Update 17/5-2012

Somebody should really moderate some of those articles at NetGymnast. I just read a comment by the user “mini-mix” were he says to the kid doing the whip and twisting at end to keep doing what he is doing and twist faster by pulling harder. I can see that the user “mini-mix” is only 11 years old, so he probably doesn’t have that much experience, but non the less his advice is completely wrong! This is the typical advice from people I call fast food gymnasts, they just want to learn things quickly without thought about were  they are going. His advice can actually injure the gymnast and build bad habits for that gymnast.

This is not uncommon, but this is how gymnastics is taught for the most part in Denmark… and it is very sad! Gymnasts are doing very advance skill incorrectly. I see a lot the video samples on NetGymnast were everybody is amazed at somebody can do a triple back somersault on equipment like a fasttrack to a soft pit and for the most part almost always landing with under rotation (some times on their knees or faces) and everybody cheers them on?!?!?! Why?!?! This is the worst possible thing you can do!

Main Article

This is more or less just a private comment on the happenings at NetGymnast.dk

For the most part I don’t post too much on NetGymnast, because everybody seems to like to attack everybody at that website (not just attacking me).

There has been a user called “Håndstand” who threw mud at me, because he couldn’t understand that the link I posted was ironic. The main post was about a job at a school at it sounded like this “A female gym instructor to start in August 2012.” (you can see the post here) … I read the link to the PDF and could see that it was for a female team… so I decided in one of my rare moments to be funny and link to a law about discrimination (I didn’t post any comment, because I thought everybody would understand the ironic under tone)… well the user “Håndstand” apparently didn’t and started through crappy comments at me… this is so typical NetGymnast comments.

Another situation is a really good post from a kid trying to learn whip backs and wanted some comments on his technique…. I knew that if I comment on it, it will quickly turn around to be a mud throwing contest… but I posted anyways… and yes the mud is flying in all directions now. The funny part is the latest comment from a user called “ThomasP”, who apparently has nothing to say about the whip back but has a lot to say about me. You can read the post from him here. Basically he thinks I criticizing all the time and have nothing positive to say on this website…. Well,.. that is both correct and not correct… It is correct that I have strong opinions about the gymnastics in Denmark, but all of these opinions is about what is wrong and what can be better. This is an independent website were I can express these concerns. Clubs, federations and such can not! They have to work behind closed doors.

The funny thing about these two users and actually a lot of other users at the NetGymnast is that they are all anonymous cowards, meaning that they do not have any valid information who they are. This really makes me think how reliable is their information? Well, I wanted to find out so I did a quick search on ThomasP and found that the user ThomasP is critizing all over the place, which actually means he has double morals. Here some of his posts (english people will need to translate it from Danish to English). 

citat ThomasP

“Cueto, hans forum-indlæg, går jo bare ud på at fortælle at han er fra Vesterlund, og at de har stillet en pige 8′er, og vist nok 10 drenge eller sådan noget… Stort tillykke til dig binkii, må jeg uploade noget socialt video, som fortæller at vi har det godt på min etterskole?

Kom nu videre i livet binkii, jeg har set jeres flotte video, og alt respekt for de 8 piger!“

citat R_Bejder om ThomasP

“ThomasP du lyder da til at være noget af en klaphat“

citate ThomasP

“Hvad skyldes så de forsøg på h-k-half-full på banen? at det ikke var deres egen fiberbane? Det er sku ikke særlig pænt at se på at man ligger og roder rundt i måtten efter sine spring, fordi man skal køre vilde og voldsommme spring….”

citate ThomasP

“Man må da håbe at udtagerne også lige lukker øjnene når de skal se jer lande, for der kan i ikke klippe det væk…..“

Wow,.. this guy doesn’t hold back on his own opinions, but throws mud at other people that have opinions.

This post highlights some of the problems when communicating on forums. People seem to think if you don’t write positive then it’s all bad. I hope people learn to be better at judging others, specially when what they are judging them on is what they do themselves.

Peter

The information is that Daniel Bay Jensen will be teaching at that school next season. I was surprised and with mixed feelings. Those of you who do not know Daniel he teaches gymnastics at Odense Gymnastikforening and helps with the National Team.

I have never really agreed on the technique and method Daniel uses to teach tumbling, so this resulted with mix feelings when I heard he was going to teach at Bernstorffsminde. The more I thought about it, I actually began to think perhaps this is a good fit for him:

• A lof of the gymnasts that come to Bernstorffsmine will already have their basic gymnastic skills in place.
• He will be teaching big groups (as I can remember it), so teaching is more about refining then teaching.
• A lot of the students want to learn fast regardless of the technique.

All in all… perhaps not a bad idea. Teaching a large group like that isn’t easy, I for sure can’t and never will (nor do I want to).

good luck,

Peter

PS: remember this is only a unverified rumor! 

Updated 14/5-2012

To those that are more interested in learning the whipback instead of this lengthy debate about whatever… then you can read a couple of beginner articles how to start learning to do whipbacks:

• Rebound Jump Back to Hollow
• Rebound Jump Back to Mats
• Rebound Jump Back

All of these articles focus on getting your feet in front of you (1st step to learning to do a whip back … well also if you are learning to do a back handspring).

Updated 14/5-2012

lol,.. I can see Daniel (Mr. Bay Netgymnast) has linked to my site via. a untrusted proxy server called “hidemyass”.. this kind of proxy server is used by most part by people that want to be hidden because they are doing unlawful things. I would not recommend using that link, because you can risk being flagged (which means you are now a better candidate for “big brother”… and no “big brother” is not the reality TV show).

Anyways,.. since Daniel wants to explode the conversation and try to force it into a debate war, I guess I should go into more details about the whipback and why it should be long.

The material gymnasts are using today is fantastic,.. they can use fasttracks, airtracks, rod floors and so  on… Long time ago gymnasts actually jumped on semi-hard floors. To do skills like a whipback (or back handspring) on a semi-hard floor you had to jump more upwards then backwards, because the semi-hard floors absorb most of the energy. Today the floors are really good at giving this energy back (rebound) to the gymnasts and this of course also means that the technique for doing certain skills has to change.

The whipback has one main purpose and that is to increase speed (gain more power). If the gymnasts do short whipbacks they will loose a lot this power, because they will have to put their body into a position that is not straight. The long the whipback the more straight the body position will be and will be able to utilize the track much better. 

Straight you say?!?! Yes straight,.. the goal for all gymnasts is to be as straight as possible when doing whipbacks or back handsprings, but physically this is impossible, but it is something they should be aiming for. The more straight they are will also result with the whipbacks (and back handsprings) being longer. In the real world their will always be a slight arch, but the gymnast should try to reduce this arch.

Daniel works with short whipbacks, big arches and pike landings… all which are completely wrong in my book. I teach at the Odense Idrætspark Gymnastikhal after Daniel and I have a front bench view and can see the results on his gymnasts (I become so sad when I see gymnasts building bad routines up for the rest of their life). 

You might being asking your self,.. Daniel has some really good gymnasts on his team like Adam. Yes,. Adam is really good and their are others on Daniels team that are really good…. but if you look at the percentage of how many of his gymnasts become that good you will quickly see that it’s like 1% – 2% and all other gymnasts seem to fade out after time. A talented gymnast will for the most part always move forward regardless of what is being taught. Do not confuse the word “talented gymnast” to everybody.. very few gymnasts are born talented.

Peter

Original Content Below 13/5-2012

A gymnast with the user name “Janus-mols” at netgymnast.net has asked people to look at his whipback and come with comments.

This is one of the few videos I have really have a  big respect for, and wish more people would post videos like that instead samplers with gymnasts doing skills they can only do in a pit. See the video and posts here.

I decided to comment on it, because one of the mistakes was that he isn’t getting enough length on his whipback. The angle the whips was taken at makes it hard to see his body position, so I didn’t comment on that until he began to twist where you could clearly see he isn’t keeping the layout position.

Anyways.. the funny part is that more people started to comment on the video (which is great)… but then one of the National Team Coach helper (Daniel) decided to comment on it too and this is were I decided not to continue posting on that thread. What shocks me is what that coach had to say… he basically says that the length of the whipback isn’t important… omg!

I’m surprised that Daniel is a helper on the National Team when he doesn’t even seem to know or understand the basics why a whipback and back handsprings should have length. This also makes me wonder if Michael Jensen the national coach even understands this?! (I once received an email from Michael were he stated  the back handspring should have a length that is appropriate to what they are doing,.. this was a good diplomatic answer because it can mean the back handspring should be long …. but it also can mean it should be short depending on what they are trying to achieve…. this was a fair comment and acceptable) 

I’m not going to post at NetGymnast because most people their act like they are in kindergarten and can be very difficult to have a serious debate on this kind of subject.

but one thing I’m 100% sure is that the whipbacks and back handsprings must have length! 

Peter

I just read the article “Outrup og Vestjysk delte eliterækkerne – Odense vandt flest medaljer”  (translates into: “Outrup and Vestjysk share Elite Entry Level – Odense Won most Medals”) at POWERTUMBLING.NET and I’m not just one to accept what is written but I also check the results. 

What is misleading isn’t so much what is in the article, but the title of the article. What is egocentric is the entire article including the title. Let’s take a closer look…

Misleading

“Odense Won most Medals” and this is correct literally, but the fact is Odense isn’t really competing against anyone and when they do they usually loose. The results can be seen here. 

Let’s examine OGF

Looking at the results you can see that OGF took 10 medals home, but as you can see if they lost everything they would have taken 5 medals home no matter what. In other words 50% of the medals are freebies.

Looking at the levels where they actually won the entry level, which is;

• Level C – mini girls (only 4 competitors and they won… this is a fair victory and well deserved)
• Level C – junior boys (only 3 competitosr… all from OGF,.. not that amazing)
• Level B – mini boys (only 5 competitors…3 come from OGF,.. not that amazing)

This clearly shows that when they compete against other clubs they loose for the most part.

Let’s examine Outrup

Outrup looks very nice, in the table we can see that they actually do compete against others and win medals including gold. The only entry level which I would pull out and comment on is the Level C – mini girls. This level Outrup is certain to get a medal and with 50% of the gymnasts coming from Outrup it isn’t that amazing. The other entries are well deserved!

Let’s examine Vestjysk

This is where things get weird. Michael Jensen writes his articles always to reflect his team best and that is exactly what he has done. The results from Vestjysk shows cleary that Outrup took most gold medals home and thereby are the true winnings of the Federation Competition.

The Level A – mini entry is not worth much when comparing, because there was only Vestjysk gymnasts in that level entry. The rest of the levels look fair enough and well deserved.

Egocentric 

The reason I write egocentric  is because the article is only about Level A & B entry levels. You would think that the National coach would be less bias, but that is the problem when you have a coach that has a team and is at the same time a coach for the National Team. 

No where in the article does he write anything about Level C, no video, no pictures. The article only contains content that has something to do with his own team. He also mentions Odense Gymnastikforning (OGF) at the title and that is about it… makes you wonder why he even mentions it? and with very misleading information.

Conclusion

Congratulations Outrup for being the most winning club!

Note: I do freelance work,.. if you need gymnastic artwork, animation, poses and such.

I think it’s very wrong that the Tumbling National Team is doing shows. These gymnasts work 10-20 years at clubs getting them to learn these fantastic passes and the National Team takes all the glory for it… very disappointing. As many people should now be aware, I’m very much against tumbling teams doing shows, schools doing competitions and so on…

Enjoy the video the gymnasts are great.

Peter

I will talk about:

• wrong progression
• wrong targeting
• limited & missing information
• messy website
• conclusion

Wrong Progression

The website is clearly designed to work in progression. They have even drawn a tree as a silhouette in the background to emphasize “progression”, but their is too much missing to even use the word “Progression”. Take a look at what skills are available here. I’ll concentrate only on the floor skills and you will see that their is only 31 skills. 

Some of the first skills a new gymnast learns is not any of the skills on the website. When teaching new gymnasts skills the very first skill I teach is staying tight and their are many drills to help this. On a website I have create you can see some of these drills here:

• Layout Fall
• Layout Lift
• Layout Catch
• Candlestick
• Hollow
• Arch
• Pelvic Tilt

These skills are always known as shapes or positions. They are the first skills all new gymnasts should work on and they are missing on the “springsikker” website!

If you look at the “handstand” skill from springsikker you will see that they show two drills as prerequisites which is good (see here), but not the ones that should be used as prerequisites. Prerequisites to a handstand as shown on their website is actually being able to do a handstand with a wall (both inwards and outwards).

Wrong Targeting

Targeting is about who is suppose to learn from “springsikker”. They write on their website it’s at all levels (coaches), but if you look at the skill list you can clearly see that it is focused more on advanced skills. I see only 6 basic skills being; headstand, cartwheel, rondat, handstand, forward roll and backward roll. Only 6 basic skills makes this clearly something a new coach should stay away from.

Limited & Missing Information

The springsikker website has been out for a while (many years actually), but it is still very very incomplete. Many of the descriptions, variations, prerequisites and more are missing?! I have no clue why, but I find it strange that they can have skills in the menu and nothing in it? On my own website at “Tumbling Drills” I only have skills available that has information in it (some information in the skills might be missing, but the overall description and execution is all there).

Messy Website

Springsikker website is on my top 10 of the worst sites to navigate around in. You really need to use time to understand the navigation system. The breadcrumbs used in each skill has nothing to do with a breadcrumb navigation but is a submenu for the skill. The search in the upper right has nothing to do with search but is a dropdown menu shortcut to the actual skills (they should really fire the guy that designed this website).

If the website was to be redesigned and “A LOT” more user friendly then it might help me to be more positive over it… but the design of the website does pull my review value for the website a long way down.

Conclusion

It doesn’t really surprise me that DGF would have something like this website. I know DGI is also a part of it, just don’t know the extent. I have in my 25 years of doing gymnasts and teaching gymnastics learned that DGF is very bad at creating concepts and very bad at designing a gymnastic model that will get gymnasts from novice to elite. The main reason being as far as I can see, is that DGF work with a top-down model which means they concentrate only on the elite and work slowly (almost completely still) towards the novice gymnast and coaches.

At the pace DGF works I can with 100% certainty tell you that they will never reach international elite status within gymnastics. Denmark will only be known for it’s bacon.

Live video for mobile from Ustream

Wednesday 11th April 2012
17.15 – 17.45 Opening
17.45 – 19.30 SYN – Preliminaries for juniors
19.45 – 21.15 SYN – Preliminaries for seniors

Thursday 12th April 2012
09.00 – 11.30 Preliminaries for the Under 21
11.30 – 14.30 TUM and DMT – Preliminaries for seniors
15.00 – 18.45 TRA – Preliminaries for juniors
19.00 – 20.15 DMT / TUM – Team finals seniors
20.30 – 21.15 TRA – Team finals juniors
21.15 – 21.45 Award Ceremony

Friday 13 April 2012
09.00 – 13.30 DMT / TUM – Preliminaries for juniors
10.00 – 12.00 TRA – Training U21 finalists
14.45 – 17.45 TRA – Preliminaries for seniors
18.30 – 19.45 DMT /TUM – Team Finals for juniors
19.45 – 20.30 TRA – Team Finals for seniors
20.45 – 21.15 Award Ceremony

Saturday 14th April 2012
10.30 – 11.30 DMT / TUM – Finals for juniors
11.30 – 11.45 Award Ceremony
11.45 – 12.15 DMT / TUM – Finals Ladies seniors
12.15 – 12.30 Award Ceremony
12.30 – 13.00 DMT / TUM – Finals Men seniors
13.00 – 13.30 Award Ceremony
15.00 – 15.30 Synchro – Finals for juniors
15.30 – 16.00 Synchro – Finals for seniors
16.00 – 16.30 IND – Finals for juniors
16.30 – 16.45 Award Ceremony
16.45 – 17.15 U21 Finals
17.15 – 17.30 Award Ceremony
17.30 – 18.00 IND Finals for seniors
18.00 – 18.30 Award Ceremony
18.30 – 19.00 Closing Ceremony

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