December 30, 2010 MOV07435.MPG

About a year ago, while working with team developmental age 3-4, my co-instructor asked me to do a station for body tightness since all the kids weren't very squeezy in their gymnasticking. Keeping the fun-factor in mind, I turned over one of the rainbows in the gym and pretended like we were going to do this big magic trick. I was Houdini and they'd be my assistants. I'd snap my fingers and say my gymnast was now hypnotized. I'd then tip them to see if they were tight, pick them up and toss them a few times into the air (which they love), then set them on the rainbow. Unfortunately, it's kind of a "one size fits all", with a bit of wiggle room for variance on height. Some are just too tiny, though, to reach across end to end from their tip-toes to their shoulders.

I'll pretend they are thrilling an audience with their levitation trick. Then I'd challenge them to see if they can keep their finger tips pointed to the ceiling while I tipped the rainbow back and forth (didn't do a good job of demonstrating that in this video- my material's pretty stale and rusty since I haven't been working with team developmental this year). When teaching layouts, I've always tried to describe it to my gymnasts that even though they may be told to pull their arms down hard to their sides, they should visualize that what they are really trying to do is snap their toes to the ceiling and their hips up to their hands (in which event their arms will end up down by their sides, but upside down, which means their arms are still up toward the ceiling). For young gymnasts in team developmental programs, I think this body tightness exercise is also a good opportunity to condition them at an early age for arm movement through a back layout salto.

This kid only did this one previous time before I decided to pull the camera out and document the drill

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• December 30
• 2010 MOV07435

[bheast86]

I must wonder why he wants such muscle in children aged 3-4 - I wonder whether, in a few years, he'll lead a gang of eight-year old girls into a barroom and they'll beat everybody up