Gymnastics Coaching.com

June 19-26th I am again booked to coach at the wonderful FUNtastics training camp in Couer d’Alene, Idaho. This will be my 4th year.

Why is this summer camp so great?

The focus is FUN. How much FUN can a gymnast have in a day? We try to push the known limits.

So what happens to kids who train mainly for FUN? They are awesome! Funtastics is one of the strongest teams in their region. This gym is on exactly the right track.

You can get an idea of how it looks by checking photos of past FUNtastics camps.

Addictive TV, the top VJ duo working today, was hired to video mashup the Antonio Banderas dance movie Take The Lead . It’s pretty cool.

Click on the video below. Or watch it on YouTube.

Details on Wired magazine.

The best trampoline act I’ve ever seen is in La Nouba, Cirque du Soleil, in Orlando. It includes a lot of backdrop skills into, onto and on top of a 3-story “building”. (We did a lot of this kind of “spiderman” work at Taiso in Saskatoon over the years.)

The two feature trampolinists are fantastic. Coach Mathew Sparks gave me a tour of the set last month. Wow!

You can watch a brief video on the La Nouba site. This show includes trick bikes too. Cool.

I highly recommend you sign up with American Gymnast.

It’s FREE (for now).

This site is very professional and includes quality gymnastics coaching articles by Jay Thornton, Steve McCain, Mohini Bhardwaj and others.

Once you are a member, you will have full access to the training tips section.

The Flying Wallendas are still going strong. The Wallendas are one of the most famous circus family acts and they still are acclaimed for the 8-person pyramid in the 2003 Guinness Book of World Records.

This photo is the 7-person pyramid they have been doing for decades.

Wow. I want a pair of these?

Click on the video below or watch it on YouTube.

They are not the same ones I found on the jumpboots.com website.

Warren suspects they are made by Powerskip in Germany..

Here’s a video of a double front into a pit using Powerskip boots:

Gymnasts like it. And the new gymnastics movie has been a financial success — but critic Peter Sobczynski calls it a “brainless and soulless example of marketing masquerading as moviemaking”.

One wag took this as a compliment.

Seems this little movie did some creative advance work with a sophisticated MySpace page.

Disney also packaged a special mailing of the “Stick It” trailer and the Missy Elliott video “We Run This” to International Gymnast magazine’s 30,000 subscribers.

Savvy Gym Clubs organized Stick It parties for their teams. GymnasticsZone posted a positive review, from a gymnastics perspective.

I am happy for the success of the film, but am already slightly dreading “Stick It, Again.”

Wonderful photo, don’t you think?

Larger version on GrinnellGirl’s photostream.

I found it on flickr using a cool search page by Air Tight Interactive.

If you want to use a flickr photo in a project (as I am here) first check the copyright restrictions. In this case the photo is in limbo, source unknown. Add a comment if you know where it comes from.

Good fun! Try a free on-line trampoline game.

The best use of the internet for teaching skills I’ve seen is The Front Handspring Vault by coach Brian Bakalar of Gymnastics Revolution, Connecticut.

Then check Brian’s photo and photo sequence database of basic skills he calls Gymnastics Interactive.