the Heart Attack Grill

Could you finish a Quadruple Bypass Burger?

8000 calories.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

The Heart Attack Grill is a fast food hamburger restaurant in Chandler, Arizona …. It has courted controversy by serving unashamedly high-calorie menu items with controversial names. The establishment is a hospital theme restaurant: waitresses (“nurses”) take orders (“prescriptions”) from the customers (“patients”). A tag is put on the patient’s wrist showing which foods they ordered and a “doctor” examines the “patients” with a stethoscope. …

Thanks George.

extreme street acrobatics video

A long (10min 25sec) highlights reel from many disciplines, including contortion. Some new (to me) footage of Junior.

bboy, power move, acro, punisher, the end, cico, guillaume, demon, dahma n, kheiro, junior, tricks and combo, brazil, breakdance, gymnas tics, sport, thomas, flare, air flare, vrille, marcio, superphazers, morgan hamm

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Thanks bboysistou.

gymnastics training in China – bar basics

The best bars video I saw in 2008 was edited by Michel Arsenault of Champions Gymnastics in Canada.

It’s a DVD with lengthy accompanying notes called:

2006 Gymnastics Study Tour of China

Michel was partly funded to travel to China by Gymnastics Alberta and Alberta Lotteries (Above and Beyond program).

Visiting gyms in Beijing, KunMing and ZhengZhou, Michel wrote a report of what he saw. Here are just a few note I took while reading the document:

  • unwavering commitment to extreme quality and basics
  • children are allowed to quit gymnastics at any time
  • at some schools parents must pay a small fee for training. The governments pay most costs, however.
  • exacting training begins at a very young age
  • all gymnasts train twice / day
  • compulsory routines until age-11. The entire document for coaches and judges is simple and only 11-pages-long! For comparison, here’s just a tiny portion of the over-complicated Gymnastics Canada regulations posted on a gym wall:

    • Canadian-judging-rules1.jpg

    (Canadian rules are the most complex, the most frequently revised, and the most poorly understood in the world, so far as I know. It certainly does a disservice to athletes, coaches and judges.)

  • very few girls wear handguards (none at all at the Beijing Provincial Training Centre)
  • when a coach speaks to a gymnast they must stand motionless listening to the coach intently. That said, the coaches are quite quiet. Gymnasts work independently from 6 to 8-yrs-old.
  • very few drills are done with high repetitions
  • coaches are paid $3000 – $4000 / yr. Average annual salary in Beijing is about $1500 / yr.
  • training gymnasts did not all have “a perfect body type”
  • Michel concluded that the good results in China are as much a result of the coaching “system” as talent identification
  • very specific technique on the descending and ascending swings of free hip
  • high priority on hitting a balanced handstand – for pirouettes

    • Available free to Alberta coaches through the library at AGF.

    If you want a copy, contact Michel directly through his club. He’s the host of the excellent Wild Rose competition, incidentally.

    tough love good for children

    Preaching to the choir …

    A study from the U.K. says “parenting style more influential than income” for raising kids.

    Children brought up according to “tough love” principles are more successful in life, according to a study.

    The think tank Demos says a balance of warmth and discipline improved social skills more than an laissez-faire, authoritarian or disengaged upbringing.

    It says children aged five with “tough love” parents were twice as likely to show good character capabilities.

    Report author Jen Lexmond said: “It is confidence, warmth and consistent discipline that matter most.”

    read the article on BBC – Tough love ‘is good for children’

    I’m sure my buddy Markos Baikas, Men’s Head Coach of Taiso Gymnastics in Saskatoon, Canada, would agree.

    Marcos.jpg

    Marcos’ is a great coaching success story, actually. An immigrant to Canada from Greece, he was chosen Jr. National Coach of his adopted country just a few short years after being recruited by Dana Brass. She met him in a Pizza restaurant.

    Yang Wei – 6yr-old niece gymnast

    A badly translated but cute article from China.

    … Yang Le, deeply influenced by Olympic champion uncle Yang Wei, was fascinated with gymnastics. Her passion for the gymnastics led her to this school when she was only 3 years old. …

    Future star of gymnastics: Little girl’s champion dream

    gymnast

    video – Athletics in Jamaica

    An inspiring documentary. The values taught by sport.

    At the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the small island nation of Jamaica won 11 track and field medals, including 6 golds — the most first-place finishes for any country in the world except the United States and Russia. For a country with a population smaller than the city of Chicago, to accomplish those feats while also breaking three world records had the rest of the world asking, “What makes Jamaicans so fast?” …

    PBS Frontline – Rough Cut

    Jamaica: Girls on Track

    Click PLAY or watch it on PBS.org. (12min)

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/js/pap/embed.js?frow03n31c2qbcb

    confirmed – Gymnastics course Bangladesh

    by site editor Rick McCharles

    I’m leading an Olympic Solidarity course for the International Gymnastics Federation in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Dec. 1-10.

    One of the mandates of the International Olympic Committee is to help grow Olympic sport around the world. To this end they budget money to support the National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in building sport programs.

    Olympic-Solidarity.jpg

    I did a similar course in Cambodia 2008. Volunteering in developing countries I find very rewarding.