2012-13 State Apparatus Leader Report Floor Exercise

By Marc Yancey

Firstly, I want to thank State Chairman Kevin Muenz for the opportunity to serve as the State Apparatus Leader on Floor Exercise. Additionally, I want to thank Terry Williams for his invaluable input regarding judging this event and for the remarkable job he did as the Head Judge of our panel at both the Texas State Meet and the Region 3 Championships. After years as a competitor, coach and Judge I feel very comfortable reporting that in my and many other judges’ and coaches’ opinion, there is no finer judge of this event at any level including international elite levels than Terry Williams.

I would like to start this summary of the strengths and weaknesses of our Texas athletes on this event by saying that though there was a great deal of information and increased demands for technical conformity that came abruptly with the implementation of the 2012-16 Jr. Olympic Program, it is my observation, along with numerous members of the National Staff and our Jr. National Coaching staff that the coaches and athletes of Texas did a truly remarkable job of learning the new routines, increasing their proficiency on the emphasized elements, wisely weighing the risk vs. reward of adding Bonus Elements to the routines, and addressing the reemphasized aspect of virtuosity with great success. The level of performance by all our Texas athletes was far and away the very highest in the country overall. There is however, room for even greater levels of performance by an even larger number of our athletes. To that end I would offer the following assessment and recommendations

By way of a general summary of the event across all the Levels of Competition I would highlight the following strengths of our athletes:

1. Power hurdles (stationary and from a run) were greatly improved. Proper arm positions and explosive pushing off the back foot going into both Roundoff and Handspring elements was clearly improving throughout the season and is becoming a strongpoint.

2. Regarding the Roundoff, I saw continual improvement on the “drop arm” emphasis as athletes blocked off the floor, which led to much improved turnover of the body in both the Roundoff and the back handsprings.

3. Straight leg tumbling, which can only occur if the athletes get their feet past their hips in the “snap down” phase of back tumbling elements improved as the season went on, but still need greater refinement and continued emphasis. 4. Height in salto elements, especially backward skills is generally at or significantly higher than center of mass as required.

5. The

6. The “bounding elements” in a series have increased in frequency and in execution.

7. Double saltos backward, forward, and as Arabians were demonstrated with much higher frequency and success. There was a significant increase in the use of Double Arabians and both Tucked and Piked Front Double Saltos.

8. Stretched Front Saltos, Front Salto with 1/1 twist, and Rudi are much improved with regard to body position during the skills and the efficiency and rate of completion of the twists.

9. Piked and Straight Straddle Side Saltos which last season were for the most part almost unidentifiable, have become much more refined and are now clearly a sound alternative selection to the Arabian skill.

That being said, let me identify some rather significant weaknesses of our athletes in general.

1. Handstands are abysmal both in bodyline and in the rate of 2 second holds. One can only conclude that consistent work on the most basic skill of our sport has dropped conspicuously throughout the state. No Level from the young 4’s, to the best 10’s was able to demonstrate a held handstand in any competition more than 60% of the time. It is the Level 6 athletes that are the very poorest in this regard. At both the State and Regional Meets, in this Level less than 50% of the athletes held handstand for the required 2 seconds. And the wide variance from straight body position in the skill was terribly disappointing. There must be a recommitment by both coaches and athletes to improve this critical skill.

2. Fully 85% of our athletes tumble with legs and feet apart on ALL skills both forward and backward. Beyond the obvious execution penalty this opens them to, it was very clear at the State and Regional Meets that the athletes who tumbled with legs and feet together had fewer height, body position and landing deductions than those who had legs and feet apart. It is clear that a renewed emphasis on this basic but critical factor in tumbling should occur and be relentlessly enforced in regular training.

3. I will only spend a moment here to comment on what appears to be an alarming trend of decreased leg and shoulder flexibility in general for our athletes. We all know the importance of flexibility but it appears that with the desire to master skills, there is much less emphasis being spent on flexibility. I believe it clear, in light of the weakness of splits, leg separation in Swedish fall and sissone, and poor handstands mentioned above, that we must renew our commitment to developing these most basic areas of gymnastics with all our athletes.

4. The front handspring continues to be one of the 2 weakest elements overall (the Roundoff into Arabians being the other-more on that later). This is due to the generally very late arrival almost nonexistent drive of the second leg going into the skill from the lunge. The resultant lack of turnover adversely affects our athletes in achieving the proper turnover and takeoff position for virtually every skill in a pass thereafter.

5. At the lower levels, and I suspect that were it included at higher levels, the dive roll is in sore need of improvement. There were only a very few athletes who were able to demonstrate tight arched or straight body positions in the skill. Almost none of our athletes perform dive rolls above their center of mass as required. The primary technical fault in this skill is the very poor hurdle and punching technique that is most commonly performed. Very short, high “stomping hurdles with the feet being directly under or behind the hips with the head down and upper torso leaning forward and a pike in the hips are almost obligatory. This is perhaps the most critical area that needs to be addresses as it impacts skills all the way up along the chain of difficulty for forward tumbling. I will mention this again further on.

6. Along with this leg issue, the lack of shoulder flexibility during the block phase (needed to “push the floor downward/backward to increase turnover and proper “hollowing action” of most our athletes’ upper torsos during the entry to the hand support phase remains deficient and needs continued attention.

7. In general, the Front Pike Salto being performed by our athletes, especially at Level 6 and 7, is being done significantly below the required center of mass height requirement and it was generally observed that the takeoff technique and improperly high hurdle into the skill led to a complete lack of necessary rotation. The angle of takeoff most commonly demonstrated is with the feet under or behind the hips and chest which results in poor leg drive and terribly slow rotation. “Punching” and hurdling drills are in drastic need. High “stomping” hurdles are the norm currently and need to become the rare exception.

8. With regard to our athletes whip, or tempo salto backward, almost all are too high, short and overly arched. The athletes lead with their heads rather than their arms and use a significant pike rather than a rounding action during the snap down phase. Great attention need to be paid to this element.

9. At both the State and Regional Meets, both Terry and I had extreme difficulty distinguishing between the two elements in what was intended to be whip, back layout passes. In well over 50% of the athletes attempts, the athletes executed 2 bounding- overly arched layout backs (the second unrecognized due to repetition) or two low, short, whips in succession for the same result of non recognition of the second skill. 10. LANDINGS on tumbling at ALL Levels are very shoddy! Most commonly at both State and Regionals, the total landing deductions for all levels ranged between .9-1.2 points. At Level 6-10 there were less than 5% routines that received less than .7 points off for deductions and a surprising number of high difficulty routines received over 1.2 points in landing deductions. This is really an area that should be improved. Tumbling with legs and feet together in lead up skills to saltos will aid in this. It would be appropriate to reevaluate the degree of risk vs. reward when determining the level of skills to incorporate into routine prior to their being mastered with no landing deductions!

11. There is no doubt that our worst weakness, along with the rest of the nation, is with regard to the very poorly performed Roundoff, Arabian Salto. Easily 80% of our athletes receive a .3 deduction for improper takeoff position in this pass due to the Roundoff having an additional ¼ OR MORE twist added before takeoff into the salto. We all know that. How do we fix it? Both Terry and I agree that much of this is due to the failure of many coaches to develop the drills for Roundoff, ½ twist, dive roll prior to working on the Arabian. In past decades, when the dive roll, dive roll 1/1tw., R/O, ½ and 1 ½ tw. dive roll were popular elements in routines, both the correct takeoff position of the feet in the R/o, and the lift and rotation of the Arabian were much more properly executed.

I spoke with members of the committees that wrote the compulsories as well as members of the Jr. National Coaching Staff and asked why the R/O, ½ tw., Dive roll was not incorporated into the routines and was informed that over their consensus opinion regarding the efficacy of this pass as a corrective, the National office forbade its inclusion due to their fear of liability issues. I find that ludicrous and want to strongly recommend that the drills for this skill and the pass itself become an area of great emphasis for our athletes. Trampoline is especially helpful here. The development of a square takeoff into a ½ into ¾ front on tramp could effectively cure this terrible weakness. For drills and progressions toward this end both Terry Williams and I among many other “older” coaches can provide a plethora of ideas for training. All you have to do is ask. And we hope you will.

Lastly, I want to commend everyone on the degree of attention all of you paid to the correct interpretation of the text of the routines. For the most part our state’s athletes performed these routines as they were intended. Rhythm was much quicker on the whole and presentation in the corners demonstrated that great time had been invested. There were sadly, a number of cases where athletes came very near, or were in fact deducted for standing in corners for over 2 seconds! A surprising number “camped out” there for almost a full 5 seconds- more than once in a routine. These athletes received severe deductions and need to work on moving in and out of corners with very little hesitation regardless of the level of difficulty of their routines. The rare exception to the correct performance of the routines was the front tumbling pass in the Level 7 routine and the presence or absence of the forward roll out of the front salto depending on the inclusion or not of the bonus element. This led to at least 12 Texas athletes being receiving a .5 deduction for either a missing element or an added element in this pass at the Region 3 Championship. Club Programs adversely impacted spanned the spectrum of age and experience. Other states fared much worse than did Texas. During the season, and very early on I would add, I had only one Texas coach contact me regarding this section of the routine. I was able to guide that through the text and help them correctly interpret it.

I say this to underscore the value of the State Apparatus Leader program in our State provided that coaches avail themselves of the opportunity to gain assistance or verification of their understanding of the routines and the rules. I would point out that when we work together as a team and use the opportunities we have as a State community to gain input from each other, we excel above other states.

In closing I want to say that I hope that all of you realize and appreciate the almost unfathomable level of talent, technical expertise, experience and wisdom that we have in our coaching community here in Texas. As we move forward to the coming seasons, we will continue to develop programs and educational initiatives that can fully utilize the remarkable coaching resources we have in our state.

Thank you again for the opportunity to provide input. When all is said and done, Texas is producing high levels of gymnastics, with increasing frequency and in higher numbers. You should be very proud of all the work you have done with your athletes to that end. I continue to be very proud to be a part of our community. We Are Texas!!