Gymnastics Coaching.com

Just this week, on my hiking blog, I lambasted Discovery Channel for one of their TV shows called Man Vs. Wild. (The publicist actually emailed me, disappointed.)

Today I’m singing their praises for a special called Discovery Channel :: Discovery Atlas :: China :: Meet the People.

Recommended to me by Jennifer Isbister, this Discovery Channel program is excellent.

As with most of the pre-Olympics media coverage, the documentary includes a gymnast.

But rather than take a cliche story line — young Chinese girl robbed of childhood by Godless Communists, for example — this is an astonishingly balanced bit of editing.

Though Jin Yang has a disastrous competition in her first major National meet, her life is not ruined. I highly recommend the TV show.

(I cannot find it on-line. You may have to look for it on that old-fashioned television of yours.) Kecks notes that segments are posted on YouTube.

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

More information on Discovery Channel.

Chris Sharma, many would say, is the greatest “dyno” boulder climber who has ever lived. His style is unbelievably acrobatic.

A child prodigy, soon after entering the sport at age-12 he was challenging the best in the world.

I saw his latest award winning documentary — King Lines — and immediately thought, ” …if only he had gone to gymnastics instead. This guy is so talented.”

King Lines follows Chris Sharma on his search for the planet’s greatest climbs. From South American fantasy boulders to uncharted deep water soloing in Greece to the future of sport climbing at Mt. Clark, Sharma and friends find and climb the most spectacular routes in the world.

Click PLAY or watch the King Lines trailer on YouTube.

Chris Sharma – Wikipedia

Jean-Yves Blondeau from France (aka Rollerman) on the Grimsel Pass in Switzerland.

On his stomach! (You’ve got to see this.)

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Jean-Yves calls this “sport” BUGGY-ROLLIN and debuted his first suit in 1995.

There’s a whole lingo of position names including SUPER BUG (arms outstretched forward), SQUELETON (arms outstreched against the body) and GRENOUILLE (frog). And actions like SNOOP, SPIN and STARWAR.

He will build you a suit. But it’s expensive.

Check another video I would call “Street” that may be even more interesting.

official website – Jean-Yves Blondeau

(via Straight to the Bar: Roller Suit and MarkFu)

Grace Chiu has hundreds, even thousands, posted: 2007 World Trampoline Gymnastics Championships – Photos © GraceClick

For free you can download a larger size of poster girl Karen Cockburn:

wallpaper

Grace put together a cool slideshow movie of highlight photos which loads when you visit the home page of Gymnastics Canada.

Wonderful job, as usual, Grace. Thank you.

Likely you’ve already seen the website GymnasticGreats.com.

The editor, Jennifer Isbister, of Gymn.ca has posted hundreds of bios of Artistic (men & women) and Rhythmic stars. It’s a great resource.

screenshot

This site was created in response to the many “Where are they now?” questions that fans repeatedly ask. If you would like to contribute to this web site (whether information, photos, or entire tributes), please feel free to email me.

Editor’s note: Please note that the tributes … are (generally) no longer maintained. I also lack the time to add new tributes. Sorry!

Whatever Happened to…? GymnasticGreats.com

Like GymnasticsCoaching, GymnasticsGreats is a hobby site. It’s time-consuming and (literally) impossible for Jenn to keep tabs on all the greats of all time.

We appreciate your site, Jenn. Thanks. And we are linked to Gymnastics Greats from the right-hand navigation under GYMNASTS.

If you are keen on gymnastics videos, be sure, too, to check Jenn’s video page. She has an UNBELIEVABLE collection.

In Canada both Keith Russell and Hardy Fink have large collections of gymnastics manuals. (I’d love to see them combine those into a resource library one day.)

Here’s one more for the collection.

Greg Glassman posted some of this classic in the CrossFit Journal Issue 30 – February 2005. The whole article is available on PDF file:

This month we review a small yet dense out-of-print book titled Gymnastics and Tumbling. First published by the U.S. Navy in 1944, Gymnastics and Tumbling is today an obscure reference in danger of extinction. We believe it is an indispensable resource for CrossFitters and intend to keep it alive.

CrossFit Journal

Glassman is a prolific fitness pundit, by the way. Watch for his name.

My home club reunion — this coming weekend. Special guest is Olympic Floor Champion Kyle Shewfelt.

It will be nice to catch up with people. I spent 21-years there. Only Physical Ed Vincent has more Altadore years, I think, than myself. Perhaps the founder, Jim McLuskey. Kyle’s former coach, Kelly Manjak, has at least 15-years.

Altadore Gymnastics, Calgary, Canada

Kids in most First World countries today are eating worse than ever. (The historical reasons are documented in the book Fast Food Nation.)

Many coaches don’t like publicly speaking truth about weight of their gymnasts. They worry about contributing to (future) eating disorders.

Avoiding talking about a problem is not a solution.

What should we do?

Consider showing kids at the gym the movie Super Size Me. It’s light and funny. Yet a good jumping off point on nutritional discussion. (There is some profanity, unfortunately. And some discussion of sex. Perhaps we should only show select clips from the film.)

Click PLAY or watch the trailer on YouTube.

The 100min long movie movie is available streamed, legally from FreeDocumentaries.org if you want to watch it yourself first.

Super Size Me – Amazon

Supersize Me (2004) – Wikipedia

Leave a comment if you have other suggestions on how to educate young athletes and their parents.

Related posts:

Fast Food Nation – the book

nutrition – grocery store tours

… want lies with that?

Increased levels of obesity in North America have paralleled increased popularity of fast food chains.

For informing kids about the risks of fast food, I prefer the film Supersize Me. It’s “infotainment”. Easy to digest for young people.

But for coaches, much better is the book Fast Food Nation.

I recently read it again. Quite a shocker. The history of fast food is fascinating.

They did make a documentary movie of Fast Food Nation, too:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

You might consider using this with athletes:

An adaptation of Fast Food Nation for younger readers entitled Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food was published in May 2006 by Houghton Mifflin. It is co-authored by Charles Wilson.

Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food

Fortunately, we already have kids exercising. That’s more than half the battle. Our gymnasts have some incentive to eat well.

Leave a comment if you have additional ideas for educating coaches, parents and athletes about the downside of fast food restaurants.

Fast Food Nation – Wikipedia

Related post:

Super Size Me – teaching kids about fast food

Everybody talks about improving the lot of Women in Coaching, but who is actually doing anything about it?

At the 2007 BC Coaching Congress we talked about it. And in Canada, a few organizations have been praised:

Rowing Canada

Rhythmic Gymnastics Alberta

Cross Country Canada

Canadian Lacrosse Association

Ringette Canada

Canadian Soccer Association

Best Practices – Women in Coaching

This list was posted by the Coaching Association of Canada who provide financial support, mentorship, resources, and advocacy to Women in Sport.

Is it “fair” to give an opportunity to a female coach not available to a man.

No.

Am I in support of (most of) these programs?

Yes.

But only until historical inequity, especially salary, is corrected. Then we can dispose of all “reverse discrimination” programs.

In Canada our National Coach for Women’s Gymnastics is a man. In fact, all our National Coaches have been male.

But we certainly have high profile female coaches.

From the start, Carol-Angela Orchard’s 30-year coaching career has been studded with milestones. Nothing, however, matched what happened on October 21, 2006, in Aarhus, Denmark, at the world artistic gymnastics championships. For on that day, 17-year-old gymnast Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs smashed a seemingly unbreakable barrier when she became the first Canadian woman to win a world championship medal, the beam bronze.

Watching from the sidelines was her elated coach. “When she landed her dismount, I knew this could be the moment we had waited so long for,” says Carol-Angela, the head coach at the Seneca-Claude Watson Sports Program at Toronto’s Seneca College.

“I have always visualized one of our athletes standing on the podium with the flag being raised. It was such a wonderful moment for me when it finally happened.”

more information – Coaching Association of Canada – Women in Coaching