August 8, 2014

Day 3 of my Birmingham training camp! 

Last night I had fun bowling and going out to a restaurant with Joe and Joshua!  Great chicken at Nando's Restaurant. 

We started day 3 with trampoline ‘sticks’ to a mat – front layout double twist.  Next was conditioning in pairs.

Conditioning:

We follow the list for an hour each day: Ropes, leg raises, parallel bars uprise to manna presses, uprise to handstand, dips, L sit – bent arm press to handstand, shoulder stretches hanging under the p bars, chin ups under the bars, on high bar: chin ups, reverse chin ups, Russians, on rings: muscle ups, on two handle pommel: push up to manna press,  20 lbs squats across the mat, side, back and front rocks (we do these over the trench pit with a partner holding or legs or on our own with shoulder on one side of the pit feet on the other), other back lying and front lying toe and chest lifts, on the floor: backwards moving push ups sliding our toes backwards across the floor, pike sit ups, weights for arms, uprise on floor to handstand (really getting tired here!),  push ups with feet on the pommel horse, stomach crunches of different types,

The girls share the same floor with the boys.  The second floor is for rhythmic mainly and some rec. Trampoline and tumbling is across the back, plus the trampoline near the rhythmic floor.  The little tumblers are amazing – 11 yr olds or younger doing beautiful whip backs, double back layout. Their form is perfect. The girls share the trench pit for bars dismount practice as well.  It is so easy on the coaches’ backs and so the coaches can move from station to station spotting different athletes.

At 1:30pm we broke for lunch as usual. J The weather has been great so we generally eat and play outside during this time. Bowling last night was a lot of fun. Joe, Josh and I also went out to dinner at a nice restaurant.  I tried to get as much sleep as possible then!

Afternoon training and time for events!

First we played a rousing game of volleyball over mats in the middle of the floor area.  We were divided into teams and rotated on and off in groups.  It was good fun! This was the last day Leeds’ gym would be training with us at Birmingham.  

Coach Dave Murray from Leeds and I had a great chat.  He was very encouraging.  His and Lee's boys are so brilliant, it is easy to be overwhelmed.  He particularly likes my rings and high bar and invited me to his gym in Leeds any time. :-) 

He talked to me at lunch about how the British program turned things around from 40^th in the world in the 90’s to 3^rd in 2012 and how the program starts with the very littlest boys so that there is always even better coming up behind the current seniors.  It was interesting how they developed the program and put it into practice. First there was no funding so national coaches toured the country visiting and instructing at the clubs to get them all on the same elite program.  Then when there was funding, the national sports centres started up, having ‘squad’ athletes from 9 on up training there part of the week and home clubs part of the week.  The boys really learn to be independent and take direction from other high level coaches.

Sam Hunter, who is coaching me here at Birmingham and will be at Lilleshall next week, is part of the national program in charge of the youngest boys.  He travels round the country helping them in clubs and coaching them at Lillshall, the national training centre as well.

Back to training!

Parallel Bars was first up after warm up. Lee sent me to the wall bars to practice dismounts into the pit. Here they do dismounts on every piece every day.  He helped me improve my double back dismount then I went on to double pike.  It was going really well.  Next Lee had me go back to the pit bars for bent knee giants.  Today he spotted a little and I did them almost solo, with the hop!  That felt great.

After P Bars we did a little tumble track work.  I worked on back layout 1 ½ preparatory to connection.  Lee had some tips for me there.

Now to pommel horse.  It has been a long time since I have worked pommels so I had trouble.  I did circles on 2 handle to turn in with Sam, then some one handle work.  It will take some patience to get it all back.

Rings went well.  I mainly worked twisting dismounts til it was time to stretch. 

Tonight Josh and I went back to his home in Nottingham, home of Sherwood Forest and Robin Hood!