Geoffrey Taucer

Check-in: this started off as a pretty good week, but my wrist, which has been bothering me slightly for months, has suddenly gotten much much worse, and prevented me from getting much done from thursday on. I'll be getting it looked at on monday.

It would take some creativity, but I think it could be done. Some requirements, though: Link must not talk. (As I said, it would take some real creativity to make a 2 hour movie where the main character doesn't talk, but I'm sure it can be done). Ganondorf must be played by (in order of preference) Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicholson, or Hugo Weaving. The music must completely own.

Definitely not a good day today. I did not get jack shit done today. 6 or 7 handstand pusho-ups on parallel bars, one 10-second stretch band-assisted cross, and that's it. My wrist was hurting too much for me to do any more. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get it looked at until monday, so it may be several until I can fully dive back into training again. Also, I caved in to my cravings and bought to packages of Oreos, despite the fact that I'm trying to limit myself to one package a month. I guess I can still do some core work, endurance, and flexibility, but I think it's pretty likely I won't be able to do any hardcore upper-body strength until I get this wrist thing figured out. And the hard core upper-body strength is the fun stuff (Admittedly, though, I could use more work on core strength, flexibility, and endurance, so perhaps this is a good thing)

Didn't he die in a car crash or something?

Went in for a vault workout this morning. Spent the entire morning working on a double-twisting tsukahara, a new vault for me (I'll see if I can post a video tomorrow) Didn't do much of anything else today; my wrist which has been hurting a little bit for months has gotten a LOT worse in the past few days. I'm going to get x-rays tomorrow.

I'd EQ the clean rythm guitars a bit, so they aren't fighting for the same frequency as the lead.

Did a bit of tumbling and trampoline in the morning. Also did 6 or 7 reps of a ring strength set in a dream machine; back lever, roll up to cross, press to maltese, press to invert, lower back to maltese, lower to back lever and repeat. (A ring machine is a set of rings connected through a pulley to a spotting belt, so you're essentially doing each exercise with 50% of your full weight. In the afternoon, did an hour or so of tumbling. Worked on double fronts, arabian doubles, and Thomases (a Thomas is 1.5 flips backwards with 1.5 twists -- it lands in a dive roll). These are the three highest difficulty skills in my routine (the other passes are all sequences of lower-difficulty elements -- which I'll hopefully be working on on friday). Landed all three on floor, the first time I've done all thre ein the same workout in several months. Did some minimal strength work; 10 muscle-ups, one 10-second stretch band assisted cross, and some rotator cuff pulls.

Focused on flexibility today. Did four sets of a minute in each split, three different types of shoulder stretch, pike stretch, and straddle pancake. Didn't do any strength work.

What's giving you trouble with the handstand? Is it strength or balance? A good way to work handstands without a spotter is to start by doing it against a wall. Stand with your back to the wall, put your hands on the floor in front of you, and walk your feet up the wall. As you walk your feet up, you can walk your hands in a bit closer to the wall until eventually you're in a handstand with your belly against the wall. One thing I like about this is that in order to get your hands really close and hit a full handstand, you are forced to hit the proper shoulder extension, something many athletes (including far too many gymnasts) don't do all that well. The other thing is just practice. Having a spotter sometimes helps. But handstands really take awhile to get a feel for (for most people). The trick (to the extent there is a trick) is to stay tight and straight and use your wrists and hands to adjust the balance; if you start to fall forward, push down with your fingertips. If you start to fall backwards, push down with the heel of your hand. As your shoulders get stronger, you can also use them to control the balance. Technically, correct technique is to do as little as possible with the shoulders (aside from keeping them tight and extended), but if you don't plan on competing as a gymnast, I don't see how it will really matter. Heck, your shoulders will probably get a better workout from it if you're using them to adjust your balance as well. It may take months (or even a year) to get it to the point where you can really hold it, but when you hit that tight position and find the balance point, it just feels so damn good it's worth all the trouble. EDIT: Did a bit of vault, and a bit of strength today, but not as much of either as I would have liked to. My shoulders were completely dead today: couldn't do crosswork at all. I did, however, manage to hold a straight-body, legs-together planche for 15 seconds, a personal record for that skill. Also worked a bit on building anaerobic endurance; I had one of my girls time me for 70 seconds of short sprints, punch fronts, and press handstands without stopping. (I chose 70 seconds because that's the upper limit on the length of a floor routine). Tomorrow's a flexibility day, but on wednesday I'm gonna see if I can get in some more tumbling, since I really haven't been doing that enough lately.

Cello needs more upper- and upper-mid presence. Koto could afford to be brought forward a bit. I love the arrangement, though.

Oh god not another corriHOLY SHIT THIS IS COOL! This is actually really sweet. Great tones, really neat and original interperetation. Arpeggios are especially nicely done. I definitely look forward to seeing where this one will go.

Don't have a day-by-day breakdown; I'll start doing that next week. I tried a new method of organizing my strength workout; I split up my workout into groups of 2 more-or-less complimentary exercises, then did 2 maxed out sets of each one. For example, dips and pull-ups. I'd do as many bulgarian dips as I could do, then without stopping for a break, as many pull-ups as I could do, then back to dips, then back to pull-ups, maxing out every time. THen I'd go on to the next pair of exercises. My strength workouts usually last an hour to an hour and a half, but I was more or less dead after 45 minutes of this. It was great. Felt like a got a lot more done in a lot less time. Also, I put together a rings routine this week. I found that I'm a lot closer to some of my goals than I thought, and a long ways off from others. What I've been doing up until now is heavy strength once a week, and light stuff every day, but I think I'm going to bump the heavy strength up to twice a week. Gonna try to stick to a schedule: Monday: Floor, rings strength Tuesday: Heavy flexibility Wednesday: Floor/vault and light ring strength in the morning, heavy general strength in the afternoon Thursday: Vault in the morning, vault and rings (mainly routines) in the afternoon Friday: Floor/vault and light ring strength in the morning, whatever I feel like doing in the afternoon Saturday: Day off. Perhaps some light rings strength, but that's it Sunday: Heavy strength, both general and rings-specific. Then I'll take a break for lunch and come back for flexibility

Haha, I've seen that. His muscle-up is absolutely beautiful. The Olympic cross (the sideways-turned iron cross) is pretty cool too. It's a shame that's not a recognized skill anymore. And, of course, the dismount was win. Here's a vid of the guy predicted by most to be the 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist on rings:

I should know what regulation ring width is, but I don't. They may come with instructions. If not, I'd aim to have them about shoulder width.

I think they'd beat a lot of people in strength work, too. At least two of them can do muscle-ups. (one of them did a muscle-up on a bar at a meet a couple years ago; she was trying to do a kip, didn't quite make it, then just did a muscle-up and continued her routine from there. The look on the judge's face was priceless.

Had a bit more of a workout in the afternoon/evening. Did a bit more cross work. Also joined my girls for their strength and flexibility work.

http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/catalog/ I accomplished one of my goals this morning: to be able to press from a cross to a maltese. I'm starting to put together a rings routine, and here's what I have so far: -Pull to inverted hang -Swing down, back uprise to L-cross -Press to maltese -Pullout to support -Press to inverted cross -Swing down, back uprise to straddle planche The inverted cross is still not what it could be, but my malteses are feeling great. I'll be heading back in this afternoon to work on it more. EDIT: My goal on rings (not for the end of the summer, but for the national qualifier next April): -Backward roll to cross -Press to maltese -Press to inverted cross -Swing down, back uprise planche -Press to inverted cross -Piked Yamawaki (it's basically a double front flip while holding onto the rings) -Tucked Yamawaki -Back uprise to handstand -Back giant -Full twisting double layout The two presses to inverted cross (one from maltese, one from planche) are the things I expect to give me the most trouble. And I'm not sure about the Yamawakis -- I've never really trained that skill before, so I'm still not sure how hard it will be for me to get it

I love the performances for the most part, but the percussion really brings the piece down imo. The snare is especially grating. Otherwise excellent performance.

I usually use ankle weights. The heaviest ones I have are 2.5 pounds each; sometimes I'll use two of those on each side. Ankle weights don't make much of a difference for stuff like dips and pull-ups, but if you ever try planches or levers with wieghts, it makes a HUGE difference. When I'm fresh, I can typically do a planche and a front lever for 25-30 seconds each (both straddled). Last time I tried with 5 pound ankle weights, I couldn't make it past 8 seconds on either one (I might be able to make it to 10 or so now -- been awhile since I tried these with weights -- but I doubt I'd make it much further than that). Today I did all my conditioning in alternating sets. First off 15 bulgarian dips, immediately followed by 25 modified pull-ups (I often do pull ups with my feet on a mat out in front of me and a bit lower than the bar, so my body is straight and approximately horizontal while I do the pull-up; it means less resistance, but it's also much easier on your hands when you're trying to avoid rips). Then another 10 bulgarian dips, and another 25 modified pull-ups (wide arms on the second set). After this I did something similar with toe touches on a stall bar and reverse leg raises on pommel horse (lie on your belly on the horse, grabbing the pommels to keep you steady, then kick your legs up behind you in an arch as high as you can go without bending or separating the knees). With both of these exercises, I like to do sets of 5 reps, then a 5 second hold at the top, then another 5 reps, then another 5 second hold, etc. I believe I did 6 sets total of each. Then I did 20 lunge jumps on each leg, 25 calf raises with my feet turned out, 15 more lunge jumps, and 25 calf raises with my feet turned in. I did 3 sets of 10 seconds in a strech band assisted cross (finishing each set with a pullout to support), and did a bit of work on malteses and inverted crosses (didn't keep track of time or numbers for those -- I usually just do them until my shoulders get too tired to do them.) And I finished off with some rotator cuff pulls. Didn't do much in the way of cardio aside from running alongside my girls to keep up with them while spotting backhandsprings. (With how much I was sweating by the end of the floor rotation, I'd like to think I at least got something of a cardio workout from it)

Best thing to do to work the muscle-up is add a little of the transition to the top of each pull-up and the bottom of each dip. 120 of each? Over how long a period? That sounds like an awful lot if you're doing them all correctly. Keep in mind, you will probably get more out of a low number done correctly than out of a high number achieved with a bit of cheating. This is especially true for something like a pull-up. With a slight swing, I can knock out 40 or so in a row without much difficulty. With correct form and no swing, I don't think I can make it past 15 without stopping. If you're getting these numbers while keeping good form, then I must say I'm impressed. That's more than I usually do in a single workout. What I generally try to do is increase the difficulty of the exercise rather than increasing the number of reps. For example, you might try adding ankle weigths, or doing instead of regular dips. As you go down, widen your arms and turn the rings in, and as you go back up, pull the rings back into your sides and turn your palms forward.Usually, when I can do more than 20 or so reps of a particular exercise in a set (less for some exercises), I look for ways to increase the difficulty of each rep, rather than the number of reps. Right now, there are very few exercises for which I will do more than 50 reps total in a single workout.

I have not been as organized about my strength work as I'd like to be, and haven't done enough of it this week, though I have a (sort of) good reason: I've been spending more time tumbling and vaulting and less on flex/conditioning. However, I have at the very least done a few straddle planches, a few front levers, and a bit of iron cross work every day (except today: did planches and levers, but my shoulders were too sore for cross work). I just got an e-mail that my new ring grips have (finally) shipped, so I should be able to spend a lot more time on rings in the comming months (and I'll be able to start putting together a routine).

To Reuben Kee *raises glass*

Not watching it. I make a point of never watching gymnastics blooper reels.

I only caught that one tune from Final Fantasy and of course the SMW part. EDIT: And Geno's woods.

I've been doing gymnastics for about sixteen years now. However, I've only recently started doing high-level strength work (aside from planches -- I've been able to do those since I was about 10). Starting when I was at the upper-mid levels, I only competed floor and vault, which don't have the strength requirements of the other events. About a year and a half ago, after being retired from competition for two years, I decided to start training again and putting a bit more emphasis on strength, because I was considering returning to competition on all six events (I've since decided just to compete floor, vault, and rings) I never even started working on iron crosses until a little less than a year ago.