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Komova – new Bar routine

Impressive. But with a fall.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Couch Gymnast)

Tong Fei on Horizontal Bar

A difficult concept to introduce is the exaggerated ‘tap’ often called after the 1985 World Champion Tong Fei.

… Hideo (Mizo) Mizoguchi shows a drill to develop the Chinese tap swing for flyaway dismounts.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Mizo’s one of the most effective coaches in the gym I’ve ever known.

In Canada we use a piked toe-on, toe-off as a progression, earlier than this stage.

Check the Gymnastics Minute YouTube channel for more. And GymSmarts for Mizo’s DVDs.

Jordyn Wieber to American Cup

Jordyn Wieber has been added to American Cup, replacing Nicole Hibbert of Great Britain.

Click PLAY or watch her Bars on YouTube.

http://www.gymnastike.org/embed/MjYxNDY1MDY0

Watch more video of 2011 WOGA Classic on gymnastike.org

Gym Club for sale

My friend Darlene Traviss is selling her Canadian gymnastics business, Flip Factory.

It’s located in Calgary, Alberta. The economy is very strong.

Contact darlene AT flip-factory.com (403) 265-2656

most dangerous landing – ‘scorpion’

Tricker Mackensi Emory is just goofing in this photo …

But it’s a great example of the worst possible landing in acrobatic sports, the ‘scorpion’.

As a coach I do everything I can to prevent this landing. It happens most often when over-rotating forward somersault (missing the feet). … It’s just as deadly when under-rotating a multiple forward somersault, though.

I ask young kids not to do this contortion position for fun, even if they are flexible enough. I don’t want them to have any muscle memory of the ‘scorpion’ shape, just in case.

How can we prevent ‘scorpion’ landings?

First, teach falling and landing skills to gymnasts at a very young age. They need be expert so as to know what to do when something goes wrong unexpectedly.

Illustration from Gymnastics Foundations – available from the Gymnastics Canada boutique $75

Next, we need be super cautious with multiple forward salto drills and skills. This girl is an accident waiting to happen.

Most of the catastrophic injuries I’ve reported over the past number of years have been on forward somersaulting skills.

On May 12, 2006, Drew Donnellan at Tucson’s Gymnastics World and did a single front flip, a skill he’d done daily for seven years.

He over-rotated and fractured two vertebrae, damaging his spinal cord. He was paralyzed at age-16.

Paralyzed gymnast’s promise: No self-pity (2008)

Drew’s coach is one of the best in the business, Yoishi Tomita.

It can happen that quickly.

The most common mistake I see in gyms is coaches letting kids who don’t need them do double (and triple) fronts into the pit. … For fun.

That’s too risky. There are a hundred other things they can do for fun not nearly so dangerous.

One coach I know banned all double fronts, … unless it was a necessary drill for an advanced competitive gymnast. Good and gutsy idea.

Nica Hults – Beam

February 19, 2011 Nica Hults participates in her first international elite qualifier at the 2011 WOGA Classic Meet. She received a score of 14.0 on beam, the highest qualifying score of the meet. …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via littlemissgymnast)

There’s some interesting commentary posted by Nica’s Mom on Couch Gymnast. This was the first time she has “felt calm during a meet“, despite 2 falls on Bars.