Gymnastics Coaching.com

Strict rules about nutrition for young athletes are a big mistake, in my experience.

They put the child athlete in a serious conflict: the coach’s rules vs peer pressure / temptation.

All the best coaches I know now talk to kids about making “good choices”. Education will work, long term, for those kids who are serious about their sport.

The real problem are the parents of athletes. Far fewer than half where I live provide reasonably healthy food for their children. (I don’t blame them. They have plenty of challenges of their own.)

The best parent education I’ve ever seen are grocery store tours like the ones organized by Gymnastics British Colombia:

Registered Dietician, Christina Baxter, will take you on a tour of a typical grocery store and give you practical and useful information …

Even better is when the child comes along on the tour with Mom or Dad.

The Dieticians of Canada offer The Virtual Grocery Store, an on-line interactive game. (It’s not all that fun. The real store tour is better.)

To be honest, good nutrition is not one of the most important variables of training. I’ve known a few very successful athletes who can eat anything with no effect on performance.

UPDATE: Dana Brass noted that her club Marian Gymnastics in Canada organized grocery store tours in the 1990s. We copied that idea at Taiso Gymnastics, I recall.

UPDATE: Check Anna’s comment below too. She feels kids today are “over-fed, … bombarded with food choices”. Too trure

Who are the “Super 7” again?

Oh …

The Super Seven U.S. Women’s Team made history by winning the first World Championships team gold medal outside the USA! The 2007 World Championships took place in Stuttgart, Germany, Sept. 1-9, and the Super Seven included Ivana Hong, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Samantha Peszek, Alicia Sacramone, Bridget Sloan, and Shayla Worley.

USA Gymnastics is taking the Super Seven team on a fun trip to New York to celebrate the gold medal win. All seven team members will be on the Today Show on Friday, Oct. 26. They also get to do a little shopping and go to the theatre while in New York. The team also will visit Madison Square Garden, site of the 2008 Tyson American Cup, to help promote the event.

Super 7 interviews

(via Rutterja on Chalk Bucket)

Gym Chat posted gymnastics crossword puzzles and a word search.

Gymnastics Crossword & Word Search Puzzles – Play directly on Gym Chat or print them out!

I never thought much about windsurfing after trying and failing to turn one into the wind … a few times.

Then in New Zealand I saw crazy athletes getting HUGE air.

In this video watch attempts at double somersaults:

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

You can get the 40min video Committed (full DVD quality) free as a torrentfile from Peter Film ProductionS.

(via Get Outdoors – Committed Windsurf Trailer)

Presentation at USA Gymnastics Region 2 Congress 2007 (R2R), Spokane by GymnasticsCoaching.com editor Rick McCharles.

What is fun?

How can we have more fun in the gym? Especially for female Artistic Gymnasts?

This fast-paced video clip is an overview of the “science of fun”.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

related post – Christmas training camp – Mountain Shadows FUN “competition” video

JBS, administrator of the Chalk Bucket forum, notes that USA Gymnastics posted a new, simplified biographies page for their National Teams.

It’s an unusual format, but works well.

screenshot example

Check it out: Team Biographies – USA Gymnastics

At R2R I was happy to be introduced to Rafe Kelley, a gymnastics coach from Washington State.

He’s also a traceur, martial artist and acrobat.

Rafe travelled to France to train and study Parkour and Free Running. And is involved in the fast growing pursuit in his region.

Most interesting to me was a concept called Le Methode Naturelle:

A discipline that in many ways seems to unite all of my interests within the realm of physical development and my training has become much more productive and complete. This blog is to share a bit of my training and my thoughts for those interested in the natural capacities of human movement.

Read more on Rafe’s blog. From a recent post:

Playful, Methodical, and Fundamental. I believe these three principles are the basis of an effective long term training practice whether it is for Methode Naturelle, Parkour, Martial arts, or really most any discipline of human movement.

…
Natural Athletics: Three principles of good Practice

Click PLAY to see Rafe and friends practising what they love.

http://www.brightcove.tv/playerswf

Click on the logo to see all posts referencing the Coaches Congress 2007 in the Pacific NW.

It will be linked from the right hand navigation for the next few weeks.

Coaches often have eight different sessions to choose from. Tom Beach is here videotaping some sessions for GymSmarts.

Excerpted from an interview of UCLA first year gymnasts:

What is the hardest part of the transition from high school and club gymnastics to college life and gymnastics training?

Niki Tom: The most difficult aspect about the transition from club gymnastics to college gymnastics is the dramatic change in training styles. Practices are limited in the sense that we are restricted to 20 hours/week and therefore cannot train as long as we would like. I personally had to learn the rule of less numbers while making each turn count! The transition related to gymnastics has not been extremely hard, for making gymnastics a team sport rather than an individual sport has made training an unbelievable and rejuvenating experience. …

Allison Taylor: The hardest part of transitioning from high school to college, pertaining to school and the work that comes with it, is the fact that some of my lectures have more people in them than my entire school did! It’s weird adjusting to having class with so many people, but I love it because it just gives you that many more opportunities to make friends! In terms of gymnastics, the hardest part of switching from club to college gymnastics has been the reduced hours of training. Every time at practice I look up at the time and it’s already time to leave to go to class! I just wish we could stay in the gym longer! …

read the whole article – Between The Bars – The 2008 freshman class answers a few questions …

I just subscribed to the videos of a young Australian montage video maker who goes by the name of nade00.

This one brought back a lot of memories.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

These are the most charismatic and famous gymnasts in Olympic history, who may not have won all the medals but touched audiences with their endearing qualities. …

Music – the 2000 Sydney Olympic song titled “Heroes Live Forever”. (I have to put the singer Vanessa Amorosi only just barely above Celine Dion at the bottom of my playlist.)

(via Difficulty Plus Execution)