKO sent me a link to the latest steroid tell-all book.

Amazon.com: STEROID NATION: Juiced Home Run Totals, Anti-aging Miracles, and a Hercules in Every High School: The Secret History of America’s True Drug Addiction: Books: Shaun Assael

One of the best things about Artistic gymnastics, I believe, is that no one yet has confirmed the existence of a strength enhancing drug. Steroids, in particular, don’t work.

I only know this from a coaching seminar with Dieter Hofmann, long time Head Coach of Men’s and Women’s Gymnastics Teams in East Germany.

In the 1970s the sports scientists arrived to see him, wanting to “test” some new drugs on his athletes. He was forced to let a group of Junior male Artistic gymnasts try what many other East German athletes were using in that era.

Within months the experiment was over, the researchers convinced there were no benefits. Only soreness and unwanted muscle bulk. They left Dieter alone, after that.

If I’m wrong, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post.

Proven instances of coaches or athletes using substances on the banned list, I’d like to post on this site.

Stanford may be ranked #1 for 2008, but Ohio beat them out in grade point average.

… With a 3.4 cumulative grade point average (GPA), the Buckeyes snapped Stanford’s four-year streak as the top academic team in the nation. Not only was the award a Buckeye first but it also logged a Big Ten Conference first. With the honor, Ohio State becomes just the fourth program to receive the title and joins the ranks of Stanford, MIT and William & Mary.

Men’s Gymnastics Celebrates Academic Excellence – Ohio State Buckeyes Official Athletics Site – OhioStateBuckeyes.com

After my post bemoaning the lack of good resources, Blair Lowe alerted me to this book of 53 games available from GymnasticsMan.com ($25).

Sample:

screen shot – source

Blair knows and uses all the games himself. It’s valuable. But even more interesting to me is a service where you can download games one-at-a-time on-line. This is future. (On the other hand, $1 / game seems a tad expensive to me.)

See it for yourself: Games to Download

The Big Book of Gymnastics Games – Amazon

Despite the many predictions I’ve heard of their system “collapsing”, it’s still bloody difficult to finish ahead of Russia in important international competitions. Though many coaches departed the former Soviet Union for better paying work abroad, there are some of the best coaches in the World still in Russia.

With a total of 11 medals Рof which 7 were golden, 2 silver and 2 bronze Рthe Russian gymnasts were the most successful during the 25th Trampoline WORLDS in Qu̩bec (Canada), followed by Canada (5 medals) and China (4 medals). The best Russian athletes were without any doubt Irina KARAWAJEWA and Kirill IWANOW.

For the first time during Trampoline World Championships, China won a gold medal for the men’s trampoline competitions with YE, Shuai and Japan was happy about their first WORDLS-gold in synchronal gymnastics with Totsuya SOTOMURA and Yasuhira UEYAMA. …

GymFamily.Com

I talked with one of the Canadian athletes, Jeremy Mosier, after the competition.

Though disappointed his Men’s Double Mini-tramp team just barely missed qualifying for finals, he was happy that Canada had it’s best ever World Championships.

A big highlight for the hosts was Women’s Double Mini:

1. Charles (CAN)
2. Warnock (CAN)
3. Barry (USA)

And Jeremy raved about the new world record difficulty routines of Ivanov from Russia who blew away the competition on Double Mini:

– Half out triffis tuck into triple back pike with opening. …

– Unbelievable pass once again!!! Half out triffis pike into triple back tuck with a vertical opening. perfect landing. 39.10 pts. NEW WORLD RECORD of the highest scoring routine. 10.40 pts. DD. He is the well deserved new World Champion. Very loud cheers from the crowd.

Acrobatic Sports

Click PLAY to see Kirill Ivanov in Team Finals doing his (comparatively easy) tucked triffus to tucked triple back. Or watch it on YouTube.

Final competition results – PDF files

This is not difficult, but looks cool.

I’ve never seen it before.

http://www.metacafe.com/fplayer/901739/new_stunt.swf
New Stunt

I’d better throw down the challenge to Don Eckert and the Woodward West coaches to post a 4 person version on-line.

Amateur Gymnast (1894)

Thomas Edison, was the “inventor” behind some of the earliest films.

…By the beginning of March, Dickson and assistant William Heise had shot The Barbershop and Amateur Gymnast, both full-length subjects. As with most films made during the coming year, these were slightly less than fifty feet long, shot at approximately forty frames per second, and lasted less than twenty seconds. …

Amateur Gymnast shows a young man performing a somersault: it was probably one of several films taken of members of the Newark Turnverein, a nearby athletic club. Others show two men on parallel bars and a brief boxing match. …

Before the Nickelodeon

Leave a comment if you know of any earlier “moving pictures” of gymnasts.

Note that we’ve added a new category called “movies” in the right hand navigation.

Steliana Nitor of Romania performs on the balance beam during the international mixed pair gymnastics competition Swiss Cup at the Hallenstadion in Zurich, Switzerland, Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007.

ESPN – Gymnastics Photo Wire

(AP Photo/KEYSTONE/Eddy Risch)

UPDATE: Steliana and Flavius Koczi easily won the Mixed Pairs competition for Romania.

GymnasticsResults.com

At the Banff Mountain Film Festival this weekend, my favourite movie was “20 Seconds of Joy”, a documentary about one of the top jumpers anywhere, fascinating Karina Hollekim from Norway.

This was a World Premiere so it’s not available yet. But you can see the trailer now.

“I don’t want to die, I want to live. I’m pretty good at running away, and this is my escape!” This is how Karina Hollekim describes her dedication to BASE jumping. Documentary filmmaker Jens Hoffman first met the now 30-year-old Norwegian in 2002. He immediately started to film, accompanying her through many stages of her BASE-jumping career, until it comes to a sudden stop, changing all aspects of her life.

best film – Banff Mountain Film Festival 2007 | besthike.com

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on MySpace.
http://lads.myspace.com/videos/vplayer.swf

It’s a study in the psychology of high risk activities.