Coach Sommer's facility in Scottsdale, Arizona

[Kit_L]

Thursday evening, I spent all afternoon and evening in this excellent facility, sitting alongside Christopher, as he took a number of his elite male gymnasts through a 'light' workout: giant swings on the horizontal bar (and practising dismounts over the foam pit, and then onto a mat placed over the pit), and the same on the parallel bars.

More to come.

[Admin]

Very soon, Coach Sommer will be in Australia (might even be there now) and all of you who have enrolled will be able to attend his three-day workshop (Melbourne). It may not be too late to enrol; see here:

http://www.gymnasticbodies.com/store/seminars.html

I am envious; I had to miss the workshops I was enrolled in, because the work visa I have has very strict start dates. Those who are attending, please post!

[Admin]

I spent the last two evenings with Coach at his facility; and helped some of his senior athletes (with the new stick chest/front line fascia/pec. minor, biceps and forearm muscles one); terrible sentence, but you get the idea. Due partly to extreme lat. development, many of them have internally rotated arms, and shoulders sitting forward on the rib cage (so similar to the changes we notice in the body from ageing/excessive sitting, but from vastly different causes!); and all have tight hip flexors, yet need to display a front splits as a compulsory pose in the flow routine. I was able to stretch Coach myself in the same exercises, which was great for me.

One thing that impresses with these 16-17 years old gymnasts is their work capacity, over a four-hour training session: the volume, while usually not at super-intense levels for them, would simply not be possible for any gym-trained man or woman to complete, let alone emulate the skill levels being routinely demonstrated.

I am about 24 hours from beginning Coach's "BtGB" (Building the Gymnastics Body) seminar here myself, and I am getting nervous!! On a happy note, though, Coach told me over dinner that our stretching system was "way ahead" of anything he as seen/experienced anywhere in the world, so I was pleased about that. We are working out the details as I write; I anticipate that we can collaborate in an interesting and mutually beneficial way in time to come. Watch this space!