Gymnastics Coaching.com

What?

Will this make any difference to training?

China’s gymnastics coaches will be forced to sign contracts promising not to let their athletes get injured before the Beijing Olympics, team leader Zhang Peiwen told Friday’s China Daily.

China will be relying on their gymnasts for a bumper haul of gold medals at next August’s Games, and officials are anxious to avoid a repeat of the injury which has kept double Olympic champion Li Xiaoping out of competition this year.

“In the coming days, all the Chinese national coaches will sign contracts with the gymnastics administrative center to prevent serious injuries from happening before the Beijing games,” he told the paper. “We don’t want injuries to destroy our prospects for the Beijing games. I hope we can reduce injuries to a minimum by signing these contracts.”

The Chinese team for the world athletics championships earlier this year signed contracts committing them to minimum achievements in Osaka, and Zhang said his gymnasts would also sign a commitment not to use drugs.

“I do not mean our gymnasts will take drugs intentionally, but I am just afraid that they might take them by mistake, such as unauthorized nutritious medicines,” he told the paper.

“The purpose of signing the contract is to give all gymnasts a warning and to avoid any accidents.”

Zhang, speaking at a test event for the Beijing Olympics, said he was pleased with how things were going with eight months to go, even though Li Xiaoping’s recovery was “slow”.

“This is our best Olympic preparation ever,” Zhang said. “Apart from Li, none of the team is troubled by injuries. They can put their best efforts into the coming winter training camp.”

China won eight golds at the 2006 world championships and another five at the Stuttgart worlds earlier this year as well as dominating the Olympic test event.

Zhang was particularly pleased with Lu Bin, who returned from more than a year out injured, to win four titles last weekend.

“That was a remarkable achievement,” Zhang said. “Faced with serious injury, he did not give up. I just love that spirit, and that will inspire the whole team to better prepare for the Olympic Games.”

But Lu’s heroics will not be enough to guarantee him a spot in the squad for the Beijing games, Zhang said.

“Even Lu knows only next year’s form counts.”

WCSN.com: News

Delegations are organizing for the 11th Pan American Maccabean Games, Buenos Aires 2007 which begin soon.

International sports competition for Jewish people the world over. We’ve had many gymnasts compete Maccabea over the years.

The Games offer, amid a strong Jewish framework of continuity, a first-class social, sport and cultural experience by creating environments of fraternity, emotion and happiness that can remain in our memory and in the friendships forged among people and institutions.

panamericanos 2007

We’ve linked to this article before.

Coaching to Overcome Fear, by Alison Arnold Ph.D.

Having the patience to deal with an athlete (most often) irrationally fearful is one of the greatest challenges for the coach.

Balking on skills. Suddenly afraid of “easy” elements like backward handspring or backward giant.

Where does this come from? And how should we handle it?

Fear can arise from many sources. Sometimes it is a result of a past fall, injury, or trauma. Other times, it arises out of low self-confidence. Whatever the source, one major cause of fear in gymnasts is out of control thinking. Out of control thinking leads to out of control performance. The root of most fear and balking are thoughts that are negative and catastrophic. So this means, helping your athletes create disciplined, positive, thinking patterns will lead to disciplined, positive, performance. What are our athletes thinking as they are standing on the beam for 15 minutes trying to throw a series? Most likely, their thoughts are about crashing, falling, or other fantasies of what MAY happen. This out of control, negative thinking is a major cause of the fear/balking cycle.

How to create disciplined thinking.

Headgames

Alison Arnold Ph.D. is a sport psychology consultant for USA Gymnastics. A former gymnast, she views training the mind as important as training the body.

Another excellent instructional article for parents posted by Brian Bakalar:

… Over the last several years, gymnasts have moved away from “static” stretches, where a gymnast simply sits in a split position, allowing her legs to stretch. Instead, a more dynamic approach is becoming more common for developing flexibility in the split position. …

… At Gymnastics Revolution, our gymnasts use these, and some other methods for attaining their splits. However, a far more important aspect of the development of flexibility lies in the mind of the gymnast. We challenge and motivate our athletes to develop flexibility on their own time. There simply isn’t enough time in the gym to work on every single skill every single day. We have found that engaging the gymnasts in a challenge, or sometimes just clearly requiring the work, has produced very good results in flexibility. Gymnasts who take their careers and training seriously are willing to do the work required, and this includes their flexibility.

Gymnastics Revolution – Journal

My Kinesiology professor many, many years ago told me that anyone could do full splits. Brian includes that point of conventional wisdom, as well:

Unlike many elements in gymnastics, a split is an attainable goal for anyone.

I no longer believe that to be true. Several athletes I’ve known over the years could not have been more determined, nor persistent — yet they did not get splits to the point of being able to compete them without deduction.

For good or for bad, flexibility is less important today than it was in the past. Inflexible gymnasts can become specialists.

Related posts:

using vibration to improve flexibility

the “flexibility torture book”

Only this year have I started to understand Rhythmic competition. It is far more complicated and demanding than outsiders might guess.

Of all categories, team is most impressive to me.

Perhaps spurred on by the earlier success of their compatriot, Olga Kapranova, who won gold in the individual all-around final, the Russian team made sure it would be a double-gold glory for their country, by winning the final with a score of 35.075.

…

read a detailed account of the finals – Event review – Group all-around – 2007 Rhythmic Gymnastics International Invitational Tournament

Russia

China was a surprise third place. I would expect the Olympic host is rapidly improving at this sport.

China

Rhythmics individual competition was added to the Olympics in 1984. Team in 1996.

Former world champion Olga Kapranova won the individual all-around title at the Good Luck Beijing 2007 Rhythmic Gymnastics International Invitational Tournament. The Russian scored 73.825, while Olympic bronze medalist, Anna Bessonova, could only manage 70.25 to finish in second place, after making a big mistake in the hoop while Aliya Garayeva claimed bronze. …

Event review – Individual all-around – 2007 Rhythmic Gymnastics International Invitational Tournament

Olga, on her birthday:

“I spent a good time and enjoyed a very good birthday in China yesterday, since I celebrated it during this Invitational. What’s more, I won the gold medal. …”

Full results are linked from the official website.

The venerable magazine leaps into the 21st century with something truly cool.

International Gymnast moves from 2 to 3 dimensional!

… International Gymnast magazine will be the first to distribute a digital version of its magazine. Yes, for the next several months, at no charge, you can read the latest complete issue of IG magazine online! Our December issue is available right now. The October issue, which was our acclaimed coverage of the Stuttgart World Championships, also can be viewed as an archived issue. We will offer the January/February (one of our two annual double month issues) online at no charge too.

Please take this opportunity to sample the quality of the magazine that has brought the entire gymnastics community the best and most accurate coverage of the beautiful sport of gymnastics for the past 51 years. No gymnastics entity has a richer history, or more complete library, covering gymnastics, as does IG! We have been the leader in our industry, and we plan to remain the leader.

As you can see, International Gymnast will now be available in 3 ways-our printed magazine, our digital magazine and our IG Online. Three ways to keep you better informed about gymnastics globally.

Happy Holidays from our entire IG family!

Paul Ziert
Publisher

This will work. I look forward to hearing how much their print publication subscriptions increase based on this promotion. Congratulations to the IG team!

There are many interesting features to explore. It’s a fairly intuitive interface. See for yourself:

International Gymnast – digital magazine

Subscribe to the print version: International Gymnast

Thanks George.

by Rick McCharles

Lisa Smith from University of Calgary and myself will be leading an intensive 4-day coaching clinic Dec. 27-30 at my old home gym, Altadore Gymnastics.

I’m really looking forward to it. Coaches must be irrationally dedicated to sign on for a course during the holidays. Those are the keeners I like best.

For this workshop I hope to have two video cameras rolling, creating an archive of my favourite drills. (Inspired by the excellent Gymnastics on Demand video training service.)

Ask Me Gymnastics Light T-Shirt : gymnastics : CafePress.com

I’ll post the highlights here.

The competition will be tougher for the hosts at the big show.

But — so far — China is looking very, very good.

Clear superiority demonstrated by the host team

Judging by the number of medals taken, China got 12 of the 36 medals on offer, among which nine were golds and three silvers. …

read the entire article on the official website

That’s just common sense. You only have to look at basketball players!

That kind of illogic we hear all the time: “Gymnastics stunts your growth.”

Yeesh!

Here are the facts:

There is no evidence that intensive training can hold back the physical development of young female athletes, say UK experts.

Demanding training programmes for athletics, gymnastics and other sports may be delaying the onset of puberty, it has been suggested.

It is important that they have a proper rest and recovery period – and that they are well nourished while they train

However, Professor Nicola Maffulli, writing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggests there is no evidence of a link.

The professor writes: “In general, the differences observed in stature between athletes and non-athletes are mainly the result of nature rather than nurture.

“With regard to pubertal development, the evidence suggests that the tempo is slowed down in some sports, but it has not yet been possible to identify whether this is an effect of nature or nurture.”

…

The professor said that the fact that so many elite gymnasts were smaller than average was probably at least partly due to the fact that smaller girls were most likely to progress to the heights of the sport – and taller girls more likely to drop out or take up other sports.

And while many female athletes experienced a later than average onset of puberty, the authors said there were other potential reasons for this which at least cast doubt on excessive training as a cause. …

BBC News | HEALTH | Training ‘no harm to young athletes’

The FIG Olympic Academy curriculum addresses the myth that “gymnastics stunts your growth” and others like it in their Growth and Development section.