Gymnastics Coaching.com

When: April 29 – April 30 2011

Where: Moncton Coliseum, New Brunswick

The new Brunswick Gymnastics Association is pleased to be hosting …

Over 300 athletes from the Atlantic provinces will be attending the event, showcasing the strength, agility, power, and grace that makes gymnastics the exciting sport that it is.

When: April 27 – April 29 2011

Where: Grande Prairie, Alberta

GOOD LUCK to athletes, coaches and officials who compete this weekend. Competitors come from BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, and the North West Territories.

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A few clips from our long Easter weekend at Okanagan Gymnastics Centre.

The door alarm sounded. Cleaning the pit. Some pirouette work. etc …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

If you are attending Woodward this Summer, you might just be able to invite someone to join you for FREE.

Do you have a friend who would like to come to Woodward but just can’t make it work? Would you like to help him/her out? The Matador Bring-A-Friend program may be just the answer!

Nominate your friend by telling us why he or she deserves to come to camp but can’t and, if your submission is chosen, Matador Beef Jerky will foot the bill for camp for your friend! Seriously! Ten lucky friends will be chosen from entries; you will be notified via phone so that you can give your friend the good news. …

details

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

… This much is true: on April 17, the Fresno Grizzlies hosted the Tacoma Rainiers in an evening contest at Chukchansi Park. And at some point in the ballgame, Tacoma’s Brent Johnson came to the plate against Victor Santos and lofted a deep fly ball down the left-field line.

What didn’t happen (at least not in real life) is the catch itself. The ball girl was a stunt woman, working on behalf of an advertising production agency that was filming a Gatorade ad. However, this particular campaign was scrapped before the commercial could make it to the airwaves. The ad was leaked online instead, where it quickly became a viral video sensation. …

read more on MiLB

World Figure Skating Championships, Moscow.

Patrick Chan blew away the field today in the men’s short programme. The canadian’s score set a new IJS record, beating that of Evgeni Plushenko from the 2010 Europeans. The best of the rest were the Japanese men followed by mini-Plushenko, Artur Gachinski of Russia who hit a clean 4T-3T combination. …

read more on Going For Gold

Aunt Joyce has video.

related: Japanese skating in honour of their homeland

UPDATE from Full Twist:

Ah USA Gymnastics have tweeted that neither are competing 😦 Booooooooooooooooooooo

_____ original post:

Normally I don’t post nominative entries of international meets, especially under the new World Cup system. The names change far too often.

But this is BIG and surprising news.

Rebecca Bross and Alicia Sacramone are scheduled to compete at the Moscow World Cup 2011, May 13-14th.

Mother Russia is still none too happy with what happened at American Cup, Jordyn Wieber added last minute and going on to win the meet. Bross would not walk into the lion’s den if she’s not ready to win the AA.

(via Full Twist)

#stopbullying is trending on twitter today.

This cause is akin to anti-smoking. When enough of the cool kids quit, it will decline.

stopbullying.gov

The Tsukahara vault is easy to do … badly. We’re still seeing too many dangerous landings in competition.

Many gymnasts (especially boys) flip their first ones off a cheese mat into a pit. That’s OK … but if they do too many, most will develop some bad habits.

I put together a quicky tutorial on a better way kids could do their first flips.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Delay the first ‘FLIP’ day until kids are confident and consistent with the Round-off. And then let them only do up to 3 flips in any one work-out, once-in-a-while. It should be a reward for hard work on sprint, hurdle, pre-flight and conditioning.

Ideally, beginners would flip no more than once a week. The other days are dedicated to preparation.

Several of the kids in this video were flipping for the first time. The youngest is age-9. She now has years to stabilize the skill (and work on LANDING) before needing to compete it.

Prerequisites to the first day flipping Tsuk:

• 10 backward saltos in series on tramp
• ‘gainer’ back salto on tramp
• ‘pullover’ on tramp
• double back saltos somewhere safe (ideally tramp with belt or bungie belt)

That’s a short video. Leave a comment if you’ve a favourite drill to add.

Going for Gold has some commentary and links to full results.

Last years champions, Koko Tsurumi & Kohei Uchimura defended their titles in style, cementing their status nationally and making a statement about the readiness of the deep Japanese teams to challenge at the upcoming world championships, hopefully in Tokyo. …

The consistency of high scores in both the male and female results though are perhaps the greatest testament to the resilience and quality of the Japanese gymnasts. …

Going for Gold – Champions defend at Japan Nationals

related commentary – Full Twist