Gymnastics Coaching.com

The Nastia Line offered by GymSupply.com has plenty of pink Nastia gym gear.

Some products are pinker than others.

But pink grips?

Amazon – Nastia Liukin Champions II Hook & Loop Uneven Bar Grip

$43.95

Hotels by City

This is rare.

An article in the mainstream American media highlighting the excellent club in Livermore, California — the West Coast Training Center — that produces so many of the top Acrobatic gymnasts in the States.

… In acrobatic gymnastics, the gymnasts help each other perform balance and “flight skills” — or dynamics — as opposed to traditional gymnastics, which uses balance beams and other inanimate structures. The sport, which has been at a competitive level in the U.S. for more than 30 years, didn’t come under the USA Gymnastics umbrella until 2002, according to Marie Annonson, head coach and owner of West Coast Training Center.

Acro combines dance, gymnastics and acrobatic and tumbling skills. Performers have three different routines: “balance,” where the partners will hold positions for three seconds; “dynamic,” which involves flipping and throwing the person who is the “top;” and “combined,” which is performed only at the “elite” level and combines dynamic and balance routines. …

Awesome acros — Livermore center trains rare breed of extra-agile athletes

West Coast Training Center website

Acro is a fantastic sport. What a shame it has not caught on bigger in North America. In fact, worldwide the discipline is shrinking, not growing.

That’s disappointing for Cirque du Soleil who hires Acrobatic gymnasts for almost every show.

I uploaded some photos from an old age group National Team training camp.

Edouard was the coach of Valeri Liukin. He moved from the former Soviet Union to France. And on to Canada to become Men’s National Coach.

flickr – more photos

I’d linked to these back in October. But now they are much more accessible, on flickr.

related post – training pommel horse – Iarov

Gymblog has a short, sweet summary of what happened on Friday night.

Georgia wins. “Courtney Kupets was back to her old tricks, winning the all-around with a 39.45.”

Kelly Lambert – flickr

Coach Suzanne Yoculan calls Courtney the best Georgia gymnast ever.

Florida goes 196.500, the highest team score of the season, so far.

Utah beats UCLA, despite falls. On the other hand, UCLA counted 16 of its 24 routines performed by freshmen. That includes a couple of Canucks:

Beam: 1, Gerber, UCLA 9.900. 2, Kim, Utah 9.875. 3, Hopfner-Hibbs, UCLA 9.850

Deseret News

Kelly M. Lambert has thousands of photos on flickr. Check out her latest pics of NCAA Champions Georgia.

Coach Suzanne Yoculan and her dream beam team from left Hilary Mauro, Nikki Childs, Tiffany Tolnay, Grace Taylor, Katie Heenan, and Courtney McCool.

The new Peak-to-Peak Gondola at Whistler Blackcomb Ski Resort is 436m/1,427ft high.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Shane McConkey and Miles Daisher

(via The Goat)

The full article was distributed with the free TumblTrak January email newsletter. Subscribe on TumblTrak.

By Michelle Kocan

Adapted from an article by Rich Kizer and Georganne Bender

It is a busy world out there—all sport businesses wish they had more customers.  Actually, your competitors wish they had YOUR customers.  Keep competitors at bay and thrill your customers with these easy-to-implement, customer-pleasing, traffic-building, sales increasing ideas!

First impressions set the tone:  The customer’s first 10 seconds inside your gym sets the tone for their entire experience.  What kind of first impression does your gym make?  ///

Hang a bulletin board near the entrance, within the first 5’-15’ inside the front door.  Post a gym map; list the week’s activities, class reminders, upcoming special events, and important information to parents.  In time the customers will stop at the bulletin board to see what is happening and be up on your events.  Keep it current and interesting to look at.

Place speed bumps.  Using small tabletop displays just beyond the bulletin board with the next community event will help customers to spread the news, have flyers about the next open gym, parents night out, trampoline safety class, and birthday parties available to pick up and hand out to their friends and neighbors. …

Do you have signage that is clear and colorful?  Signs can act as an extra sales person in your pro shop, the waiting area for parents and your entry way.  …

Make sure to publicize the community open gyms, open houses, and any competitions you may be having.  …

Promote birthday parties in your facility. 

Hold your staff to high standards …

Implement the 7 feet rule.  Every time an employee comes within 7 feet of a customer, create eye contact and greet them.

Don’t react to customer questions, respond to them.  When you react you tend to give short, unfocused answers.  But when you respond to a customer, you look them in the eye and really engage them in conversation. 

Hold monthly meetings with all your staff, and have an agenda of what you need to talk about and what training you want to do. …

Establish a dress code for all employees, right down to hair and makeup if needed.  …

 Make sure your staff is well trained.  …

Make a staff person responsible for walking the gym everyday to look closely at what you are saying about your business.  Make sure to remind the staff person to walk the gym with a “parent hat” on.  Is it clean?  Are the signs visible?  Is the bulletin board up to date? …

Build a Buzz around Town:  Send out monthly newsletters and keep them current on your web site. …

Make a brag list—list accomplishments of your gym, awards earned by your coaches and staff, and let the town know.  Something in the local paper monthly about accomplishments is a great way to publicize your facility.

Collect customer testimonials and put them in and around your gym as well as on your web site.

… Depicted is a 21-year-old amateur bodybuilder who arrived at a clinic in Dusseldorf, Germany with severe acne on his chest and upper back.

He was a constant user of anabolic-androgenic steroids, of which acne is a side effect — as is damaged sperm and shrunken testicles, both of which he also possessed.

Doctors ordered the patient to quit steroids and start taking antibiotics. Two months later, the acne was gone. So was the muscle. Only gruesome scarring remained — and as his doctors wrote last week in the Lancet, that “is likely to remain with the young man for the rest of his life.” …

Wired Science – Graphic Evidence Against Steroid Abuse

Blythe from Gymblog posted some information:

A simple software upgrade that went very wrong has been what’s keeping the International Gymnast Magazine website frozen, according to the site’s online forum.

The homepage appears to be normal, aside from a large banner in white letters on a red background that reads, “International Gymnast Online is currently unavailable due to site maintenance. Please check back Jan. 1.” But the links don’t work, aside from the forum.

IG’s Amanda Turner posted this in the forum:

Fortunately we were able to do the upgrades and restore our database, but there is an issue with the article engine. No news when it will be fixed Hopefully ASAP!

We have quite a few stories waiting to go up. If this is not fixed by Friday, we may start posting them here on the forum!

IG, where are you?

Some subscribe to IG for a digital subscription to the magazine. Those customers must be ticked-off right now. I assume IG will make amends for the outage, if and when they ever get the site working again.

The major gymnastics magazine websites suck, IG included. (Though I have to admit, International Gymnast is the best of the bunch, when it’s working.)