Gymnastics Coaching.com

GymCastics has lately been including Evan Heiter @yoEv as another of their pundits on the terrific weekly audiocast. Great choice. Evan’s entertaining and knowledgeable.

On the other hand, last week’s episode 71 is titled “The Chest Position Enforcement Bureau“.

Too much deduction on landings for “chest position” is an error.

It happens a lot in WAG NCAA. Judges kill terrific vaults, ignoring multiple technical and form breaks for weaker vaults.

The goal of a landing is to bring huge impact forces to zero. Efficiency on the skill of landing will help reduce landing injuries.

via supermura.tumblr

Uchimura is as good as any gymnast who ever lived. Check his shoulder position.

Kohei is using every possible shock absorber, including trunk and hip flexion.

Any set of rules that deducts this performance is ethically, medically and biomechanically wrong. Indeed, young kids should be taught to land like Uchimura from a young age.

Deducting “chest low” is like deducting a gymnast for lack of foot point on the sprint for Vault.

… that said, there are SOME unsafe landings — poorly controlled — that should be deducted. This one, most likely.

Dr. Joshua Eldridge in the comments:

Love it…you are so right on with this post. Our number one goal in gymnastics needs to be protecting athletes from injury.

Increased angular joint movement (proper movement of the hips/knees on landing) is proven to reduce the load placed on the body by allowing muscles to absorb the forces and displace the energy through movement and heat.

Well said that it is unethical to deduct for athletes protecting themselves!!!! I agree fully.

According to the LESS (Landing Error Scoring System), 30 degrees is the optimal hip angle and building more core control can help our athletes maintain this hip angle and not “bow” as much. This 30 degree angle also makes sure glutes are activated which is an important mechanism to make sure the spine is protected.

Bill Sands audiocast

In Session 6 of the Gymnast Care Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Bill Sands and discuss his history in the sport of gymnastics, from the beginnings when he taught himself how to do gymnastics, through college, and the start of his coaching career at Mid America Twisters.

We then get into the meat of this podcast talking about how to protect your gymnast through proper biomechanics, strength training, and recovery.

Listen to Bill interviewed by Dr. Joshua Eldridge on Gymnast Care. Or download the MP3 from that page. (about 1hr 15min)

1. Michigan, 2. Illinois and Ohio State

I love the passion in Men’s NCAA gymnastics.

This years Windy City was a close race right to the very last routine.

Michigan came from behind in the last rotation on rings to take the title for the 2nd consecutive year with Illinois and Ohio State tying for second. Here is a look back at the highlights from 2014 Windy City Invite.

Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/NDc1NzMwODE0?related=1&autoplay=false

Watch more video of 2014 Windy City Invite College Session on gymnastike.org

To check up-to-the-minute rankings for both WAG and MAG NCAA, click over to Road to Nationals.

62 coaches at FIG Chile Camp

The Chile Gymnastics Federation hosted the first 2014 educational session and training camp for the introduction and understanding of the FIG Age Group Development and Competition Programme.

Over the past two and one-half years, this programme has been introduced to lesser gymnastically developed regions …

Federations in attendance were Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. In addition, Mexico sent a coach to participate.

In total, sixty-two coaches attended this Age Group introduction, by far the largest attendance of any previous FIG Age Group Programme event. This brings to 767 the number of different coaches from 76 federations who have attended one of the 33 Age Group coach education events. …

read more on FIG

FIG experts were Hardy Fink and Lilia Ortiz Lòpez of Mexico.

The FIG education programmes will continue with its efforts to assure that the FIG Age Group Development and Competition Programme is correctly understood and implemented. These efforts will be in the form of 2½ day Follow-up and Monitoring Camps … The first such efforts will begin in February in Namibia, Bermuda, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. …

I’m attending South Africa & Mozambique.