Recent content by coachAJ

That’s where I’m a little confused. Walkout passes are considered an indirect connection of SALTOS. But aren’t all the ELEMENTS in this case connected?

Hi everyone! Canadian coach here constructing a routine for my athlete who will soon be competing level 6 WAG. She’s been having some mental blocks on back tumbling lately but can do a beautiful front tuck walkout to roundoff back handspring. I want to make sure this pass properly fulfills SR 1...

Our head coach is very adamant about safety before skills. We haven’t had even a broken bone in years! The most serious injury we've had is a trapdoor fracture which happened when an athletes knee came forcefully into her eye. It still affects her almost 10 years later. Many years ago we had a...

Since you say the problem is that your knees bend when you bring your toes to the bar, it sounds like issue may be hamstring/pike flexibility. First, ensure that you have the passive flexibility to get your chest to your legs in a pike stretch. You can do this sitting or standing. If you can’t...

I don’t think I should be giving coaching advice over the internet, so I would say talk to your coach/coaches. If you find that you struggle to execute a skill properly, you may need more physical preparation. Ask your coach about drills you can do to improve your form.

Interesting! I don’t coach level 8s so I have no idea if this holds true in Canada as well. HC usually has level 8s doing BWO BHS, I’ll have to check with him if he knows about this/if we have the same expectations here.

This may be different in the US but in Canada the code asks for “Acro series, two elements, one with flight.” Since BWO BHS meets this exact requirement wouldn’t it be unfair to deduct for it? Once again the rules may slightly differ here.

I’m fairly new to coaching competitive so I can’t answer on experience here. Dave Tilley from SHIFT (@shift_movementscience on Instagram) has actually suggested that athletes under 12 shouldn’t be training more hours per week than their age. I don’t fully agree with this (for example if you have...

I can imagine it would definitely be a bit of a learning curve, but very much worth it in the long run.

Thank you for this comment — I believe beam may be a potential cause for my athlete too since she’s been training BHS there up until her recent wrist issues. I try to limit the number of BHS and pounding we are doing on all events but unfortunately these things can still happen sometimes. HC has...

She’s been wearing tiger paws on vault and floor for the last few months (most of our optionals do). They haven’t been able to get a doctors appointment yet but are working on it. They have been seeing a physiotherapist and luckily PT doesn’t think it’s anything serious, just wants to do a few...

Absolutely. Head coach says to only do a little bit and monitor if there is any pain.

Love the elbow stand idea! And I can’t believe I didn’t think of blind changes lol! Thank you!

one of my athletes who is training level 6 has been having wrist pain when doing backhand springs, so we are taking a few weeks off of weight bearing on her hands. The only thing she is allowed to do on bars is swings. Today we did: -swings/giants on steel bar -tap swings on HB -flyaway from tap...