Go Broadway!

Great moment at North SoCal State Championships last weekend:

I'm glad the judges here have not been afraid to award 10.00s if they feel it is deserved (I believe it was at 3rd prelim that another level 3 from Waller's Gym Jam scored a 10.00 on vault).  Congratulations to Alexis and her coaches at Broadway Gymnastics School!

Press/Cast Handstand/Stalder Shape Conditioning

Have not done this exercise in a very long time:

That's a preteam/new level 3 kid.  Thought I'd try it with her at the end of her practice.


Below, I think this was a level 5 kid; maybe training old level 6:

Spotting Method for Pre-Team Chin-ups

  I learned this spotting method from Michael Manzanet of Broadway Gymnastics School, for spotting chin-ups/pull-ups.
Open hand squeezed between the legs by the gymnast. It helps the gymnast maintain form (like squeezing a beanbag); and the gymnast only gets an assist if she needs it by squeezing the spotter's hand.

This was just a quick take (and the coach in the video is new to this.  The spotter does not grab the gymnast.  The gymnast "grabs" the spotter's hand).  The gymnast can also squeeze with the feet, too, instead of the knees.

Memory Monday

2011?  Not even sure what year this was.....

People Try Gymnastics for the First Time (Go Broadway!)

Building up a powerful, consistent run

At my old gym, counting steps was so ingrained in them, that they seemed to have to count their steps in EVERYTHING.  It can be a helpful tool, however, in building a consistent run and hurdle that does not slow down or balk.  Although I had never been taught to count steps myself, I remember being able to always build up my run to a crescendo and adjust my strides accordingly as I neared the springboard without slowing down (and on rare occasions, hurdle off of my bad leg if need be from being way off).  I heard that young kids, however, have not fully developed their depth perception (I'd love to know if anyone can verify this).

As coach "dunno" writes:

the basics. start the run with the same leg that they hurdle off of. and keep the number to 9/11/13 etc; running steps. yes, there are exceptions as i'm sure someone will point out. but these are the basics and they work consistently across the board with most kids and both boys and girls.

Teaching from odd number stepping to a hurdle makes sense when considering future vaults down the road- a hurdle will eventually lead into a yurchenko (step with the bad leg and skip up with the good).  So odd number of steps as opposed to even number (unless your intention really is to train your gymnasts to hurdle off of their dominant leg as the last step before the hurdle). 

Due to compulsory State Championships this weekend, we canceled team practices yesterday.  I offered a makeup practice today and one level 3 and two mini-shots came in.  Here's something I experimented with:

This idea came to me while driving to work; so I tested it out at the gym today.

My spacing was a bit off on the number placements; but it definitely helped encourage a longer stride (the lvl 3 gymnast shown is in between deer runs and sprinting) and getting consistent number of steps down (had the girls go up to 9 running steps, stepping first with the "bad" leg- i.e., the non-dominant leg that is used to push from one a hurdle into round off or front handspring).

The original idea was to take a permanent marker to some foam blocks (but I didn't think the gym would fully appreciate that) and set them up as markers; but then I remembered that we had these placement mats for preschool.

Something else I used to do (and should still do) at my old gym with the optionals was to have them front flip over the table.  Wade encouraged me to do this as opposed to having the girls do "run bys".  Why?  Because the tendency of a lot of kids is to slow down as they get closer to the hurdle line and veer off the runway.  With the front tuck (or layout) to avoid hitting the table, the vaulter maintains the acceleration all the way to the hurdle and punch.  No need to hurdle off course into the "gutter".  With a powerful punch, the gymnast should be able to clear the table at her table-height setting.

 

Polish the floor and you polish your soul

From the Bleacher Report:

A number of Japan fans flew all the way to Brazil for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, and they reportedly made sure to not make a mess while at the games.

Even after losing 2-1 to the Ivory Coast on Saturday, June 14, a number of Japan fans were reportedly seen picking up trash. The pictures show the fans being quite thorough, making sure there was no trash in sight.

That's quite a classy move coming from fans of a losing team.

[Twitter, h/t BuzzFeed]

I recall talking to my gymnasts about this a couple of years ago. (How they behave at meets and how it reflects upon us; how when we host meets, is it any fun to clean up after other people's mess?).

One of the things I was most proud of with BGS was when I filled in to help at an off-site event and Laura, the program director, ordered us staffers to clean up trash in the area as we were leaving; that it was our responsibility to make the place look cleaner than how we found it when we arrived.

I thought that was a good reflection upon the reputation of the gym.

And I'm really not at all surprised at the Japanese. 


Something I wrote over a year ago on a "secret" blog and am now reprinting here:
Read more »

How to Coach Gymnastics

How To Coach Gymnastics from Luke Knezevic on Vimeo.

Some publicity for the gym

Overshoot spotting method.

Raptured!

Thrill of Victory and the Fun of Defeat

Thea won floor at State Championships for her age division. If not for her two falls on beam, she'd probably also be the All-Around champion and her high marks would have counted toward the team score (Not being mean...I just like giving her a hard time).

Her beam series has plagued her all season. She hit about 4 or 5 for 5 in warm-ups. In every meet this season, she's missed. I wonder what the professional commentators would have to say about it....

The Weekend...

...was busy.

Peter Vidmar Invitational went Friday through Sunday. I only caught a little bit of it on Saturday evening, after my event at the Chinese-American Museum's Lantern Festival. Parents next to me were asking what was up with the Australian team's style of sporting sagging shorts and saggy long pants that make their torsos look long and their butt-cracks show. I asked Wade (Australian coach at Broadway) and he said the Aussie's were influenced by the saggy pants look of American gangsta culture and put their own twist to it. We both felt embarrassed.

Sunday, I was at the UCLA meet (lost to Georgia) and thought I'd help with the tear down at PVI afterward; but they weren't even done with competition when I got there.

Peter Vidmar's talk at the end (I'm sure much is stock material- PVI's in something like its 20th year- but this is the first one I've more or less attended) was entertaining and inspirational.

He made the competitors give their parents a standing ovation, telling them their parents didn't have to bring them to the meet or to gym day in and day out; to think of the sacrifices they make on their behalf and each day when they get dropped off at gym, to say "thank you". He then got cheered into giving a pommel horse demonstration to show what he could still do. It was pretty funny and he is in great shape for his age. One mom joked to him when he fell off, that this was going up on YouTube! He told everyone they just witnessed history, as it was the 1st time he's ever fallen off the horse.

Vidmar was great, and I so wish I had come armed with the camera to film this.

Maybe that mom's footage of his pommel horse work (with the 'historical/hysterical first time ever" fall) will in fact make it up on YouTube...

Quotes of the Week

Blair March 1st: "Last night after gym I was by the toilet bowl ready to puke, thinking I had the stomach flu. My mom gave me Pepto Bismol. After a while I realized my stomach was just sore from too much conditioning."

Blair February 28th being spotted on her two giants to layout flyaway...I tell her to come back up and go again; she says, "Yesss! This is like getting a free ticket pass at a Magic Mountain ride!"

Thea's First Yurchenkos

She did 3 by herself for the first time.

The Dirty Half-Dozen Ride Off Into the Sunset...

We fielded 6 former level 5 gymnasts to the LA Classic at Gymnastics Olympica today. They all scored personal bests in level 6 (since it's their first and only six meet), achieving their mission objective: Passing out of 6 and on to level 7. Finally...they can now just focus on one level.

Congratulations, girls!

Having No Limitation as the Limitation

"There are two kinds of people: those who think they can, and those who think they can't, and they're both right."
- paraphrased from Henry Ford

At Broadway Gym, each level group has a prescribed series of stretches they do, as a routine, with one of them chosen to lead. Our expectation is for them to do it, synchronized, efficiently transitioning from one stretch to the next with presentation (as if they were performing this on stage or in a competition). So there is no talking, no extra movement; focus is straight ahead. Of course, inadvertently someone will "break character", and look around at what else is going on in the gym, play with her ponytail, pick at her leotard, etc. Basically, losing focus.

Yesterday, I challenged my 5-7s (a group that is jumping from level 5 to level 7) with a sticker reward for whoever was the most focused with great presentation during stretches. Immediately, one girl said "Why not just give it to GymnastA?" (GymnastA is a model gymnast when it comes to doing this and everyone knows it. She'd be great standing and marching in a military formation). I told them why not try and "beat" GymnastA? That they were all equally capable. Two other girls said in regards to this, "But that's impossible!"

After their stretches, I led them over to the side of the gym where, on the wall, I had taped the following story:

If you put fleas in a shallow container
they jump out.
But if you put a lid on the container
for just a short time,
they hit the lid trying to escape and
learn quickly not to jump so high.
They give up their quest for freedom.
After the lid is removed, the fleas remain
imprisoned by their own self-policing.
So it is with life.
Most of us let our own fears or the impositions
of others imprison us
in a world of low expectations."
-Andrew Hsu

We talked briefly about what the message is that we can take with us from that story; about the limitations we fabricate in our own heads about what we are and aren't capable of achieving.

Last week I had begun posting little inspirational quotes and maxims around the gym at key locations. Over by beam, one of my favorites:

"Fall down seven times, get back up eight"- Japanese proverb

Girls at bars are always asking me the time. There's actually a clock on the wall nearby and above it I have a sign that reads, "The time now..." and below the clock: "...is for you to work harder! And the only easy day, was yesterday."

A favorite of mine at the bar stations hangs on the wall above the chalk tray. It reads something to the effect that, "Those who squander their time hanging out at the chalk bar become experts at procrastination. Those who spend most of their time getting up on the equipment get better at gymnastics."

I like having these in the gym. The kids are noticing.

I don't know how much of this sort of stuff sinks in, but if you fling enough out there, and often, something's bound to stick.


*Special thanks to Nadine, from whom I first heard the flea story.

Candlestick Extension Drill for Giants- Wrist Shift

A drill idea I was playing with for giants/wrist shift, handstand shaping.

The other related drill is to lay on the rainbow, grabbing a low bar facing the other way, scoop into candlestick shapes, then scoop all the way over into a push-up position on the other side, maintaining the hollow-dish shape the whole time. Laying on the rainbow in a tight arch would be perceived as the bottom of the swing with the hollow push-up as the top of the giant. Also good for working 3/4 giants.

Hustled Out of a Dollar

Summer is often the time when we hope to intensify gymnastics training. Well, if you aren't working with elites and wannabe-elites, that's not likely to happen. So we often have kids who disappear for vacation trips, sometimes for weeks on end. You assign conditioning-on-the-go exercises they can do while away, and hope and pray they and their parents are disciplined enough to follow through with it.

One of my level 5's has been on vacation since the beginning of summer- almost 2 months. Monday was her first day working out and she could not do a kip on bars. Not even if her life depended upon it. She was very pouty and frustrated with herself.

Wednesday, she still could not make her kips. Wasn't even close to making it on the high bar. Lots of frowning and fuming. Then it struck me to inject some humor into it and I started picking on her over her orange toenail polish (anyone who really knows me, knows how much I hate nail polish, makeup, tattoos, and piercings of any kind- including earrings). I remember her toenails had this ugly orange on Monday as well. So I told her it was obvious she wasn't making her kips because she had ugly orange toenail polish on. I theorized, "I bet once you get rid of thatl polish, you'll be able to make your kip." A shocked, offended smile spread across her face. With feigned indignation, she denied the nail polish was the problem- especially her color choice. I insisted it was the polish. And the color. She boldly challenged me with a dollar bet that she could make the kip and prove me wrong. Based upon how much trouble she was having Monday and that particular succeeding Wednesday, I seriously did not think she had it in her to make the kip. So I took her bet.

She jumps to the high bar, long hang kips effortlessly. My jaw just dropped. her expression back was a smug, "I told you so!"


I think I got hustled out of a dollar.

Okay, so it wasn't the toenail polish....but they're still an ugly orange!!!

New Toys for the Gym!

Always fun to get new things to play with. Egbert is our maintenance guy and will be constructing a frame bar for our tumbletrak, hopefully a portable handstand wall bar (like the one Al built), and a hollow-arch body shape strength machine (Home Depot's just around the block).



Mike approved a work order for octagonal-end floor bars. I talked to Jaime about making them yesterday, and this afternoon he already had two made, plus made an extra one which he gave to me as a personal present.



Jaime Villalobos is a former UCLA gymnast and he works for his brother-in-law's cabinet business which is right next door to BGS. His niece, Sara, was on SMGC team and sometimes volunteers work at BGS.

Hopefully the bars work. I had a couple of level 5-going-on-7's test 'em out. I think it might be a matter of them getting used to the bars, as both had difficulties at first. The one who kept testing it got better at it.



My one concern is whether or not they are safe getting to a handstand position with stable wrists and not let the bar roll back the other way. Might be a good idea to practice rolling back down from a handstand safely before letting them try to pop it open to a handstand, unassisted.

I would have tested it out myself....but then thought, "Naaaaah....."

I really liked ET's video, "Bars: Must Drills for Beginning Optionals". I liked the emphasis on the dish shape over the bar in the 3/4 giant, since I see so many gymnasts arching on the way up to the handstand in their giants.

I started out teaching Izzy on her giants, this way, using the low bar. When it came time to start actually doing giants, she had trouble opening up her shoulder angle to get to handstand because she was used to swinging to the 3/4 giant/hollow push-up shape. And now, because I haven't gone back to re-emphasize the scooping action as a drill, she's been developing the habit of peaking too early with an early wrist shift, and a bit of arching at the top of the swing.

*UPDATE*

07/26/2010

The 5's and 6's had trouble with the prototype, so Jaime cut it down (I think the bar was too high off the ground). Edie tested it out, and she said the one on the left- the new one- works much better.

*UPDATE II

7/28/2010

This is the final version (notice the difference between the ones on left and right?). I've had a lot better success with these 3.

Good luck, Doug, Leah, and Kai!

After some 10 yrs working at BGS, Leah is leaving the gym. She and Doug have decided to raise Kai back in Canada.

Leah's going away party was yesterday. They'll be missed, but Leah willl still be coming back out here to choreograph routines.