Earlier this month, Jay Thornton posted a story about Paul Hamm's new online coaching venture. Over at Hamm's website, he offers a free analysis of a particular skill a gymnast may be working on. Just e-mail him a video clip, he'll analyze it and send you back a private link to his personal assessment of your skill. I have received some positive feedback [...more]
As of November 16, several signings are unreported for college men's gymnastics. The day's biggest announcement came from Stanford, as they announced the signing of Junior National Team member Akash Modi. This was a huge recruiting success for Stanford, as they will be getting a budding superstar capable of contributing on all six events right away. Modi placed 2nd AA at this year's U.S. Championships, and has already [...more]
I can't recall in the past seeing many gymnasts, if any at all, announcing their college commitments before the early signing period. So far, as of October 30, five gymnasts have publically announced via Twitter and/or Facebook. There may be others, so please don't hesitate to correct me on this. This is a very cool development for college MAG. Usually, the process is battened down as tight as a drum. Thanks to social media, many of our top high school seniors are talking about their college recruiting trips. The naysayers may think otherwise, but this has a [...more]
The early signing period for 2013-2014 recruits is rapidly approaching (Nov. 14-21). This year's crop of college MAG prospects looks to be every bit as good as last year's. We will be posting any signing news we get as soon as the ink is dry on the letters of intent. The recruits are now busy making their weekend visits to the schools that have expressed interest. Thanks to social media, the college MAG recruiting process is becoming a little more transparent than it has in previous years. This is a good thing for the sport. Football and basketball recruiting have always dominated [...more]
The results speak for themselves. Sean Melton has been a consistent top elite junior gymnast for a long time. He has won national AA titles at every level. Melton's formative years in the sport were spent at Orlando Metro under the tutelage of current Ohio State Assistant Coach Casimiro Suarez. When Suarez joined Head Coach Rustam Sharipov's staff last summer, Melton and teammate Jake Martin moved to Colorado Springs to live and train at the Olympic Training Center. Martin ultimately signed with the Buckeyes to begin his very promising collegiate career, while Melton will be completing his final [...more]
Guest blogger Matthew Rusk was one of the lucky ones able to make the journey to London. Rusk is a significant contributor of insightful gymnastics commentary, and is well known in the gymnastics community. The Indiana University sophomore submitted the following gem, which chronicled his trip to London. He saw two days of event finals, along with watching other sports like beach volleyball, taekwondo, diving and handball. Sounds like Matthew had a great trip, and we're pleased to have him share [...more]
Three days of event finals wrapped up the 2012 Olympic men's gymnastics competition. Dominating the competition were multiple medal winners Zou Kai (China) and Denis Ablyazin (Russia). Zou Kai defended his 2008 FX title (15.933) and could only muster a bronze on HB (16.366). Ablyazin achieved his goal of qualifying on three events (FX,SR,VT), and won bronze on FX (15.80) and silver on VT (16.399). Every apparatus provided outstanding performances. In fact, [...more]
OK, it's now official. Kohei Uchimura is the best gymnast of all time... For now. His 4th world championship in-a-row fixed that. This was vintage Uchimura, tallying scores of 15+ on all six events (92.69). It wasn't perfect, as he had a good save on PH and suffered a bobble on FX, but it was good enough for the end result to never be in doubt. His margin of victory was 1.659 over surprise silver medalist Marcel Nguyen. The real battle was for [...more]
