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official Championships 2007 website

Website editor Rick McCharles is in San Jose for Championships.

I will be linking to results as well as relaying the buzz from the competition venue.

Of course I’m not the only one blogging Championships.

From World silver medalist Chelsie Memmel’s blog:

I leave for Championships this Sunday and have my first training at the HP Pavilion on Monday the 13th. We will train there for a few days and then compete on Thursday, August 16th and Saturday, August 18th. You can watch it on NBC TV on Saturday and Sunday evening!

I am really excited for Championships. My whole family is going, along with a few people from the gym. My best friend, Katie, is also coming!!

Chelsie’s blog

I’m surprised we are not seeing this vault.

I know it can be difficult to get “into” the tucked position. (You need a strong “block”.) But clearly many of the top vaulters in the world have enough angular momentum to do it.

Perhaps Yurchenko double pike will be done first.

from FIG

I posed this question some time ago.

Several coaches got back to me with specific examples of female gymnasts who do it easily.

UPDATE: Kecks sent me a link to a CrossFit video.

These are non-gymnast adult women doing muscle-up series on rings. Their relative strength is better than 99.99% of the Men on the planet.

To see the CrossFit video click here. (.wmv file)

The Romanian Men are still strong in Artistic gymnastics. But many have been anticipating a decline in the performance of the long time dominant Romanian Women.

But here’s some good news:

BUCHAREST — Triple Olympic gold medalist Catalina Ponor has come out of retirement to head the Romania squad for next month’s world championships in Stuttgart.

Ponor, 20, retired after last year’s European championships where she won gold on the beam and bronze on the floor, her favorite apparatus.

“With Ponor in the team, Romania hope to qualify for the 2008 Olympic team contest,” the head of the Romanian gymnastics body Adrian Stoica told reporters on Tuesday.

Without Ponor, a young Romania team failed to win a woman team’s medal for the first time in 25 years at the 2006 world championships in Aarhus, Denmark.

The first 12 teams at the world championships from Sept. 1-9, will qualify for the Beijing Olympics.

Last weekend, Ponor dominated the Romania national championships, winning on the beam and floor.

WCSN.com: News

The level of competition was much reduced this year as the meet was scheduled so close to the (higher priority) World Championships qualifying for Olympics 2008.

China won the Women’s Team, Japan the Men’s Team.

Despite a string of falls from apparatus, the Chinese females gymnasts made an narrow escape to defend their Universiade team title on Thursday.

Led by three world champions Zhang Nan, Fan Ye and Zhou Zhuoru, China was definitely the hot title favorite before the final as its strong rivals Russia, Ukraine and Romania sent their second teams to the 24th Universiade.

…

Best in individual all-around qualification was FAN, Ye from China with 58,250 points. ….

MEN’s Competitions

Japan’s men team was on top at the Friday’s Team decision with a score of 273,700 points, followed by China (265,200) and Ukraine (263,150).

Hasashi MIZUTORI (JPN) was the best gymnast in all-around qualification (92,000) and also the new world champion of students after the all-around final at Saturday.

With 92,450 he won in front of GUO, Weydong (CHN) and Koki SAKAMOTO (JPN).

GYMmedia.com

I’m a coach. And was a lousy athlete.

It’s easy for me to go along with the conventional wisdom that “great athletes make poor coaches”.

The sport came “easily” to great athletes so, the thinking goes, they cannot relate to the normal child.

Certainly this is wrong — in some cases.

Charlie Tamayo from Cuba is certainly one of the greatest gymnasts of all time. But he’s also a naturally gifted coach and motivator.

Click PLAY or watch Charlie on YouTube.

He’s wearing “old man” make-up at Woodward West Gymnastics Camp in California. Spotting Stalder on bars.

Do elite athletes make good coaches?

It may simply be the case that there are very few elite athletes in any sport. And that very few of those go on to be coaches.

This could be the simple explanation why most of the great coaches you can name were not elite athletes in their sport.

At Woodward West Gymnastics Camp the trainers have had plenty of experience protecting hands for swinging bars. (They have over 100 gymnasts some weeks.)

Unless you have a system you like better, this is what you get when you go into the trainers room for “repairs”:

In practice, they seemed to work very well.

Of course athletic tape is very expensive. You would not want to make these on a daily basis.

“Marinich” is the name of a difficult and somewhat dangerous dive roll from a forward handspring. (Adding a full twist as Jared Walls from Canada did on Floor Exercise is definitely dangerous.)

Coaches from Woodward West Gymnastics Camp show the skill — without twist.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Still a controversial question, I agree with the Sports Girls Play blog:

Some of the gyms I have coached at in the past (before I had kids of my own) actually had “no-watch” policies. I don’t agree with that philosophy ….

As a parent paying tuition or players fees, it is your right to observe what your child is learning. Additionally, I would be very cautious allowing my child to participate in a program that regularly held closed practices unless there were multiple coaches that I knew well and trusted present at all times.

On the other hand, parents in the observation areas do sometimes cause some problems:

Years ago I had a student who’s Mother watched every practice. She would sit in the stands and count how many turns each child took and if her child got any fewer turns than anyone else, she would make a point of letting me know after practice.

She was constantly comparing her daughter’s progress to the other girls and it put a lot of unnecessary pressure on her daughter.

Should Parents Watch Sports Practices?

My personal philosophy is to explain to the parents why it is not optimal to watch all of every practice.

Leave a comment if you have an opinion.

Where I come from we call a back somersault from sitting on a bar a “leaf drop”. No doubt it has other names in other regions.

It’s not a competitive skill, but is good psychological preparation for future dismounts.

Once the kids can do leaf drop for “fun”, the flyaway seems less “scary”.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

From Mountain Shadows Gymnastics Camp, Okotoks, Alberta, Canada.

One gymnast does double back leaf drop. This is not recommended due to the risk of landing on the neck in the foam pit.