Gymnastics Coaching.com

Things are tough in Maryland:

… a staggering decline in student enroll-ment because of the faltering economy has taken its toll on his business, Barlow said. At the gym’s peak, about 700 students frequented the gym weekly for classes. In the past 12 months, those numbers have dropped by more than half, to about 300.

His business has suffered in other ways, too. His pro shop, where he retails athletic gear and clothing, has lost revenue, with sales falling by about 50 percent, he said.

And with so many other options today for kids’ birthday parties, parents have been less apt to book Barlow’s for such celebrations, he said. …

Longtime gymnastics training center closes – Economy forces owner to shutter Barlow’s after 25 years

Is your gym threatened?

… Barlow’s Gymnastics isn’t the only gym struggling with the recession. Universal Gymnastics, another Annapolis training center, also closed, with 1st Class Gymnastics absorbing almost all of its professional staff and enrollment in January 2008. …

From Inside Gymnastics on Facebook:

FIG announces they’re still investigating the ages of 2000 Chinese Olympians, Yang Yun & Dong Fangxiao, both of whom have, at various times, admitted publicly to be underage at their Games. (Both later said they were mistaken or misspoke.)

Yang is married to 2008 Olympic champ Yang Wei. The couple are currently expecting their first child.

The two came under suspicion after internet investigators started looking into the age of 2008 Olympian Ke Hexin.

The more time passes, the greater the chances are that China will get away with the infraction.

Why did it take so many months to get a legal ruling on whether or not the Olympic statute of limitations had expired?

Certainly the practical solution to prevent age cheating is to eliminate the minimum age of Olympic gymnasts. I don’t have much faith the FIG Disciplinary Commission will bring action.

FIG Press Release

Washinton Post – Age-old question: Chinese gymnasts under review

Like a soccer player …

Aaron Shutway, an 8th grader at Brecksville-Broadview Heights Middle School nails a front handspring to a 3/4 nothing but net shot to send the P.E. class in a frenzy! I haven’t seen Lebron hit one like this!

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Amanda Turner linked to this video on Facebook.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing in a gymnastics gym are weird mental blocks.

Every coach has a dozen stories about inexplicable aversions.

Balking on skills can start at a young age. But it’s more often a problem with older gymnasts.

Most often on backwards skills: backward handspring, flyaway, backward tumbling on beam.

eHow posted an article with a few ideas: How to Deal with Gymnastics Mental Blocks

It’s worth clicking through. Each mental block is different. We handle them each individually.

Leave a comment if you have any strategies that work more often than not.

One odd thing … mental blocks are very rare for male gymnasts. Very common for female. I’ve never understood why.

Very dangerous.

One commentator thinks it’s from a 1988 competition in Russia.

Click PLAY or watch the igorgymn1 posted video on YouTube.

Certainly this skill will be done again, soon.

Any athlete with a very strong double layout Arabian could possibly do triple tuck. I’d rather not see this skill on the competition floor, however.

Dave Carter linked to this clip. He linked to a Quadruple Twist on Floor, as well.

Well deserved.

Georgia gymnastics standout and two-time Honda Award winner Courtney Kupets has been awarded the 33rd annual Honda-Broderick Cup, designating her as the 2009 Collegiate Woman Athlete of the Year.

The announcement was made Monday by the Collegiate Women Sports Awards Program in the Low Library Rotunda at Columbia University. The award recognizes not only outstanding athletic achievement but also team contributions, scholastics and community involvement.

Kupets is the all-time NCAA leader with nine individual championships and was named SEC, AAI National Senior and NCAA Southeast Regional Gymnast of the Year. …

Kupets is a National Honor Society member, was chosen as ESPN The Magazine First Team Academic All-American and is a recipient of NCAA and SEC postgraduate scholarships. She is also a member of the Blue Key Honor Society and a recipient of the Richard B. Russell Student Leadership Award. She won UGA’s Marilyn Vincent Award as the senior female student-athlete with the highest GPA.

In addition to her athletic and academic achievements, Kupets has also worked with Special Olympians, participated in the “Do It For Broph” 5K Run/Walk and joined in the SEC “Together We Can” food drive.

Kupets is a Housing/Property Management major with a 3.8 GPA.

Georgia Dogs

(via Inside Gymnastics on Facebook)

It’s all the more impressive to me that Kupets achieved what she did in only 3 full years of competition, coming back from two separate Achilles tendon ruptures.

From Shawn (ShawneyJ) on twitter:

Hey onion! This ones for u! twitpic … You can’t stop me =) hehe

A funny rebuttal to: Shawn Johnson Put To Sleep After Breaking Leg

Sad news report from Australia:

Queensland Workplace Health and Safety says it will investigate the death of a 19-year-old woman in a gymnastics training accident in Townsville in the state’s north. …

Gymnast dies in ‘freak accident’

A great quote from The Couch Gymnast:

… you should treat Mostepanova fan’s montages and code videos as your GYMNASTICS EDUCATION!

… if you want to see some old gymnastics, even just to see how we have arrived at the state the sport is in now (in good and bad ways) Mostepanovafan’s videos show some of the greatest, most innovative, graceful and influential routines in gymnastics history. …

More from… Mostepanova Fan

A good point.

I appreciated the Mostepanova fan videos more than any other montages over the past year or so. You will too if you feel the new code “absolutely murdered the sport of gymnastics“.

Here’s a sample. Kicking it OLD SCHOOL on Bars. Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Ask any of the best gymnasts in the world today to WRAP the low bar. And do Tkachev in the same routine. … They will laugh you out of the gym.

See more like this on the Mostepanova fan YouTube channel.

by site editor Rick McCharles

Amy Van Deusen on her About.com Gymnastics blog posted an important article.

Important not only because I was quoted in it:

… Kids that start more serious training very young don’t seem to have a leg up on kids that start a bit later — and it may even be to the child’s disadvantage to start early. “The risk of starting advanced gymnastics at a young age is potential burnout as a pre-teen,” says veteran coach Rick McCharles of Altadore Gymnastics Club in Calgary, Canada.

Altadore runs a “Mighty Mites” program in which kids age four to six work on general physical and motor fitness. Then, children progress to a “pre-competitive” training program.

An interesting sidenote: McCharles has noticed a difference between boys and girls. “Girls are on average more psychologically and physically ready for structured training than boys the same age,” he says. …

read the entire article – When should my kid start serious gymnastics training?

Leave a comment on that site if you have an opinion.

Just last week I was in the gym with an AMAZING 7-year-old. She did giants to flyaway at age-6, for example.

But the coaches worry that her gymnastics ability is so far ahead of her mental consistency. It’s easy for a developmentally young 7-year-old to get “lost”.

As always with coaching, we have a balancing act trying to ensure that young gymnasts progress at an optimal rate.