Amazing Beam Skills

I don't really work with the girls on beam ever. I used to coach beam but I find that when I don't work an event for a while I kind of get out of the grove on it. So now when I work with the kids on beam I am just mostly making sure they are doing what Laura the beam coach had assigned.
These girls though are something special! I have day dreamed about teaching some of these skills but thought they would never be done. Well, amazing athletes can always surprise you. Enjoy.

I hate teeth

Why? Because they do nothing but suck. Just got a temporary crown today, which means that I have to go back in again to get the permanent crown.....awesome. I guess I just really hate anything that has to do with my mouth. I grew up with sore throats all the time, had an evil dentist that told me I was a tough kid so he wasn't going to use Novocain when drilling out my skull. Lips chap, cold sores, burned tongue, the only good thing is you get to taste good food.
The start down this road started last year. I had a sore tooth that I had a cavity filled in. Once that was done I kept waiting for the pain from that to subside but it never did. About six months later I finally went back to the dentist and he said I was screwed and needed a root canal. SHIT! All I had ever heard about root canals were they hurt bad. Then I learn that it isn't a one time thing and you are done, noooo you have at least 4 procedures to go though. First they go in and drill out all the innards from your tooth. Knowing what I know now about the whole thing I don't really get that. Then you go back in and the dentist drills out the top of your tooth and puts some kind of cement or compound to hold your tooth together. Today he goes in and drills out the entire outside of the tooth so that he can put some kind of cap on it. What the hell do I even have any of my own tooth left now!? Why the hell didn't I just get this fucking thing pulled and they put in a fake tooth? For some reason I still feel pain in the damn thing too, there are not supposed to be any nerves but I have magical teeth that can still feel.
I am loving even more how much money all this shit costs. Almost $1000 buck out of pocket so far, and you never know what the insurance company will decide they are not going to pay for. Fuckin teeth.
I think that the James Bond character knows as Jaws had the right idea with the razor sharp metal chompers. Maybe I should look into that.

A good start, but a ways to go

We took the gymnastics team to Bloomington IL this last weekend to compete in the Horton Invite. It was a good meet, run on time in a well lit gym that had great viewing for the parents. Our team was by far the biggest team there. It wasn't what I really wanted, I want a lot of competition but it is early in the year and not all the teams are ready to go yet. Truthfully we use competition this early in the year just to get ready for our home meet. We want the kids to have a meet under their belt before they go against their families and friends back home.

The one team there that over the last few years has been a thorn in our sides was Midwest Twisters. It is a small gym with not a lot of athletes but they have a few groups that really compete very well. I was sure that our level 8 team had the competition sewn up but we were unable to take the day, losing to MT. Our levels 8s last year lost to MT as level 7s as well. It appears that those kids will be duking it out for the next 8 or 9 years. Our level 9 and 10 teams looked a lot better than we did at the intra squad about a month ago and that is all that I can be hoping for. Some of the girls still had a pretty tough time but that is going to happen. Those kids that really struggled had been sick a lot, and maybe they had not trained as hard as they could have. I know one of my top girls did not train as hard as she could have. She is a competitor and has always relied on her ability in competition. But she has grown taller, her routines are harder, and she has struggled with illness and injury. If she wants to have a year like she was having last year she is going to have to pick it up. And I think she saw that this weekend. She knows what it is like to win, and hates to lose. I think if I do not see a big effort from her in the gym over the next few weeks I will be very surprised.

I would have to say the quality of the athletes I have makes a huge difference. In the past I felt that I wanted "it" more than my athletes did. They didn't understand how hard it really was to be competitive. I guess that was because those athletes had never been expected to win. When mediocrity and failure is looked at as the norm, it is hard to change that mentality later on. The athletes we have are conditioned to know what it is like to win, and these girls learn to crave it. This is a tough attributed to instill in girls if not done early in life. I feel that our society tells girls that they are not supposed to compete and that everyone wins. For most of my early career I often found that girls would mentally pigeon hole themselves. They would see that they may not be the best athlete on a team, or in a competition, and instead of working harder to become the best, they would almost sabotage their training to remain in the same status.

The girls have a long way to go till they are going to be competitive on a regional, or national level. They have the skills and the ability, they just need to work harder to perfect what they have. The trick to gymnastics is making the hardest skills look easy. Some of our girls have routines that could end up being pretty competitive at the end of the season, but only if they are perfect, and perfection only comes after thousands of quality repetitions. It is a lot of hard work, but nothing worth doing is ever easy.

On the mend

I came down with pneumonia last week. I have no idea how one gets pneumonia and I have had a lot of people ask me that, but I don't know. I don't think I got it that bad though. The people that have talked to me about it have said they were laid out for weeks. Makes my one week off the bike seem like a cake walk. It started with me just feeling a little achy last Wednesday, by Friday I was hovering around a 102 degree temp and hating my life.

Monday I ended in the hospital getting my chest x-ray'd and breathing through this machine for about 30 min. Wow what a difference that, and a Z pack makes. By the next day I was back at work and went to the gym for the first time in six days.

The toughest park about being sick is getting back into form. I had been working out a lot and already could feel the loss in fitness and strength. I hoped that it was going to be good to have some time off but I guess it was too much time.It is funny how hard it is to remember that I will get back to where I was it just takes time. I work with my kids all the time after injury or illness. Half the battle with them is trying to keep them motivated. You can see how close you are to where you were but you also know how hard it was to get there.

Something that always seems to happen to me when I get sick is I get a real bug to do artistic things. It doesn't really matter what it is, I just want to do something. I have been thinking about designing a layout for a possible new gym that my organization has been mulling over. I have also been really enjoying writing in this blog and maybe I should do some more writing. I used to paint a lot but it takes a lot of work to get all that stuff set up. The hardest part is just starting or having an idea.

Is school a scam?

This article got me thinking. It is about a high ranking school official in one of the biggest school district in the country. I don't know where that is, or who this is so I am just taking it on face value. What he does is take a standardized test that is required of all the students in his district. He basically fails it. The article states that this guy has multiple degrees, lives in a big house, has control over a 3 billion dollar annual budget, an all around successful guy. So how could a man like that fail a test meant for a 10th grader? In my opinion, because it has nothing to do with determining how smart a child is, or how well they will do in the "real world" when they get out of school. What these tests are, are political weapons used by politicians, cash cows for businesses running the tests, and are not a good measuring stick for how good a school is, how smart a child is, or how great a teacher might be.

Something that I hear quite often from friends of mine who own businesses is that they always have to train new employees when they arrive. Not that they have to show them where to put time sheets and how the printer works. But they have to teach them how to be an engineer, or an architect, or a business man. Now why would you have to do that if you just spent the last four to even eight years learning how to do this? It's because school isn't really teaching you anything, it is taking your money and giving you a piece of paper saying you can now be an engineer. They are the trolls guarding the bridge and you have to pay the toll.
I have kids who everyday work themselves to the bone to learn all this information that one year out of school they wouldn't remember anymore. Why? Because no one uses it! Except for rocket scientists, who we need lots of, (not sarcastic) who needs calculus? Unless you are going to be a doctor, pharmacist, or a scientist, why put kids though years of advanced science classes? I know that there are people out there that need these classes. And without allowing kids to try them how would they ever know if they wanted to be a quantum physicist without the advanced classes? You still can.

How many people out there are in school now just so that they can teach exactly what they are learning to the next group of students, who will then teach the same thing? What is the benefit to society, to the human race, when a type of knowledge is only created to be kept in a closed loop? I feel that it is created for the benefit of scholar class, to make a university seem greater because of how smart it's professors are. Also what is the benefit of teaching outdated, or overly complicated ways to do different activities? Money, the more a school has to teach or can teach, the more they can make you pay them. What if it only took six months to teach someone to be a stock broker? That would only be one semester worth of tuition rather than the eight needed now.

In my area of study I had an entire year that was basically a waste. I was a fine art major at the U of I and majored in oil painting. Every artist's first year was taken up by basic drawing, photo, graphic design, and every other art discipline. I didn't give a crap about any of that stuff, I just wanted  to paint and draw. So I liked the drawing courses, and I know why we needed to take the art history classes, but every other class was just another avenue of revenue for the university. I had to take calculus, foreign language, what for? I have never used calculus, I use adding and subtracting, I balance my budget and pay my bills. I don't need to be able to speak another language to know what is going on in the world. I read the news every day, I read multiple blogs, news papers, and can't get enough about world happenings. 

I think those who are in charge of making these tests, and deciding where they think the american children have to go in terms of learning are all wrong. I think it is human nature to always do more every generation. So every year children are expected to know more and more, in less time. But quantity is not always better than quality, in fact I would say the opposite is the truth. That means kids should be learning more about what life is really like younger, get more kids into a craft. Specialize more and stop making kids learn so much NOTHING.

I don't know if I am talking out my ass and am a total idiot but it is how I feel. Schools fuckin suck, and kids are not getting what I think they should out of it. I'm out.

Am I a sickly athlete?

Ive been sick since Wednesday night. I feel like I have been sort of hurting for the last few weeks actually. Had headaches and sore throats, my body aches and I have had a fever for the last two days. I remember when I was a gymnast I had a lot of sore throats and would get achey quite often. Most of the time I would feel better in about 24 hours, this is the first time I can remember that I have had a fever this long. Ive been taking tylenol and advil and that helps but as soon as they wear off my fever goes up again. I guess if I can't get into work tomorrow I will go see the doc. It is surprising that I don't get sicker working with some many kids. And there was a good amount of time that I didn't get sick at all, like 2 years maybe.

So what was the difference between those two years, now, and back in my gymnastics days? I wasn't working out like a fiend. When I was a gymnast I worked out at least 20 hours a week, and in high school often more. Those couple years that I never got sick I was working out but maybe I wasn't pushing it like I do now. I am more on the level I was back when I was in college, and I got sick a lot in college. I have read that pro cyclists do wear down their immune system and can get sick, I wonder if that is what I have done. I have also had a lot of kids really sick at the gym over the last few weeks. Most of the kids that have been sick have missed long stretches too, like a week or more. So if I caught what they have I might be in for a few more days before I feel better.

I guess what I have been thinking is how funny it is that you try to do something that should make you healthier. But it could make you sick. I guess how they say you have to do everything in moderation, even the good stuff. That has always been my problem though. I don't do much in moderation and get pretty crazy about my interests and hobbies.

I hope this ends soon so I can get back to training and I can get back to the gym and work with my girls. I'm feeling a little better now, but I am a couple hours after taking some tylenol so that is normal. I will see in a few more hours.