Gymnastics Coaching.com

These are the best videos I’ve seen explaining the differences betweeen many choices available in 2009.

Video 1 – Lady’s Uneven Bar Dowel Gymnastics Grips

Jay Thornton of American-Gymnast.com explains 3 main options: Narrow, Regular and Protec.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Most girls should start with with Narrow Grips. Here are the choices within that category.

Video 2 – Narrow Uneven Bar Dowel Gymnastics Grips

Click PLAY or watch it on American Gymnast.

Thanks Jay!

I prefer young gymnasts to use Velcro. Advanced gymnasts to use buckle.

No girl should ever use palm grips, in my opinion. They are a waste of money. Go either without grips, or get dowel.

A bigger question, of course, is when to start using grips. Normally start them in the off season. Putting on grips only at the end of the Bars workout each day. No rush. Most kids will start preferring to wear grips at about 80lbs (36kg) body weight.

Leave a comment if you have advice for female gymnasts and their coaches on grips.

American-Gymnast.com is a great site, of course. Aside from gymnastics products, they offer many other services for coaches.

Funny.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Jason Mortimer linked to this on Facebook. Thanks.

follow her

… I still feel twitter is next to useless compared with Facebook. But almost everyone is trying twitter.

Gymnastics coaches The Platt Brothers were voted off America’s Got Talent the other night. Damn. Twitter users were not happy.

Andy Thornton asks if this skill has ever been done better …

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

That’s up-and-coming American star Danell Leyva. Only 17yrs-old.

A few commenters quickly responded with this guy:

Click PLAY or watch Justin Spring on YouTube.

From Cirque du Soleil by email:

For the past 20 years, Mark has worked as a high-level gymnastics coach in Australia. Our team met first met him in 1999 during the American Cup in St. Petersburg. The following year, during a stay in Sydney for the summer Olympics, our paths crossed once again, and Mark accepted our proposal to collaborate as a partner to the Casting team. At the time, his mandate for Cirque was to keep an eye on the local acrobatics and sports scenes, cover major competitions, and lend a hand during our auditions. A few months ago, Mark joined the Cirque family by becoming Acrobatic Head Coach – Touring Shows.

What is your most memorable experience with our casting team?

Apart from the 3 a.m. phone calls I used to get from Montreal (there is a 10-hour time difference to Australia), I would say it’s the true satisfaction of seeing an athlete I have auditioned go into a show and the great feedback that the majority of them give me on the life-changing experience it is. My new position also allows me to catch up with some of them. Also, the actual casting team in itself is a pretty memorable group.

How is it working at Cirque du Soleil IHQ?

Working here is like being in the wash cycle. There are many things going on at once, a lot of different perspectives to be considered and so little time to do it all. I travel a lot so time here is short with a lot to do.

Which aspect of your new coaching job at Cirque do you enjoy the most?

The mix of people I get to meet and work with. They are from such a diverse range of backgrounds.

What is the biggest motivation or challenge for a coach working with athletes who will be performing on stage?

8–10 shows a week, 350–440 shows a year… keeping artists healthy and motivated, and trying to balance the demands of training and performing to allow this to happen. This is totally different from peaking for specific events, as they’d be used to from their athletic careers

Only 3% of the acrobats in Cirque shows were Olympians. Anyone interested in auditioning should click through to the link at the top of each page on Gymnastics Coaching. Cirque is the biggest employer of acrobatic athletes and coaches in the world.

Auditions are coming up in Portugal and Australia.

by site editor Rick McCharles

I’ve attended this meet for the past 3yrs, … but will have to watch it this year online.

US nationals (called the Visa Championships) is just a few weeks away, and NBC and Universal Sports have now announced their coverage of it:

August 13: Senior women’s preliminaries 8-10pm ET. Live on Universal Sports, streaming at UniversalSports.com

August 14: Senior men’s finals 8-10pm ET. Live on Universal Sports, streaming at universalsports.com (a more direct link will be available soon)

August 15: Senior men’s finals 3-4pm ET on NBC (not live)

August 15: Senior women’s finals 8-10pm ET live on NBC. This will also be on UniversalSports.com post-broadcast.

click through to About.com Gymnastics for links

Gene died, actually, of a complication from an aggressive infection.

It was a shock.

Her passing caught many in the sports community by surprise, even though they knew their friend was in a tough battle.

“It’s just surreal,” said close friend Therese Quigley, the former McMaster University Athletics director.

“She’s just one of those people you expected to always be around.”

Sutton recently helped with the Canadian gymnastic championships at McMaster. She’d been involved in an Olympic symposium in Greece and was co-chair of Hamilton’s Olympic torch celebration. …

“She will be missed big-time. There aren’t many people with her passion and the drive to give at all levels of sport, from grassroots to the elite level.”

Quigley said “she did the work of 120 years in her 64 years.”

Sutton’s influence spanned local to international sports as a gymnastics judge, administrator and visionary.

…

She sat on the executive and board of the Canadian Olympic Committee, was an international authority on gymnastics, served on a multitude of committees and was Canada’s chef de mission at the 2003 Pan American Games.

read more – Sutton was city’s amateur sport icon

Friends and family are organizing a party to celebrate Gene’s life.

Thanks Amy.

Even if you don’t use twitter, it can be useful as a real time search engine.

The results are much different … and far more up-to-date … than Google.

And you don’t need to have a twitter account to search.

How Twitter Search creates new opportunities for business feedback, tracking news in real time and discovering trends.

CommonCraft.com

CLICK play or watch the short explanation on YouTube.

Follow GymCoaching on twitter

bloomfield and george posted photos of a couple of old acrobatics books on flickr.

Coach Katrina Burton commented that much “garbage” nutrition information is circulated. Check her comment on this post, too.

She recommends these books:

Enter The Zone – by Barry Sears
Mastering the Zone – by Barry Sears
Toxic Fat – by Barry Sears
The Paleo Diet – by Loren Cordain
The Paleo Diet for Athletes – by Loren Cordain

Barry Sears is Ph.D. biochemist who has popularized the Zone diet:

The diet centers on a “40:30:30” ratio of calories obtained daily from carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, respectively.

Sears describes a Zone meal as follows: “Eat as much protein as the palm of your hand, as much nonstarchy raw vegetables as you can stand for the vitamins, enough carbohydrates to maintain mental clarity because the brain runs on glucose, and enough monounsaturated oils to keep feelings of hunger away.”

Amazon – The Zone