Terrible Tuesdays : The apple doesn't fall far...

They say that parents treat their kids how their parents treated them as children. I suppose the same could be said for gymnastics coaches.

I recently received an email from a gym mom who spoke about her high level daughter's former coach. She spoke about her experience saying that she was, "constantly berated, degraded and demeaned on a daily basis." The mom went on to cite specific incidents in which she felt her daughter was treated inappropriately by her coach. While I've never stepped foot in the gym in question, it got me thinking. Similar things have been said about the former coach of the coach in question, as well as that coach's former coach.

If you're taken straight out of college, or even high school and thrown into an environment where you're coaching high level athletes independently, what experience do you really have? You can only coach in the way that you've been coached, which sometimes can be ultimately, detrimental to athletes. I spoke with another athlete who had experience with the coach who was nearly driven to quit gymnastics from her experiences.

It is worth noting, however, that some of others with whom I spoke really loved the gym, and one even stated that her time at the gym was the "healthiest and happiest [she's] been as an athlete." Maybe it's a personality thing.

Property of USA Gymnastics

At the end of the day, I do not know, and will likely never know what happened or didn't happen in any gym that I'm told about. Even if I did, whether or not those coaching styles are appropriate or inappropriate is not my call. But I will say that I think that it's a poor choice to throw an inexperienced coach into an environment where he/she is coaching Elite or Upper Optional athletes with little to no experience. Without being mentored and supervised, former athletes have only one thing to draw from: their experiences. And ultimately, that may or may not be a positive thing for the gymnasts involved.

Terrible Tuesdays : 5 reasons to hate the age limits

Yup. A topic that's Totally overdone and redundant. But I mean come on? 16? Ugh.

Here's 5 reasons to want to scream at Bruno Grandi.

Terrible Tuesdays: "Leaps" out of tumbling passes

In 2010, Lauren Mitchell captivated fans across the globe with her giant tumbling and became the first Australian to win a Gold Medal in Gymnastics. Although her dance was lacking, I had respect for her big skills and turn in the tuck position. And I was thrilled when just a few days before 2011 worlds when International Gymnast announced that she had earned a 6.4 SV on Floor, higher than any other woman in the world at that time. That is, until I saw the routine. 

Before we move on, let me define a gymnastics term for you:

Code-whore - /kōd'hôr/  (n.)

1.  An individual who, for the sake of start values, sacrifices her artistic integrity.

Ex: Because she was scared of the competition's talent, Lauren Mitchell code-whored her entire floor routine by jumping horrifyingly out of each pass. 

--

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of jumping out of a tumbling pass. Svetlana Khorkina did it incredibly for years. It's when you sacrifice your artistic integrity and the quality of your gymnastics that I hate. 

Let's look at a screen shot out of each of Lauren's 4 passes at last weekend's Pacific Rim Championships. I took screen shots 3 times, and picked the best picture for each pass. 

Frankly, with the exception of the last picture, I don't think any of those pictures display acceptable gymnastics, much less artistry. 

I'm not trying to pick on Lauren here, but her leaps are the most apparent examples of code-whoring. They don't work with the choreography and are blatant attempts to eliminate hops on the landings. If you can't control your tumbling passes, don't use "dance" to attempt to hide that. Everyone can see exactly what you're doing. 

Terrible Tuesdays - "Spectaculars"?

I LOVE Hollie Vise’s gymnastics. Seriously. Little Tweenaged Bekah cried when Hollie didn’t make the Olympic team. But this, my friends, is unforgivable.

Why do they think this is okay? How much are they being paid to embarrass themselves this severely? When I initially saw this “routine”, I thought that this was as bad as it could get. Oh no, it gets worse.

Since when does an attempt sex appeal have to be part of gymnastics? I just don’t understand. Does this sell to little 10 year old girls somewhere? I guess it has to, or they wouldn’t keep doing it. But this isn’t the only option, because year after year, there’s someone who proves that it’s possible to perform, captivate the audience, and not look like a dumbass. 

I love this “Once Upon a December” routine. This is from the Olympic Gala, but she did it on tour prior to the Olympics. She does some barre work on beam, and then she actually performs a routine! Not that “high on the hill was the lonely goatherd”  bullshit. She really performs. 

Spanny wraps up my feelings on Hollie's routine pretty well in this blog. 

Terrible Tuesdays - Tough Split?

What's wrong with this picture? 

(Property of USAG) 

Give up? Alicia Sacramone, who's closest to the camera, isn't all the way down in her splits. She's probably at 165-170 degrees. In the air, that wouldn't be a split; on the floor, it isn't one either. I love A-Sac even more than the next person, but there are several other pictures of Alicia not hitting her splits around the internet. And she isn't the only elite either.

I'm not even talking about having active flexibility in jumps, I'm just talking being able to go all the way down in the splits! If you're training 40 hours a week, there is no reason you should be unable to go all the way down in the splits. Flexibility and strength are the foundation of gymnastics. In my eyes, if you can't hit the splits, all the way to 180 degrees on the ground, that's almost as bad as being unable to hold a handstand. 

I disagree with the TOPs coach in this video who says, "Girls, I'm telling you now, you need to get your splits all the way down. Unless you've got a double-double on floor, there's no excuse." 

There's never an excuse. 

(Property of Heather Maynez) 

Terrible Tuesdays - Short Sleeved Leos

Anyone who's followed my twitter through my post competition "Leo Awards" knows that I hate short sleeved leotards. Although they're nearly extinct in US Elite competition, gymnasts across the world continue to wear short sleeved leos. Here's the way I look at it: if you were see Swan Lake and the dancers were all in black leotards, pink tights and leg warmers, it would be tacky. In my opinion, it doesn't make sense to wear the same thing you'd wear in practice to an important event, much less to the Olympics. I have a hard time understanding why, on possibly the most important day of a girls life, she would choose to look less than exceptional.    

Now I've heard people say before, "Well, short sleeved leos are less expensive than long sleeved ones!" While that may be true, the average difference between a custom short sleeved and a custom long sleeved leo from GK is about $60 (US). Your delegation surely should be able to splurge $60 on you if, I don't know, you're representing them in international competition! 

It's obviously not the most catastrophic issue in the sport, but it just continues to irk me when girls like Vanessa Ferrari or Youna Dufournet show up to World Championship finals in short sleeved leos. 

But at the end of the day, at least they aren't wearing 1 sleeved leos. (No, seriously.) 

(Khyla Pottenger, 2011 US Challenge) 

Got something you think should be featured on Terrible Tuesdays? Contact me! 

Terrible Tuesdays - Things I Hate About the Code

I don't miss the 10.0 scoring system... Okay, maybe I miss it a little bit, but for the most part, I like the D + E way to judge. However, there's no doubt that there are parts of the code that are causing the quality of gymnastics to decline.

Here are 3 things that I hate about the current code:

1. Vault scores are entirely too high. 

The highest score at the World Championships on Vault was a 16.033 (Maroney) while the highest floor score was only 15.133 (Afan). Thats a .9 difference! With vault and bars consistently scoring higher than beam and floor, the system really isn't fair to people like Aly Raisman whose strengths are on the lower scoring events. (Someone on the International Gymnast Forum pointed out Raisman in particular, but I can't remember who.)

 If I were rewriting the code, I might add an extra composition requirement on floor and maybe beam (adding .5 to most SVs) or I would devalue all of the Vault start values by .5.

2. A Hop up onto the beam is considered a "mount". 

There are forty five unique beam mounts in the current Code of Points. According to this report by FIG, 68% of gymnasts at 2010 Worlds used an A Mount. Yet, A skills only account for 17% of the mounts in the code. I'm not even against A Mounts, as long as they display something worthwhile. I personally think that a simple leap onto the beam is such a cop out. You're setting the stage for your whole routine! You think you'd want to do something that would impress people, rather than bore them to death.

Ideally, I wouldn't get rid of "A" Mounts, but I would eliminate mounts that don't require much skill, like the leap and hop.

3. People can cheat the Frontwards/Sidewards Requirement on floor. 

Come on, you're an Elite Athlete. You do FOUR tumbling passes and for some reason, you can fit a front layout into one of them? I HATE when gymnasts add an aerial or a side somi to fulfill the composition requirement on floor that says that each gymnast needs a backwards and a frontwards/sidewards element.

I would require that the backwards and frontwards/sidewards element be part of a tumbling pass and connected to other elements.



Those are my 3 biggest pet peeves with the code... for today. What do you dislike about the code?

Terrible Tuesday - The Horrific Plague in Elite Gymnastics

Initially, I didn't want to have a reoccurring negative feature, but come on, I had a find a reason to use this Marta picture over and over again.

Anyway, I wanted to address a terrible disease that is affecting some of the world's best gymnasts. It makes their difficult tumbling irrelevant in my eyes and automatically portrays them in a negative light. It's a disease that just a little bit of childhood prevention could change, yet, the disease continues to attack gymnasts young and old.

That disease is the "I Can't Land Turns Syndrome". 

Coming from a dance background, I just don't get it! I haven't been in a studio for several years now, and I can still turn a decent double pirouette. In the code, your pirouettes don't even have to be in passé (with the non-working foot at the knee). Chelsea Davis's turns are lower, and she executes them beautifully! Why is it then, that these fantastic gymnasts can throw Amanars, Double Arabians and other skills that defy what the human body should do, but continue to fall out of their turns?

Some culprits include:

Elsa Garcia (at :33)

Amelia Hundley (at 1:08) 

Sam Peszek (at 1:23)

And there are many others as well! 

What makes me sad is that ALL of these gymnasts are insanely talented! They're all just so good and they're losing tenths on something that, in my opinion, is 100 times easier than their tumbling passes.

I'm not saying every gymnast needs to be a prima ballerina, but it seems that if you can train a gymnast to do a gymnast to do 2 flips and 2 twists at the end of a tumbling pass, or to leap, lose sight of the beam and still land perfectly, you should be able to teach your gymnast how to execute a double turn well and land it cleanly.