Gymnastics Coaching.com

I can watch Zoe all day. She’s perfect. Judges struggle to find any deductions.

Click PLAY or watch her on YouTube.

Actually, Zoe’s recently moved to Dhahran, Jizan, Saudi Arabia. Her new coach must think Katelyn a genius. 🙂

Update – There’s no gymnastics in their part of the country. And she’s not yet allowed to travel to Bahrain for training due to visa restrictions. Leave a comment if you know of any other gymnastics or acrobatics training there.

Gerald S George:

The importance of form (body shape) should be patently obvious to all professionals associated with judged sports.

Yet more often than not, specific interpretations of correct body shape are incomplete, inaccurate, or both. Rarely does this concept go beyond aspects such as locked elbows and knees, pointed toes, legs held together, deep pikes, wide straddles, and the like. Asymmetrical cervical, thoracic, and lumbar curvatures, improper pelvic girdle alignment, and poor arm-trunk or leg-trunk angles are some of the typical body-shape deviations that slip by seemingly undetected. …

Patterns of Motion

Some variations of shape during giant are “techniques”, some are “errors”. … And a small subset are also judging deductions.

If your gymnast can do a giant without taking a deduction, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a good giant.

That excerpt gives you an idea of the kind of content in the G.S. George coaching manual — Championship Gymnastics.

His online Newsletters and Blog are free.

Chelsea Werner is far more than just a gymnast with Down syndrome. The 19-year-old Danville resident is the kind of athlete who inspires others to greatness and challenges the perceptions of possibility. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Go Showtime!

Join in the discussion about Chelsea and her coach Dawn Pombo on a Chalk Bucket thread by bogwoppit – Incredible talent and determination

Mercury News – Gymnast refuses to be grounded by Down syndrome

James from TumblTrak links a related post / video – TNT Fitness program helping kids with autism

In general, gymnastics is terrific for special needs athletes.

Brigid McCarthy is doing a research study at the School of Communication and Critical Enquiry, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.

The questionnaire calls for the opinions of bloggers who currently maintain a blog about tennis or artistic gymnastics, OR who have done so in the past four years. …

Very little research has been conducted into this popular form of sports communication, particularly research asking bloggers themselves about their work, and this research attempts to fill that gap. We would be very grateful if you were willing to contribute your opinions and insights to this research.

The questionnaire is anonymous and you will not be asked to provide your name. All information about the research and the rights and responsibilities of the participants is provided at the beginning of the survey.

You will find the questionnaire via this link …

The questionnaire should take less than thirty minutes to complete.

… Contact brigid.mccarthy |AT| latrobe.edu.au

I completed it in about 15min, the best interface I’ve seen yet. The questions are intelligent. I’m looking forward to seeing the final report.

National champion and 2010 World team member Céline van Gerner will lead the women’s team from the Netherlands at next month’s Artistic Gymnastics World Championships, the Dutch Gymnastics Federation (KNGU) announced today.

Also named to the team were Joy Goedkoop, Marlies Rijken, and Yvette Moshage – all members of the 2010 World Championships team – along with Tess Moonen, Wyomi Masela, and Lieke Wevers; the alternate has not been designated yet.

Missing from the team are Sanne Wevers and Jessica Dowling. Wevers suffered an ankle injury in training prior to a recent dual meet with Poland and last week withdrew from the training squad. …

THE ALL AROUND – Dutch name women’s team for Tokyo

Dual citizen Canadian Jessica Dowling (pictured) is still training with the Dutch squad, but will not compete at a tune-up meet for Worlds against Belgium and Spain on Saturday. She suffered a minor foot injury recently.

Netherlands were 9th at Worlds 2010 and could certainly grab one of the 8 team qualification positions with a good performance in Tokyo.

… looking for talented young athletes aged between 12 and 15 to represent four teams – England, Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland in a brand new TV show called ‘Ultimate Sports Day’. The series will begin filming in late autumn …

Have you got the sporting X Factor?!

Are you passionate about sport? Are you super-competitive? Fancy being coached by some of the world’s top athletes?

If you’ve answered yes – you need to apply to be on Ultimate Sports Day!

(via Gymnation Wales on Facebook)

Planking is so over.

The new absurd, dangerous goof is called “batmanning“.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

batmanning.org

… @BatMan173 tweeted, “BATMANNING … cause planking is for the weak.”

A Google search tells me that there have been no batmanning deaths yet. But it’s only a matter of time. 😦

On this blog, I skipped “Owling” altogether.

Seeing Valeria Maksyuta’s Yurchenko double back in training reminded gymnasticsilove of Jeanette Antolin‘s Double Pike from a 2004 UCLA workout.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Leave a comment if you’ve seen any other female gymnast flip double back. … I recall rumours that Shushanova was once training to compete it.

At Japan Cup this summer the infamously weak American pommel team went 15.4 Naddour, 15.35 Orozco and 14.35 Leyva to win the apparatus.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Very good. But I still don’t see that routine making finals in Tokyo.

John Orozco is good too (VIDEO) but missed both routines at VISA Championships. Consistency is still an issue

If the USA gets a strong Pommel team to the Olympics, I predict they’ll be the legitimate #3 team, and not the surprise Bronze medal of the past 2 cycles. Sasha Artemov is no longer essential on this apparatus, finally.

(via Gymnastike)

_____

In a related post Andy Thornton compares TEAM USA at Rotterdam (276.5) vs TEAM USA 2011 Tokyo (280.15):

… the 2011 U.S. men’s world team appears to be nearly four points stronger than the 2010 U.S. men’s world team, which includes about a 2.5 improvement in difficulty and the rest in execution. …

Universal – Playing the numbers game: U.S. men’s gymnastics team

He took away the American bonus tenths in that comparison, … and acknowledges that execution deductions are more severe at Worlds than at VISA Championships.

Still, I’d say the American men are significantly stronger this year. Germany will need to HIT to beat them.

… never mind. It’s only Nastia training in London.

She’s one of 7 U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes touring Great Britain’s Olympic venues and iconic destinations in advance of London 2012.

Nastia is Britain Bound.

She will be performing in some kind of Skatnastics Spectacularama airing on NBC, January 2012.