A cool place for friends and family members of Santa Monica Gymnastics Center to come hang out. So nuke the popcorn in the microwave; Snoopy dance...dance..dance around the room...then pull up a chair, and be prepared to laugh and cry; to feel embarrassed and inspired; and to just sit back, relax and enjoy these music videos.
Monday, December 29, 2008
What do we need to do? Time you two with a calendar?
Of course, many skills often aren't acquired by anything less than on a calendar timeline.
It's funny how some skills come quickly, and others- no matter how seemingly simple- seem to take forever.
Unless you want to sit through 15 minutes of failed attempts, I suggest you don't watch.
Erin hasn't done giants since summer, but got them back on Saturday, all on her own.
Alexandra Kroner is a graduate of the old SMGC kinder/intro classes. She did a fronthandspring last week; and this past Monday, I let her do her backhandspring by herself from the trampoline:
Finally...it's about time, Thea:
Thea started hitting full routines right before the Lights Holiday Invitational (she missed a giant on bars, probably nervous about the dismount that would follow). This is from December 2:
Annisa's been borderline on her tramp backhandsprings. Today (yes, the gym was open Christmas Eve!), we took the training wheels off for real and let her do the majority of them, unassisted.
Teri was a great find for SMGC and a great loss for LASG. She stayed on for as long as she did because of her love of teaching the kids.
For anyone who could use a great photographer who happens to also be a caring person who will bond to you like a family friend, you can get a hold of Teri through her website or her blog.
After forwarding Rick Charles' post (reviewing this product by Norbert) to the staff at LASG, our gym went ahead and purchased one of these (comes in 3 sizes), back in September. I think the gym invested in the size small.A number of coaches seem to have never taken a liking to the Pack man trainer:
OK for Rec. But these mats have been criticized by many coaches. The technique is not ideal as the knees and hips are too bent.
I've always liked it as a secondary station, once beginners learn how to make it move on their own. Devices like this and the octagon can help emphasize body shapes; with the pac-man, a gymnast can learn to squeeze tight and has to work to lift the hips up into a tight arch from the seated position, whereas, on the octagon, the beginner doesn't have to work for it: the cylinder automatically shapes the body into the "bridge" shape, just by draping oneself onto it.Finding creative uses for any equipment can be fun. Here's a few ideas, other than the standard, typical use:
Erin put me up to this, as apparently Julia told her, "He's put everyone's routines up but ours."So we intentionally conspired to leave her out of the previous routine post as an EPIC inside joke.
Julia's been hassling me, btw, about Facebook. She "friended me" and indignantly says it's rude not to friend people back. I don't use Facebook. I have an account in case I feel the nostalgic urge to look up old college and high school friends (I borrowed Coach Dan's myspace account to do this before, as I don't have a myspace). But I don't "network" on it; I don't use it. I have all these friend requests I've been hesitant to respond to, because I don't quite know what it's all about.
My favorite radio station has been running a program ad, with excerpts of Hugh Hewitt, who's been on the cutting edge of internet technology (including blogs) and is now into Twitter, expressing the same bafflement. It's a pretty funny ad as he asks, does he "just friend EVERYBODY?" Why?
I caught this program clip, too, that reflects and expresses perfectly, the Facebook dilemma:
At the risk of embarrassing Julia, I'd like to highlight and underscore again, what a good person she is. This is the kid who went to New Orleans last summer with her church youth group to help rebuild homes for those who suffered loss during Katrina and Rita.
A couple of weeks ago, Julia gave me an unexpected card:
I think what might have triggered this was an inadvertent admission that I wasn't being paid to help Nika, as Julia wondered if she was taking my time away from teaching a private to Nika (I was helping both her and Julia- who got "thrown out of the house", so came to watch Erin work on her floor routine- out at the same time on a Sunday).
LA Lights Holiday Invitational 2008 (Level 7s and 9s)
Thea missed bars because she's still nervous about the dismount. She slowed down her giant, and fell off; even after getting back on and completing the routine, you can see her trying to control the descent.
I think she had only been doing this full routine about a week, prior (did some decent routines during practice, the week before).
Hadn't seen her floor routine, either until about a week ago. She was ahead of the music and kind of got lost toward the end. Still needs to learn dance, as well as more familiarity with her routine.
Thea:
I was in a bad spot to film Erin's floor. Missed her and Nik(k)i's beam.
She hasn't done giants since summer. Weird mental thing, since she's been doing them just fine, prior.
Erin:
Nikolina hadn't done a full floor routine until the week before the meet. It's her old routine.
Both she and Erin only started focusing on paks for the upcoming meet.
I recall Pineda telling me about some girls up at Woodward who were doing one-arm presses and one-arm planches. I wonder if Bender was one of them? Time frame is about right (this was back in the late 80's-early 90's). Here's her on beam in '91:
One of the things I've been into checking out while searching for certain songs, are cover versions. There are tons of covers uploaded at YouTube by your average joe, and by your extraordinary janes. Seriously, YouTube and similar internet sites are great exposure for "undiscovered" artists and talented people who deserve record contracts, stunt gigs, and wider reknown. David Choi is one such artist I stumbled upon a month or two ago. I subscribed to his YouTube channel and received a notice this morning of a subscription update. Just one listen to his new song (free, downloadable mp3, btw) changed my mind about doing any kind of music video from last Sunday's LA Lights Holiday Invitational meet.
These are Ita's pre-team girls, plus the developmental level 4's who moved up over the summer (Emma, Sofie, and Grace came out of our SMGC intermediates/LASG advanced class). It was their first meet, and they did really well.
Grace is so shy, it's amazing to see her actually out there competing and performing. When she was with me, I had the darn'dest time getting her to remember anything resembling even parts of a routine. Strong and talented kid; but her habit and nature is more to do this all day long:
She always said she wanted to move up to team; but I think that was to be around Brenda and Keli, two older team girls. A strong kid with good-looking backhandsprings almost immediately, Hamest invited her to be on team earlier in the year. Mulan went, but Grace wasn't mentally ready. But around summer, she actually became serious about it.
Grace first came to SMGC from Broadway during summer camp in 2007. She hated being pushed in her stretching, and they did that a lot at Broadway; they do that a lot at LASG too, but she can take it now.
Grace:
I've known Emma since she was 6 or 7; she took a break, then came back a couple of years later. Another very strong, talented kid. Rather fearless on bars (she made my heart drop when she said, "hey look Michael", then did a mill circle on the high bar), she could do pullovers from the high bar right away, and started making kips prior to summer. Sloppy as all heck, you'd never recognize her now after only a couple of months on team.
Emma:
Sofie was with us at SMGC for quite some time as well. It's gratifying to see that she's hung in there and made it to team. I'm always happy when any of our gymnasts make that big transition to the world of competitive artistic gymnastics.
She had her round-off backhandspring on floor before moving up to team, but somehow lost it. I thought that maybe she had gotten sloppy on them, so that the coaches told her not to do it. But that's not the case. Sofie told me she lost it.
I'm sure it's still there, somewhere....
Sofie:
I've always liked Gracie. She and her sister Janie came to SMGC during summer camp in 2007 and had a great time. I thought we'd gain them in the Fall, but they returned to JAGS. When SMGC closed down, they came looking for us, and arrived at LASG. She went straight into Ita's pre-team class, tried rhythmic, then in the Fall, returned back to artistic.
Gracie:
Alejandra picked a very tough sport for her. But her love for the sport has made her determined not to give up. Through hardwork and perseverence she's made it to level 4 team. She has come a really, really long way in just a few months. She went from someone whose feet barely left the ground more than a couple of inches in a backhandspring, to someone who got her round-off backhandspring and has even done some standing ones.
Alejandra:
Tatiana's on pre-team with Ita, but comes on the days that I don't help Ita with her pre-team class. I always see her and her father around, though.
Tatiana:
Alexa's the kind of girl that boldly holds her head high and tells the world, "I'm beautiful, and people love me!" Really, thre's no lack of self-esteem in her bearing. She acts like she's in a beauty pageant. You can see it in her glance as she's walking out to do her floor routine.
Alexa:
Sarah's undoubtedly Ita's top student. She's so talented....she had never done a back flip on trampoline before, and within five minutes was doing them by herself with a very nice tuck. The team really wants her.
Sarah:
The "A-Team":
They were minus Miriam, who injured her ankle earlier in the week. They were on their own rotation, and I missed much of their routines as I was shadowing the "B-team" and pre-team girls.
Levels 5-9 also competed, and if I get around to it, I'll put their routines up as well.
I've known Nika since she was about five or six. Formerly a competitor at Gymnastics Olympica, this past year saw some dramatic changes in her life as she found a new school to attend, as well as leaving the gym that had cultivated much of her present gymnastics skills.
Currently, she is a migrant gymnast without a gym to call her own. Hopefully, that will change in the future. Right now, though, she loves her school and is in a sabbatical transition with regard to her competitive life as a gymnast. She trains at Valley College, and here and there, where her mom can take her for open workouts.
Even though I've already used this song in a previous video, and I don't like to repeat what's been done when there are so many songs out there begging to be used in my videos, knowing how much Donna and Nika (and much of the rest of the world, it would seem) loved seeing this musical, to the point of tears, I just thought they deserve this song, as well. Besides, I'm using the musical version here; I think I used a rock version in Crislin's video. Gymnasts know how to defy gravity, so it's only appropriate that this song gets worn from use.
Some of the footage from the video is taken of her shoot with Country Crock advertising, which happened at LASG.
Since hearing the Samsung Behold commercial the other night, I knew right away that I wanted to do a video to this music. So, haphazardly strung together, here's my first LASG music video for the boys team and coaches:
