Gymnastics Coaching.com

I first heard this in Australia. Now an Oregon paper cites statistics from a USA survey by the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association.

From 2000-06, overall participation in gymnastics declined 25.5 percent while participating in cheerleading increased 11.3 percent,

Does that ring true where you live?

Cheer was late coming to my town, but it’s booming now.

… Last April, Metro joined a growing number of gymnastics gyms adding competitive cheerleading programs. Now, it has more than 200 kids enrolled in cheer classes or practicing with teams. …

Offering the fun of tumbling with less stress and practice time, competitive cheer is the new gymnastics.

Gymnastics stagnates

At Oregon high schools, the demise of girls gymnastics and the rise of cheer was like a handoff: The Oregon School Activities Association held its last gymnastics state championship in 1983 and its first competitive cheer championship in 1984.

…

It’s difficult to say whether athletes increasingly are leaving gymnastics for competitive cheer or whether cheer is merely giving them a place to land when their bodies grow too big or battered for the demands of gymnastics.

But participation trends and coaches’ anecdotes suggest a heavy crossover between the sports, both of which are overwhelmingly female.

“When I talk to (gymnastics) club coaches, they say that they’re losing a lot of kids to cheerleading,” Maryland competitive cheer coach Jarnell Bonds said. “And they’re sort of bitter about that.”

Meanwhile, colleges have slashed men’s gymnastics programs in the past 25 years — from 51 Division I teams in 1982 to 17 in 2006 — both to help them comply with the Title IX federal gender-equity law and focus support on potential cash cows such as football and men’s basketball.

Women’s college gymnastics has suffered, too, victimized by the high cost of specialized equipment and training. Division I college women’s teams dropped from 99 teams in 1982 to 65 in 2006.

read the entire article – Competitive cheer is No. 1! – OregonLive.com

Many gymnastics people dislike and are even resentful of cheer. They see it as an inferior sport requiring less skill and fitness. Only grudgingly are gymnasts willing to admit that cheer is a real sport. That cheerleaders are improving madly.

There should be no conflict. I agree with Steve Penney who was quoted later in the article:

… (the) president/CEO of USA Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body, said cheer and gymnastics complement each another.

“If you look at cheerleading today, especially competitive cheerleading, there’s a lot of tumbling, there’s a lot of gymnastics-related skill that you’ve got to have,” Penny said. “So cheerleading almost requires a gymnastics background these days.”

He also said gymnastics gyms offer a safe place for cheerleaders to learn tumbling skills.

I want all kids to start gymnastics and trampoline in a quality club, and later specialize into Artistic, T&T, Cheer or any of two dozen other acrobatic and fitness specialties. The gymnastics club is the starting point.

Thanks to Doug Davis of TumblTrak who mentioned this story in his monthly newsletter.

A (dated) British documentary from Russia is critical of severe coaching and corporal punishment of young children.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It’s the same dilemma I faced after watching video of severe training in China. How much can we criticize other cultures who do not meet our own standards?

Do we have a right to decry coaches in Russia doing things unethical or illegal in our own countries?

Perhaps we do.

Coaches hitting kids is wrong. Wrong where I live. Wrong in Russia.

It’s up to the coaching community of the world to contest training practices that are unethical.

Related posts:

gymnastics training age 5-9 in China

Shi Cha Hai Gymnastics Sports School – Beijing

The Flying Fox Ride in New Zealand is 170 meters above the river. … reaches speeds of up to 160 kph. That’s around 100 mph …. The ride over the river is over a mile long.

Flying Fox Ride in New Zealand | Adventure Logue

Click PLAY or watch (only the first minute or so) on YouTube.

International Gymnast magazine posted this list in their October issue.

Qualifying nations can choose which of their athletes to send.

International GYMNAST Online

I spoke with one of the Men’s judges returned from the Olympic test meet. He said it was a great trip, well organized, superb venue — but that the Men’s competition was incredibly relaxed. Everyone knew that it was a “test” and not a serious competition. Few arrived in Beijing in top “shape”.

Next …

Absent from last week’s “Good Luck Beijing” tournament, Japan’s top stars geared up for the Toyota International Invitational, which began Saturday in Toyota City, Japan.

But despite the presence of superstars Hiroyuki Tomita and Hisashi Mizutori, each two-time world all-around medalists, the foreign guests were the best on the first day of competition.

Mizutori won the silver on men’s floor exercise and tied for third on rings with teammate Takuya Nakase. Tomita was fourth on pommel horse.

Korean Kim Dae Eun won men’s floor exercise over Mizutori and Germany’s Marcel Nguyen. On pommel horse, Hungary’s Krisztian Berki led a European sweep of the medals, topping Great Britain’s Louis Smith and Romania’s Daniel Popescu.

Former world champions Yuri van Gelder (Netherlands) and Dimosthenis Tambakos (Greece) finished 1-2 on still rings.

In the women’s competition, only four gymnasts competed in the vault event. Germany’s Oksana Chusovitina won easily, topping co-silver medalists Keiko Mukumoto (Japan) and Alina Kozich (Ukraine) by more than a point.

On uneven bars, Ukraine’s Irina Krasnyanskaya defeated Romania’s Steliana Nistor and American Bridget Sloan.

International GYMNAST Magazine Online

The competition is not yet over as I write.

Yuri van Gelder (Netherlands) and Krisztian Berki (Hungary) have not qualified for the 2008 Olympics, I understand.

Yuri van Gelder

Krisztian Berki

photos – Samantha Davies

No, not competing at the Olympics.

… It is expected that more than 200 Olympic cheerleading team members will be selected by April next year. …

The cheerleading teams will shoulder the performance tasks for the volleyball, basketball, football, and athletics competitions at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Olympic cheerleading teams begin performance tour – The Official Website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games

Hard work for hard work sake, is foolish.

Coaches, above all, need to work smarter, not harder.

Agony

The best coaches work smarter and harder, of course.

The last word on “kip machines”. From coach Brian Bakalar:

We use ropes, and kip drills, and kip swings, and have even created different “bungi” spotters and bouncers to help put the gymnast through the kip motion. In the end, there simply is no substitute for the coach. While spotting may be tiresome for the coach, and in fact, back breaking at times, it remains the best proven method for teaching the skill. The coach’s responsibility as a spotter is to adjust the level of help inversely with the gymnast’s ability to perform the skill.

Gymnastics Revolution – Parents – Kip – Gymnastics

One day, I’m sure, coaches will use a “kip machine” that can progressively reduce assistance, eliminating the need for spotting.

Related posts:

gymnastics coaching tip – introducing kip

gymnastics – I made my kip

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