Friday, January 14, 2011

HOLLOW EXERCISES


I was once taken by Prof.Evgeni Rozin to the Olympisky Sports Complex in Moscow, where I met coaches Nokolai Epicin, Anatoly Zaburkin ( head coach ) and Nadia training the young boys.
Nikolai worked the group on some hollow exercises ( dish or banana ) forward, backward and sidewards. Looks like they were doing conditioning. But as the week unfolded, these hollow drills, with variations, kept popping up on every event for every skill. Our kids might not realize it the importance of hollow exercises Nikolai and Nadia were teaching then as an essential part of gymnastics; bodyline, and control of each position. Without it they would be lost.

Nikolai claimed that he reduced most gymnastics skills to these hollow drills and after a while it all make sense. Everything from pommel horse circles, to full twisting lay-outs involved one or several of these hollow positions ( forward, sideward or backward ). And if you mastered the drills, the skills would come naturally.

Do some log rolls then !

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