If you do not want to climb a real iceberg, for only $9,000 you can get your own inflatable, climbing … iceberg ??.
via BoingBoing
straight body cast handstand on bars
Rick McCharles
This skill frustrates almost every female gymnast. Even at the highest levels of competition many competitors are deducted.
What’s a coach to do?
My philosophy is to compete only straddle-up cast handstand. Some world and Olympic champions have avoided straight body casts. This is the best strategy for the vast majority of competitors.
Every gym has athletes who tell me, “I can’t do straddle cast.” That is nonsense, of course, regardless of flexibility. They simply haven’t done enough of these drills.
Straight body cast is normally only appropriate for short, light girls who have terrific “planche” strength. Even those kids will normally show this position on the upswing. (A photo still from the fantastic Gymnastics Revolution database of skills.)
Young gymnasts sometimes pick up the skill easily only to later have trouble, after they grow taller.
If you insist on training straight body cast with girls, my advice is to train a series of kip to straight body casts on a safety straps bar. And work the planche position seriously.
More advice from Skills and Drills, Karen Goeller, and Tulsa World of Gymnastics.
Men’s coaches, no worries. We hardly consider this a skill. It is far easier on the men’s bar.
book – gymnastics – Leonid Arkaev
Coach Mack gives a strong recommendation for How to Create Champions: The Theory and Methodology of Training Top-Class Gymnasts (Hardcover – Oct 2004):
Awesome book. Not for beginners. A background in biomechanics, kinesiology, helpful.
The Russian authors are N. G. Suchilin and L. I. Arkaev. Arkaev is oft called the most successful gymnastics coach in history, many years the Russian and Soviet National coach. He has finally retired — presumably to write this book.
Arkaev in a 1999 interview was asked to name the best ever Soviet athetes. He replied, “Dina Kochetkova and Nikolai Andrianov”.
language translation – now on this site
Just added a small widget (bottom of right hand side navigation) which can translate this page into 8 different languages.
Translations between European languages are surprisingly good. But to and from Asian characters is more hilarious than helpful.
Babel Fish is a web-based application developed by AltaVista (now Yahoo!) which machine translates text or web pages from one of several languages into another.
It takes its name from the Babel fish, a fictional animal used for instantaneous language translation in Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. …
adult fitness through gymnastics
Magic moment captured on Santa Monica beach.
I was searching for some art to “mash” into a header for a new blog focused on adult fitness through gymnastics.
So far this is my favourite image.
I wish on was there on the swinging rings right now.
unfair competitions
Unfair competitions are entrenched.
For example, the Olympics. I am always irked looking at the table of medals published in every newspaper.
A far more just comparison is medal tally by population. For Athens 2004 the winners were:
1) THE BAHAMAS
2) AUSTRALIA
3) CUBA
Even more impressive, perhaps, are the winners of the medal tally by gross domestic product (GDP):
1) GEORGIA
2) ETHIOPIA
3) CUBA
Recently I was working with athletes training for a competition called Canada Winter Games. The tiny Province of PEI (pop. 140,000) must field a team to compete against Ontario (pop. 12,800,000). Ontario has 90 times more people to draw from.
Is that fair? Is it smart athlete development? Is money being spent wisely?
Obviously not.
The only argument for a competition this unfair is that it somehow encourages the regions of the country with less population to develop their gymnastics program. I don’t buy that argument.
Needless to say the competitive rules for this competition are entirely wrong for PEI. Those kids are forced to compete above their ability level.
(I should mention that in Canada we also have fair competitions where all eligible competitors have an equal chance. The first I would name is called Elite Canada, the National Team Selection meet.)
What about your region? Do you attend unfair competitions?
(Leave a comment below.)
video – David Elsewhere – dance
You’ve probably seen David “Elsewhere” Bernal — perhaps in a Volkswagon commercial where he dances Singing in the Rain with Gene Kelly’s face.
David’s 2001 performance at the Korean-American talent show Kollaboration was one of the first big viral videos to sweep the internet.
The video features dance styles called popping and liquiding. Many assume that this clip has been digitally enhanced. No way. This is for real.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
books – Roland Carrasco
I was reminded of the wonderful Roland Carrasco books published long ago in French by Vigot Editions, Paris. (Their website no longer lists Carrasco’s titles.)
I have Gymnastique aux agrès, still listed but not available from Amazon France. It is great and still useful if you cannot read French. The best bits are excellent diagrams.
I have not seen a second Carrasco book listed: Gymnastique des 3 à 7 ans : Une approche nouvelle pour des apprentissages illimités.
Do you know where to get your hands on used copies of these two and his other publications? If so, leave a comment below.
I could write a “handstand” book
But Karen Goeller has already done so.
Coach Mel Gabor ordered several of Goeller’s books (more self-published booklets) and has been pleased with them.
I was impressed too. The gymnastics content is good though the very simplistic drawings are less descriptive than I would like. An on-line edition with video clips of the drills would be perfect for me.
Goeller has a wealth of articles and other booklets on the GymStuff site. For example:
GymStuff.com is cluttered and slow loading. The graphics are distracting. But if you dig in, you will find some great content.
why so few good gymnastics books?
On this site I’ve linked only 4 posts referencing books and manuals. But 60 references to video clips and DVD.
Gymnastics coaching is so complex it is difficult to explain on paper. A few great books and manuals have been written. But most of those sit on the shelf getting dusty.
It’s easier and faster to access digital content like a video clip on YouTube, a web page, or this blog, for example.
The once excellent Gymnastics Canada competitive coaching manuals (one published 22-years-ago) still have some good content. But at a recent coaching course nearly every coach attending found them outdated, questioning why they were mandatory.
Jeff Thomson in New Zealand found a solution to the dilemma of outdated curriculum texts. He put together binders of up-to-date articles and book excerpts. This is legal, cost effective and the resource was far more useful to coaches than any text.
Are there any excellent, up-to-date coaching manuals available in 2006?
I help promote the Up Down All Around gymnastics lesson plans. No coach or teacher wants to take a laptop into the recreational program — hard copy lesson plans are best.
Other lesson plans are good value too. Gymnastics Canada’s CanGym program I recommend to all recreation coaches and leaders. It is currently under revision, by the way.
Please leave a REPLY below if you have any other books and manuals to recommend. We will post them on the blog.
Gymnastics Coaching.com 