A Few Highlights from this Week's Advanced Class

A few Tuesday gals:

Helaine:

Thursday...


It's not the first time Naomi's done round-off backhandsprings on floor; but she hadn't done them on floor in a while, and this week seems more confident and more consistent; using mats, she was even starting to snap-up off her hands, rather than just curling up and letting her feet fall over.

Erin's first day doing her round-off backhandspring on the floor without mats:

Note from Mom:

Erin was sooo excited to do the backhandspring without a mat. She said it "felt good, like a roller coaster ride." I asked her again if she wanted to do the meet [Academy Meet coming up at the end of the month]. She said "I'm shy, but I want a gold medal."

Naomi's the only senior student this Thursday; the other girls observed her going through the level 4 floor, to get a sense for it:

Getting Erin to try two in a row on trampoline:



Maiya experienced doing backhandsprings for the first time by herself yesterday:



Maiya mentioned that she misses Anna.

Last Chance....

The last Saturday before the Academy meet, tomorrow.


Mulan Sweeney:
In spite of all the flaws and sloppiness, I'm duly impressed by how much this 6 year old has acquired and retained, in a short span of practice.

And she's absolutely unphased about the notion of performing in front of people.



Emma Totsubo:
I could not talk Emma into doing the Academy meet. She's better prepared than her younger sister, Leah, yet it's her younger sister who is willing to go out on a limb and do the meet (and Leah was in tears part of the time, in practice today; basically, she learned her routines today, and is justifiably, understandably a bit scared....yet she's agreed to do this!).


Lauren Kelly:
Lauren was sick with the flu about a week ago, and it didn't look like she was going to be able to do the meet, anyway. I know she was very excited Tuesday night and really wanted to do the meet. I think she is supposed to have something going on for tomorrow. Yet today, arriving late to practice, she said she would be here tomorrow. She's probably the best prepared out of my intermediates advanced girls, from SMGC. Keli pointed her out today, and asked when she'd be on team.

What Our Intermediates Have Been Doing in the Gym

Here are a few clips of Tuesday's intermediate class, as an example of some of the exciting things the girls are working on. This is the last week. before we go over to LASG (our last week of the session will take place over there, to acclimate our kids to the change in environment). Some training devices we do not have at SMGC (tumbling pits), which is present at LASG; others will be missed, such as this bungee zipline:

Corynn demonstrating RO BH:

Naomi practices RO 2 BHs:

Kaitlin shows how it's possible to do 4 in a row, with a little help:

You can hook as many as 3 bungee cords (those weighing about 70 lbs or less will find themselves floating) to each side of the belt; at one cord, it supports maybe around 20% of their body weight, making them about 20% stronger than they normally are, as Al puts it. Octagons and PAC-Men are good for body-shaping and hand-spotting is good for manipulating and reinforcing desired positioning. But the zipline makes it easy on the spotter and enables the young gymnast to be somewhat self-sufficient, and get in the numbers. Repetition is the mother of all teachers, even in the absence of constant nit-picking and spoon-fed corrections.

I think Lauren's first RO BH was done this way, before I had her try it on the platform into the portapit, with a spot. I think it accelerated the process. There is no "one size fits all", of course, but when Al introduced this method over the summer to some summer campers, we had several of them acquire their RO BHs by themselves, shortly thereafter.

Lauren's first time trying RO 2 BHs:

We only just started working on the level 4 routines for about a month, now, after spending the past year on level 5 elements, when we worked on them at all. The change is due to the fact that LASG does compete 4's. Lauren is the number one student when it comes to routine acquisition. It may not be polished, but even just the fact that she has it memorized, for how little time we've actually devoted to it, and that she can do all the skill elements says a lot about how much Robyn, Heather and I wish we had a dozen more like her.

Lauren performing Level 4 floor, after class for her mom:

I believe that Lauren's actually one of the rare students we have who has done her gymnastics homework, and watched YouTube vids of the level 4 routines, coupled with a good memory, and an interest. Lauren's only been doing gymnastics for about a year; I think she moved up to intermediates in the summer...maybe before...'ll have to look that one up.

I remember moving her up, based upon her maturity level more than her skill level at the time.