Gymnastics Coaching.com

High praise from one not easily impressed:

This is the coolest routine in NCAA this year thus far. …

Aleksas

Click PLAY or watch Allyse on YouTube.

Allyse and teammate Tabitha Yim have more dance elements in their routines than you see in an FIG competition, all routines combined.

Too much?

I don’t think so. This is pizazz. Crowd appeal. This is why people watch NCAA gymnastics.

I heard coach Mike Lorenzen say he doesn’t feel Stanford has really “hit” Floor yet this season. But they already have people paying attention to their routines.

I’ll be sitting close to videotape their competition this weekend — Chicago Style: Stanford University, UCLA, Illinois and Washington. This blogger is getting a media credential.

(via Difficulty Plus Execution)

Winter Cup is ON this weekend in Vegas.

ALL the media coverage will focus on the return of Olympic gymnastics champion Paul Hamm. (Morgan is still injured.) And corporations love media attention.

… So far, Hamm is representing Visa, as one of the corporation’s select few Summer Olympic athletes, and he and Morgan are endorsing Adidas, Hilton Hotels and Johnson & Johnson (through the cable TV and online docudrama “Family Room,” emphasizing family relationships on their journey to make the Beijing Olympic team). They recently shot a ‘Got Milk!’ ad. And there are plenty more deals in the works.

“It’s their biggest and busiest Olympics ever,” says their agent Sheryl Shade. “This is the first Olympics since the 1996 Atlanta Games with so many individual athlete endorsement opportunities. Corporations are interested in getting a foothold in China, so they’re going all out. Paul and Morgan are getting lots of calls. Theirs is a unique story. Twins. Coming out of retirement for a third Olympics.”

Hamm’s competition schedule will be relentless. After Las Vegas, he’ll compete in the Tyson American Cup on March 1, the Pacific Alliance in March, then head to Europe for a competition to get acclimated to traveling, time zone changes and the equipment that will be used in Beijing. Then it’s onto the U.S. men’s championships May 22-24 and the Olympic trials June 19-22.

Hamm back in routine to defend gold medal – USA Today

I thought corporations might be reluctant after the scandal of how Paul won in Athens. Seems I am wrong.

NEW – GymnastTube

I had the privilege of watching two training sessions of the Stanford Men’s Gymnastics Team last week in California.

How good are they?

Good. Very good. And deep. With great freshmen. High level difficulty. A great work ethic in the gym.

Two serious contenders for the Olympic Team: David Sender and Sho Nakamori.

Sho – BBC photo

They’ve come a long way since the hugely popular (almost half a million views) YouTube video: Stanford Gymnastics – Strength Comes in the Struggle was posted by Jason Shen in 2006. It documents their struggles up to that point.

Assistant coach J.D. Reive told me everything came together for this team, this season. They couldn’t be more excited to vie for the Championships at home April 17-19th.

Ranked #1 in the preseason coaches poll. Stanford is the team to beat.

training gym

Related post: confirmed – Stanford University

Good idea. Height markers on the rope are goals for gymnasts.

United Athletic

related post: teaching safe rope climb to beginners

Steve McCain and the team at American Gymnast have done it again.

Already producing the best online gymnastics streaming video — Video on Demand — they’ve now announced the best online gymnastics video sharing site: GymnastTube

You already know exactly how to use it. Very much like YouTube.

Brilliant!

Here’s a sample. Note the excellent quality:

Click PLAY or watch it on GymnastTube.

UPDATE: I removed the embedded video as it was “breaking” the site in the Firefox browser. Better to check out the site itself, in any case.

By the way, that’s Thomas Kelly training the “Russian Giant” with the technique now supposedly expected by FIG. (I called it a “looming disaster” when changes to the el-grip interpretations were first announced mid-cycle.)

I plan to upload all my own best gymnastics video clips ASAP. Please do the same. The faster we upload, the faster this site will become better than YouTube for finding quality video.

GymnastTube

(Leave a comment if you are seeing anything strange on this post. There may be a problem with Firefox on the Mac showing the video twice.)

Brazil is bidding for the 2016 Olympics.

Current World FX Champion Hypolito says he cannot retire until after those Games.

Epoca

From the Portuguese, by Google Translate:

With only 21 years old, the gymnast Diego Hypolito already builds a bicampeonato world, the Pan-American title and classification for the Olympics in Beijing. The detail is that all these achievements have been achieved in just one year: 2007. Now, Diego believes in the future and says that his career still must last three more Olympic Games.

— I want to compete until some 34 years. Certainly, if I still have financial support and my own results, disputarei the Olympics of 2016. It is a dream compete in the Games of the River We must fight hard to achieve hosting the competition – said the gymnast on the application of the Brazilian city. …

— I am offended when they say that we are a sport amateur. Treinamos seven hours a day. Our work is professional, the remuneration to win it is amateur. But I believe that people are already with a different look to us.

With problems with Olympic Team preparation in Australia, and France, it’s great to see such enthusiasm coming from the Brazilians.

This post comes from the excellent Gymblog Brazil (Portuguese) which looks influenced by Gymblog edited by Blythe Lawrence.

Here’s Diego’s flawed 2007 World Championships gold medal Floor routine. (Makes me wish stylish Kyle Shewfelt has competed.)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Diego Hypólito – Wikipedia

Diego Hypólito – official website

A sell-out crowd of over 15,000 college gymnastics fans look on in Alabama’s Coleman Coliseum as the Crimson Tide and the Georgia Bulldogs compete.

GemGemz

More information on the meet – Clash of the Titans

Morgan Dennis won the All-around. Georgia defeated Alabama 196.625 to 196.000.

The most interesting aspect of the Women’s NCAA is how hugely popular the top teams are. How can we extend this to age group gymnastics?

I’ll be attending Chicago Style (4000+ competitors) next weekend. Lets see what kind of audience they draw.

If you are planning on attending one of the major North American camps, register early to get the week you want.

The excellent bilingual camp in Quebec — GymRep — is already full.

Coach Robert Majeau tells me they still have space in Cheerleading, the first year they’ve offered it. But gymnastics is FULL. With a waiting list.

GymRep – English home page

Related posts – Camps Category

If there is such a thing as a “good” serious injury, it’s a complete Achilles tendon tear.

Alexis Greene – University of Arizona

… “She’s phenomenal,” said senior Karin Wurm. “It’s definitely been inspirational for every person on the team, from the seniors looking down at her and for the freshman to see someone who had had such an extreme injury – tearing your Achilles’ – which for many people is career-ending and to come back and to be so strong is awesome. …”

Wildcat Online

Far from being “career-ending”, most gymnasts recover very well.

Adam Wong, Canadian Olympian, is on the comeback trail, as well. And looking good to qualify for Beijing.

Every coach knows someone who has had this injury. It must happen to gymnasts and tumblers more than in any other sport.

I have no data at all. But, seems to me, it is happening less frequently than in the past. Leave a comment if you have any statistics on this.