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

Inspirational 62 year old learning RO BH

I don't know how I ended up on this channel, but I did:

The video is from 2013, and I believe he was 62 at the time.  You can see some of his other videos, recording his journey.



This is what it says about him on his YouTube channel intro:

A Life-Changing Event:
On Oct. 2004, Lee was in a serious life-death accident. Upon awaking from a coma, he was told that his right foot and ankle was spared amputation due to the insistence of his wife to reverse the medical recommendation to amputate. The medical opinion was that he would never be able to use his right foot or ankle in a normal manner and that the foot would be problematic in the following years.

Lee's recovery involved a month long hospitalization period, and 2 months convalescence period before stepping back into the gym to regain his noteable strength and fitness.

Lee carries a permanent wound on his right foot which needs care at least on a weekly basis. When asked about it, Lee smiles as he says " I may have pain every day, but I don't suffer. The pain is an acceptable part of my day, considering the alternatives."

Go Paula!

Around 2 minutes into the video.

Energy Unlimited on the Home Show (circa 1993?)

Laura used to have fund raisers for the UCLA men's gymnastics team. Yefim, the UCLA assistant coach, was one of her fitness instructors. David St. Pierre worked for her for a couple of years; after my last year of eligibility, I needed part-time work and by a strange act of fate, saw an ad of Laura's asking for gymnastics fitness instructors. So I began working with clients in her small fitness studio on Motor Ave. When that shut down, she moved her business over to Santa Monica Gymnastics Center, renting out the gym at the same time Richie Salas ran his Adult Gymnastics program. When Richie moved, we "inherited" some of his leftover clients, like Sarah Black and Cathleen Handler.

The following is a promotional stint we did on the Home Show. If I remember accurately, we arrived very early and did take after take after take after take. I was very muscle-fatigued by the time we actually started taping (as well as out of competitive shape) and got stuck on one of my handstand push-ups, just as the camera panned my way.

Because I Said So

Keesha Scott is a beautiful singer/songwriter with a vivacious personality. Over a year ago, she took some gymnastics privates and was a lot of fun to work with. From her MySpace page:

I grew up smack dab in the middle of the country in southern Indiana. My house stood on a cornfield, and even though my family didn't own the field, I could tell you everything that there is to know about corn. For instance, did you know that there is male and female corn? Weird. Not only was I the coolest star that my grandmother's video camera had ever seen, but I sang everywhere, and I was the best little actress on the planet! ? I sang at everywhere!My mother raised me as a country girl, making me one hell of a country girl at heart!!

It took me over a year of editing to complete this video. Actually, I had pretty much finished it quite some time ago, but had to shelve it due to some computer issues; then I thought I lost the project after taking my computer in for repairs and having the letter assigned to my disc drive, change.

Last week, I had taken my computer in for repairs; and once again, it came back to me with letters scrambled. I didn't want to lose any more projects, so I Googled a question, and figured out how to go into disk management and change the drive letter and path. Phew!



I don't think the song on this video quite fits the footage; but I love the song, and definitely wanted to use her music in the video.

She has a terrific personality that demands attention and deserves stardom. I wish her all the best of luck in her personal and professional endeavors.

Don't forget to do your sit-ups, Keesha!

Gymnastics Kid

Sarah's the best around! And here's another video, to prove it:



She's such a great sport....I know she wants to kill me when I make these.....but she's too much of a peace-lover.

Ever since I saw a South Park episode using this song from Karate Kid, I envisioned doing a new Sarah Black video to the Joe Esposito song.

I need to send it out to all her friends and family members.

Remember, Sarah: We're all laughing with you!

Level 5 Floor for Intermediates

Since SMGC does not compete level 4's, I have the intermediate classes work on elements from the level 5 routine; that way, if any of them make it to team, they'll have a sort of "head start". In terms of the dance elements being progressive, moving from basic to something more advanced, I don't see it. It's silly that prior to the second tumbling pass, what differentiates 5 from 6 is a flexed toe in 5 and a pointed toe in 6. That's just....pointless; other than to confuse transitioners, who end up jumbling parts from 5 with parts from 6.

I wonder how often a level 6 gymnast doesn't realize she has kept a level 5 interpretation in her routine, goes unnoticed and uncorrected by the coaches, and then makes its way before tired judges who, after watching a hundred routines, fails to catch the error.

Anyway, most of our intermediates only train once or twice a week, in two hour classes. They don't always get to practice routines; but some really get into it.

I thought I'd put some videos up of the routines; that way, we can spend more time polishing in class and less time memorizing.

Hopefully, they will also get a "feel" for the performance aspect, and see how different gymnasts and different gyms interpret the same routine differently.

The following video is of Michele Wunderlich during practice, April 4th:


This is a video I took of my friend's daughter, Nika (who I taught her first backhandspring to):



The routine scored a 9.1 or 9.2.

Here is a 9.6 routine at the So. Cal State Championships, by another Nica. Outstanding dive roll!

The following is of one of my adult clients. Mari only recently began working on the level 5 floor routine and her background in dance and movement shows through in this partial clip:




Here is her first time doing a round off backhandspring without a spotter present, on the floor. November 24th:



I encourage all of my intermediates to run "level 5 gymnastics" through the search function on YouTube. You can learn quite a bit from observation and study. In my day, I didn't have such access at my fingertips. I had to monitor the tv guide for any gymnastics on Wide World of Sports or other sports programs, and set the VCR. Now you are no longer limited by only watching elite level gymnastics on tv; but through the internet, we are able to peek in on home video training sessions of anything from high level gymnastics to awful low quality gymnastics.

Far Away

I grew pretty close to the Derrett family, beginning with Emily. She is always kept somewhere, bouncing around in the best corner of my heart.

I've been wanting to make a video for Emily for the longest time; but she's a difficult one to film. Whenever a camera is around, you can be assured that Emily will run in the other direction, more often than not. Nita's a bit camera-shy as well, but was good about it, when I recorded some of her workouts.

This is essentially a Nita video; but it's hard to make one without including footage of her daughter Emily, who sometimes invaded her workouts (as shown in the video).

Nita pretty much learned her gymnastics within the year that she trained with us. She is quite athletic, having been a volleyball player in her "youth" (quotation-marked, so as not to imply that she is now "old"). I think she has a knack for boxing, too. Her technique may not be technically polished, but what you see in the video is the result of the barest of training hours put into acquiring jabs, crosses, and hooks. She also worked kicks, elbows and knees on the Thai pads and kicking shield; but unfortunately, I did not get around to having any of that filmed.

The music was hard to choose. I settled more or less by chance on this Nickelback song, while sift-tasting through my collection, because of the instrument that coincided well with the slapping thump of the boxing leather on the focus mitts. Plus, this is the kind of music that Nita and I both like.

The edit is kind of rough, toward the second half. This is because of two problems:

1. The MP3 file is corrupted, so that in order to synchronize the music to the footage, midway, I have to replay it from the very beginning; otherwise, the soundtrack is off.
2. Windows movie maker kept freezing up. I had to restart my computer about 15 times. I think I might be running low on RAM. The video really should have taken me no longer than 4 hours to complete.
   

If I had just one complaint about Nita, it's that she went to USC. Other than that, she's practically perfect in every way.

Here's hoping Emily finds the wisdom to become a UCLA Bruin. (^_~)

Sarah vs. the Handstand Foward Roll: Round One

I would love to make a serious video about Sarah Black....but sometimes, you have to work with the footage you are stuck with. And with Sarah, that often translates into pure comedy.

Her best event is rings. Unfortunately for her, this is all about her struggles with mastery of the handstand forward roll.



Previous videos:

Serious Gymnasts Only
Blunder Woman!

Gymnastics Fiction

Last Year, Stacey and Trish had each other in the Wednesday adult class, as they were the only ones consistently present. They really got into learning the level compulsory routines, and started out with the level one floor; and I think went up to level 3, which they showed off at Spring Fling in May. During their floor routine, they went at the same time along with a couple of the Academy-level kids. After their performance, they kind of shoved past the kids to high-five each other. They were totally into it. Pretty good for a couple of people who had never done gymnastics before, and who have shoulders stiffer than mine.

"Forever Young"

Just a quick mix of haphazard footage tossed in with little regard to rhyme or reason.

Cathleenated Addiction

Cathleen was a former competitive gymnast who now seems to enjoy coming into the gym as a stress relief from the daily grinds of the work week. So the song is perfect for her video, and is one of a number of songs she picked out.

She is an avid coffee-lover, so you will see her make repeat visits over to her coffee, throughout her workouts.

The story behind the title of her music video, and the sticker- "Start Here"- on her Tiger Paws wristguards, is that one morning at workout, she asked what was on my bottom. I thought maybe I had ripped a hole in my shorts. Upon closer inspection, Cathleen burst out laughing. She pulled the sticker off of me, and it was a piece from a cd sticker label, that said "start here". That's the portion that let's you know where to peel the label off from. I must have sat on it at home. Cathleen, still laughing uncontrollably, said, "Start here (my butt)...and end up where?!" (better not answer that one).

The Freedom of Flight

Sheryl's into horses, but I could not think of any horse music. One day A Nina Simone song was playing in the gym, and Sheryl remarked she had never heard it before, but liked it. I love this song, and so found the perfect music for her video.

Sheryl first began workout out with us around June of 2005. She's rather athletic; if you ever push her down, she'll know how to fall and roll out of it safely...and if she gets back up, she'll be kicking your a...ah...royal rump (This is, after all, a family-friendly blog)!...well, more like, "whatever you do, don't grab her wrists". You can check her out tossing me around in the Gymkata video.

"Friendship Story"

I've had the idea for this video and the song for quite some time, but only just now got around to bringing it to fruition. Unfortunately, I had to leave a few pieces of footage on the cutting room floor...but I'll just sweep those up and salvage them for a future video, somewhere down the line.

This video is my first experiment in utilizing photos with captioning to help tell a story. It's a bit of a tedious process...almost like stop-motion, but of course, far simpler. You can see the results as part of the opening and closing credits of the video.

Stacey and Jolene bring their two daughters to the intro level class. Instead of sitting on the bleachers, around December of 2004, they decided to do gymnastics themselves, during the time that their daughters, Lilly and Malaika took class.

Stacey had actually been dreaming of trying the adult gymnastics program a year or two earlier, when Malaika was enrolled in the mother-and-me, baby class.

Last year she went through a pregnancy, and still worked out, almost to the end (check out her front flip, 7 months carrying). Stacey has been a very enthusiastic student. Both her and Jolene have some athleticism that has served them well in acquiring their gymnastics skills, basically from scratch.

They were also good sports, back in April, when they participated in the annual Cartwheel-a-thon.

Video is uploading right now....stay tuned.

What's Up? (The Opposite of Down...Duh!)

Katy started up with our adult program (Energy Unlimited) around February of this year. She came in, out of shape and in need of exercise that she could get excited about; enough for her to stick with.

I remember the first day she walked into the gym, I took good care of her; but still, after 2 passes of lunges across the floor, she was wobbly on her feet the rest of workout.

10 months later, she has made remarkable progress. The video charts her rise...

"Full of Life"

This is more modern dance than it is gymnastics. David and Jane have been coming to Energy Unlimited for years and years; and in recent times, have been working with Jason, who has a background in dance. For the past year, at least, he has been choreographing them to do routines. I've seen at least a couple. I think the one in this video was the first time they did it, and spent at least 2 hours in the gym on it. The music in the video, by Aimee Mann, is the actual song that they used to perform to.

I find watching them amusing at times, and in a good, positive way. It's awesome that they are able to do their thing regardless of who is in the gym; and it is a beautiful thing that this married couple are able to find commonality and mutual enjoyment in this activity. Time spent together, basking in one another's glow, is time well-spent.

Mission: Unpossible

A monkey-crawl race across the beams...featuring members of the adult class.


This message will self-destruct in 60 seconds....

"Right Now"

"I Want a Mom Who Will Last Forever"

Elana, Brenda, and Malik's mom, Timea, decides to try the adult gymnastics class and has a good time.

Cartwheel-a-thon 2005