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Looking good Trev!

Oops.

More photos – Facebook | Stu Cram’s Photos – QCK Summer & Fall ’07 Practises (free membership required to see them)

Photographer Stu edits the best Canadian Gymnastics results site – GymScoreDepot.ca

Just a shout out to some friends who assisted me with a 30+ hour coaching course in a small town gym last week.

This is Altadore Head Coach Jeremy Mosier. With Brooks Head Coach Tracy Jegou looking on.

photo credit – Altadore Assistant Head Coach Sheena Steacy

A highlight of the long weekend was using the new safety straps bar in Tracy’s gym. This will make training easier and safer!

THANKS to all who participated.

a few of the demonstrators

The perfect 10 blog posted the first of a 3 part review of the Women’s Artistic World Championships.

World Championships Review, Part 1 – the GOOD highlighting:

* Li Shanshan
* Jade Barbosa
* Daria Joura
* Nastia Liukin
* Vanessa Ferrari
* Yang Yilin
* Shawn Johnson
* Jiang Yuyan
* Cheng Fei
* Ksenia Semenova

And although I am mainly commentating on the Women’s competition here, I would like to add the U.S. Men’s performance to this list. For all the talk and negative hype about whether or not they would even qualify for the Olympics, they really stepped up and showed everyone that they are in the game to play. Well done.

read the entire perfect 10 » World Championships Review, Part 1

Daria Joura photos – Gymbox.net

After watching the most extreme wall flips video yet, we spotted some of the Funtastics Artistic girls off the wall — they LOVE doing them.

The most important teaching point is to run up a “cheese” mat when learning. In fact, at Taiso Gymnastics, we started with 3 cheese mats (providing about a 60 degree angle slope) … then reduced it to 2 cheese mats … and finally one mat.

Very few gymnasts get good enough to do back flip off a wall without a mat.

Check out the matting and progressions used by these Parkour acrobats on advanced flips. Posted by FreeRunLA.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

A coach — Nick Checker — resigned his position after 21-years with his club to protest a management decision that opened his gym to spectators, including parents.

Checker had argued that he covered the viewing window “so parents didn’t distract children and to reduce risk of injury”.

Personally, I prefer children’s sports clubs to be open to spectators at all times, even at risk of distraction.

But there is a great compromise, one with which almost every coach can agree. Spectators sit behind one-way mirrored glass.

Parents can see in. But the gymnast sees a mirror.

Altadore Gymnastics has used them for years (originally installed by Dave Holmes, I seem to recall) and they have been very successful.

The Gym Chat Forum has a thread on this topic with links to the Nick Checker situation: A coach that doesn’t want parents to watch?!

Coach Rachael Tart from Funtastics recently travelled to WOGA in Texas to see what she could learn in what I consider the most interesting gymnastics club in the world.

She came back raving about USA Jr. Champion Rebecca Bross — especially her huge double Arabian dismount off beam. (Recall Carly Patterson’s beam dismount?)

They say big things come in small packages. Words were never more true than for national team member Rebecca Bross. Becca, as she is more commonly know, is the youngest of 2 children born to Terry Bross & Donna Brugge. Becca was born on July 11, 1993 in Ann Arbour, Michigan. At the age of 6 Rebecca’s parents put her in a gymnastics class, where she fell in love with the sport. Since then Becca has been steadily climbing the ranks as one of the USA’s top gymnasts at the Junior International level.

In 2003, during Rebecca’s level 7 season she moved to Plano, TX to train at World Olympic Gymnastics Academy (WOGA), under Valari Liukin and Natalya Marakova. …

bio – Rebecca Bross Online | www.sitesbyspeedle.com/rebecca

The Gymblog speculates that one of the big rivalries of the 2012 Olympic quadrennial just might be Bross vs Russian Aliya Mustafina:

… Mustafina, meanwhile, hasn’t had the breadth of competition experience Bross has, but everywhere she’s appeared, she’s stunned with her elegance and big skills.

read more … Gymblog

I hope so. But it is far better to be born just old enough to qualify for the Olympics (like Shawn Johnson) than just too young, like Rebecca Bross.

Valeri Liukin will have a long-term training plan leading to the London Olympics.

more photos

Many gymnastics coaches, many of my friends, are seriously into mixed martial arts.

This is my first ever post on MMA. I’m still not convinced I’m on board with where it’s going.

On the other hand, I just watched a TV interview with GSP, Georges St. Pierre, a superstar of the sport. Obviously he is a superb and serious athlete.

Georges “Rush” Saint-Pierre (born May 19, 1981), often referred to as GSP, is a French Canadian mixed martial arts fighter and former UFC welterweight champion.

… He is ranked by Sherdog as well as MMAWeekly the #2 170lb (77kg) fighter in the world …

Wikipedia

GEORGES ST-PIERRE | THE OFFICIAL SITE | GSP FIGHT CLUB

In some towns in North America, mixed martial arts is one of the fastest growing youth sports.

And don’t be surprised if the IOC decides — once skateboard is in for 2012 — to add some form of MMA to the Olympics one day.

What do you think of mixed martial arts?

Leave a comment below.

Fans of Beatles music should check out this documentary. It uses footage from creation and performance of the Cirque du Soleil show LOVE.

Click PLAY or watch Imagine…The Beatles in Love (part 1) on YouTube.

Part 2 – YouTube includes a glimpse of Head Coach Dan Niehaus and the amazing roller skating act in creation.

Part 3 – YouTube
Part 4 – YouTube
Part 5 – YouTube

LOVE – Cirque du Soleil

Caversham Gymnastic Club’s Team 1909, Hocken Library Photographic Collection

Historian Professor Erik Olssen, FRSNZ – University of Otago, new Zealand

Photoshop whiz Amber posted tributes of two of her favourite gymnasts to Flickr.

She put them under a Creative Commons licence so you can use them for non-commercial projects with attribution to the author.

Here are screenshots of parts of the “wallpaper” photos.

Shawn Johnson – larger photo

Carly Patterson – larger photo

Thanks Amber.