Mats

Al Fong:

Some of the mats I have are actually older than most of the parents of my Level 4 athletes. I hardly ever throw away an old mat. I refresh the tired ones by reinforcing the old foam with new foam pieces and then recover them. I discovered a long time ago that finding an industrial sewing person who works with car upholstery and vinyl could help me maintain the life of a mat that normally most gyms would discard. Since then I bought my own industrial sewing machine and found sewing people from my parent ranks and gym staff who had sewing experience. With the money I saved by recovering old pieces, I paid for my sewing machine 20 times over!
I still buy new landing mats, resi mats, panel mats, etc...but I can now design and build my own special mats to fit my style of teaching.
It can be challenging finding a place for all these mats, especially at the end of the day when it's time to make the gym orderly for the next day. It's very important to keep the gym clean and organized because it says something about your team and your coaching.

Sunday Funnies

Why!

Original photo by

ROLF VENNENBERND/EPA

Inspired by:  Victory Gymnastics Academy

Wilson Bethel vs. Olympic Gymnast

Volvo Gymnastics Stability and Precision?

Rick links to this:

If I had the gymnasts that could do it, I'd stage it so the one Van Damming would be standing on gymnasts who could show off the stability and precision of gymnastics body shape tension hollow walking.

Sunday Funnies

How Robin became agile and acrobatic.....

Great Question, Eddie!

Eddie Umphrey:

My question is in regards to balancing time between technique/perfection/basics vs. training new skills with young athletes. More specifically, the younger kids who are on a faster track.  Admittedly, I like to take a lot of time with the fundamentals and not rush the skills.  It's hard to fix things down the road. At the same time I don't want to slow them down from learning. Each coach has their own philosophy on this.  What is your approach when it comes to this?  Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time and happy New Year.

Read Al Fong's response.

UCLA Rising

Christy Linder writes of her fiancee:

Soooo excited to share this finally!

Jason wrote, sang, & produced this song RISE for this year's UCLA Gymnastics home meet opening video (with only a tiny tiny bit of help from me). He also directed & produced the video as well. It gives me chills every single time I watch it... and for whatever reason I get nervous every time it plays on the jumbo tron at Pauley Pavilion

Please watch at 1080P with your speakers turned UP!!!

 Christy helped coach team developmental at BGS for a while.  Now she has an official photo gig with the UCLA Bruin Gymnastics team.

Christy's photo blog is here.  Check out her post and photos of the season opener against the Florida Gators. 

Happy MLK Day!

If you can't fly 

 

LATimes

 

Source

 

Source

then run....

April 17th, 2011; Cleveland, OH, USA; UCLA gymnast Brittani McCullough running down the runway during her first attempt in the vault during the 2011 NCAA Gymnastics Championships at the Wolstein Center. McCullough finishes with a score of 9.6125.

If you can't run 


 

Source

then walk...

"This is a gymnast walking on  Relevé on a low beam I like this picture because the gymnast, Olivia (development) was having a difficult time staying on Relevé and finally got it. She was very proud of herself and i caught this moment on camera."  Source

If you can't walk 

 

"Crutch Buddies"

then crawl....

Source

But whatever you do


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Monday Motivation

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sunday Funnies

International Gymnast, January 1994

Check out this post on inclined leg raises.

Utilizing gravity to provide the resistance is an interesting thing.

When I was in college, rehabing my shoulder, I modified the traditional free weight internal rotation exercise where you lie on your side by keeping the weight in the same plane at 90 degrees and moving my body back and forth from supine to prone.  That way the gravity resistance remained constant.

The Need for Speed

One of my favorite running drills:






I often go for time (move legs as fast as possible within allotted amount of time); but when first starting out with little ones, I first check their form and positioning; and will call out numbers.  So for example, when I say "one", they lift one leg only and hold the pose.  If I say, "two", they switch their legs twice; "three", 3 quick switches.  And so on.  (I guess I'm not the only one who does this.  :-) ) If I say, "thirty", they do 30 leg switches as fast as they can without short-changing getting the knee to drive up and forward.  Here's another progression (the wall march):

Seek the Owl

By Sarah Lorish:

Sunday Funnies

I just got Pantene-rolled!

How on earth do you tie together a feel-good drama to a hair product?

Well.....kinda like this:



That is one long commercial!  If you're rolling your eyes, just look at it like this:  At least it wasn't an ad promoting the virtues of soft drinks or fast food.

Two Teachers

“If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.”
― Confucius

Adding a Little Twist

This drill from Rebecca Sykes interests me because the twisting method is one Wade introduced me to where you set and instead of pulling both arms down on the thighs (or rather, pull the hips up toward the hands), you pull both hands down over one thigh.


I think I might have mentioned the story before about how we had one level 5 gymnast bouncing layouts well enough on trampoline that Wade asked me to teach her the twisting method he described to make sure I understood it well enough to teach.  So I told the kid what to do.  We didn't tell her she would be twisting.  I just basically told her how I wanted her to pull her arms down, and to keep them there tightly.  The kid landed a full and then asked, "What did I just do?"

It's a great way to introduce twisting, in my opinion, because it's simple.  No complexity with one-arm dropping first, starting out wide set, or anything else (not to say I don't like other techniques and styles).  Just simplicity.

The hands go over one thigh, like you're sticking your gluing your hands to your pocket.  From there, you can also just flex the arms and bend at the elbows if you're ready for more.

Tony Retrosi also recently posted these series of trampoline drills:

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One-Armed Gymnast on Rings

A kid named Seth:

Trapeze Flyaway

Trapeze and swinging rings are a good place to learn the art of tapping.  How much carry-over does it have as far as bar work goes? 

I've heard of having gymnasts work flyaways on short trapeze or rings attached to the high bar.  There's less likelihood of pulling back into the bar.

 Here's an interesting route to acquiring a layout flyaway:






Hmm...Not really convinced in the merits of this approach.  I see problems with head throwing and shoulders closing.

Okay, I found a DGS product:

The trapeze-type motion of the bar forces your body into the tap position on the back swing, the extended position at the bottom of the swing and the pike position at the top of the swing. Try it and see how it improves your beginning swingers' tap swings!

Their product video doesn't really promote the virtues of good habit/technique flyaway training with the Tapeze, however:

Chin ups in a Tuck

I made the mistake of not setting a time limit:



Rules should be:

1. As many as possible in a minute
2.  Chin all the way over or it doesn't count.
3. Don't drop the block (encourages control on the way down) or it doesn't count (including the last one).

If allowed to do those ugly kippy type of chin-ups (and yes, I call overgrip chin-ups and undergrip as pull ups), she can probably do double the number of reps she hit here.

Gymnast Care