Gymnastics Coaching.com

Tom Beach once again has Tammy Biggs on the homepage of Gym Smarts, the world’s #1 distributor of gymnastics videos.

No surprise, she’s a favourite clinician of most everyone who has seen her present.

Develop and Strengthen the Most Important Shapes that Affect All Events

What are the critical basic elements for developing gymnasts? In this DVD Tammy Biggs explains the body shapes necessary for gymnastics. She shows the candlestick, bridge development, and chest roll, moving into and out of the positions, shaping the body and shoulders and then conditioning to strengthen these shapes. This is lecture was presented at all the regional and national congresses and one of Tammy’s most popular lectures. It’s great for staff training and development.

GymSmarts videos

No arguments here.

Great choices:

Inside Gymnastics magazine is pleased to present the 2007 Gymnasts of the Year Awards, based on readers’ votes placed at InsideGymnastics.com.

Gymnast of the Year, American Female – Shawn Johnson

Gymnast of the Year, American Male – Jonathan Horton

Gymnast of the Year, International Female – Jade Barbosa (Brazil)

Gymnast of the Year, International Male – Fabian Hambuechen (Germany)

Click through for details. Next edition of the magazine will announce more award winners.

News – Inside Gymnastics Magazine

Our favourite tabulator of competition scores Stu Cram of Gym Score Depot is trying to retire. (We insist he cannot.)

Stu emailed:

Free Software for Results & Forms at Gym Meets

GymScoreLite’08 (Macintosh and Windows)

– Excel workbooks for men’s and women’s competition
at a club level (no teams or combined scores)

– Easy entry of gymnast info and scores

– Automatic calculation of ranks and ties

– Latest GCG forms for judges’ sheets and chits

– Many extras (audience lists, big numbers, etc)

– Special score sheets for BC and Sask beginner levels

– User’s Guide included

Link: gym-score-depot.ca/software/

Other software available includes the older but full-featured GymScore 2000 (Mac OS9 only, Men & women, teams, combined scores), and TrampScore (Excel) for beginner club meets in T&T.

Let the computer scoring people you know know about this great offer. User guide included.

Tyler Hass of RingsTraining.com emailed:

… the final production run of Classic Elite Rings is finished, I am putting them on sale for $50 a set. This offer is valid while supplies last. First come, first serve. Once they are gone, which shouldn’t take long, they will be gone forever.

Sale details

If you pick up any set of rings, consider adding on an “agility ladder”.

Click through to see a video explaining how it works:

For the month of January, if you buy a set of rings, you can use the coupon code “ringsladder” to purchase an Elite Agility Ladder for $30 (40% off).

Elite Agility Ladder

Related posts:

STRENGTH – Fitness Straps or gymnastics rings?

innovation in gymnastics rings design

If you’ve been following the evolution of the B.A.S.E. jumping wing suit, here’s the best article yet.

By Matt Higgins in the New York Times:

Jeb Corliss wants to fly — not the way the Wright brothers wanted to fly, but the way we do in our dreams. He wants to jump from a helicopter and land without using a parachute. …

Jeb Corliss

Extremely dangerous. We’ll see many deaths as this technology improves by trial and error.

Click through to see video:

Flying Humans, Hoping to Land With No Chute – New York Times

(via Team Geared Up)

A great story …

You’d have as much chance removing the perma-grin Alexandra Orlando wears these days as you would wiping the smile off the Mona Lisa.

Her constant state of euphoria dates back to September, when the Toronto native earned a spot to represent Canada at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics with a ninth-place finish at the world rhythmic gymnastics championships.

If you knew how heartbreaking it was when she missed a berth for the 2004 Athens Games by a mere one-tenth of a point, then you’d understand why she’s been floating on a five-ringed cloud ever since.

“I hope it doesn’t stop,” says Orlando, 20. “I hope I float all the way through until August.” …

TheStar.com | News | Alexandra Orlando: Gymnast

The standard progression is for the gymnast to jump off a box into a low free hip circle:

Click PLAY or watch it on Youtube:

Jumping from the box makes it easier to get a good “down swing” with the centre of mass as far from the bar as possible.

More advanced is John Carney’s Tower of Power drill:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

I love the “lobster” (Bungee Mat) by Tumbl Trak.

You can rig up the “Tower of Power” for yourself without an air inflated mat. But you’ll need to find a way to brace a mat up against the high bar. (I used climbing trestles one time. That worked well.)

These drills work far better, far faster, than spotting the gymnast.

Great news!

… Microsoft and NBC will deliver NBCOlympics.com on MSN, the official U.S. online home of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In the first “long-tail” Olympics, online viewers will have access to more than 3,000 hours of live and on-demand content so they can watch their favorite athlete or sport, regardless of whether the sport has seven fans or 7 million. NBCOlympics.com on MSN will be available free …

Press Release

On the other hand, Microsoft usually manages to screw up anything they are involved with.

Lets hope for the best.

Shawn is atop the NBC Olympics home page right now.

Bookmark this site if you want to watch Olympics on demand. Free.

NBC Olympics | Games of the XXIX Olympiad, Beijing China

(via Beijing Olympics blog)

One of the gymnasts I coach every summer went to Community College this past Fall at age-16.

I was worried.

Home schooled for years, by mid-term it was evident that she had no problems keeping up with older, regular-schooled peers.

Now, what about former US National team member Kayla Hoffman?

She joined Alabama this season. It had been 18-months since she last competed. And she had been home schooled for a decade.

How did that work out for Kayla?

… Hoffman (5-foot-1 from Union, N.J.) earned a perfect 4.0 grade-point average in the fall in her first semester at UA after setting foot in a classroom for the first time in 10 years.

“I’ve been home schooled since the fourth grade,” she said, “plus I had a year off of school … and I was very nervous about coming here and keeping up academically. The first day I walked in the class, I was like, ‘Oh, gosh,’ there’s people. I like it a whole lot better. You get to communicate with the teachers and you’re not just staring at a computer screen.

“It was just a great plus for me when I made a 4.0. I just worked really hard at it and I overcame the nervousness about coming in after being home schooled and having a year off.”

After making a successful segway in the classroom, Hoffman will make her transition as a gymnast next Friday when sixth-ranked Alabama hosts No. 23 Illinois …

Tide’s Hoffman adjusting just fine to college life | TideSports.com

(via GymGemz)

It really takes talent to capture exactly the right moment. The light, almost always, is poor in gymnastics competitions and training gyms.

Trent Nelson has got the right stuff. Click through the two links to see more of his work.

Trent Nelson is currently the Chief Photographer at the Salt Lake Tribune, where he has worked since 1995. Trent is a three-time Utah press Photographer of the Year, known for his keen observation and creative skills.

Katie Kivisto – University of Utah

Tribune Blogs — Fly on the Wall

Katie Kivisto – Salt Lake City Tribune

Coaching note: On Bars, thumbs around the bar in handstand, beside the fingers during swings. Even in the NCAA.