Your chair is your enemy -  a piece from The New York Times

Aileen Gallagher of NY Magazine on Why figure skating is so much better than gymnastics

Blythe has a response to Aileen Gallagher’s article from a gymnastics point of view

Ross Tucker on The mental edge or physiology – what separates champions from contenders?

Here we were also shown the body in Transverse and Saggital sections. The exit then lead to a small gift shop and a visitors book in which to write your thoughts, I really wish I had done this, although it could have been as long as this blog post! I treated myself to a pair of socks from the Gift Shop, for those of you who know the cost of them, I will try to convince you that it was well worth the “X” euro! My socks are great, they map out the structure of the feet and legs – a bit geeky but I love them!!

As you can probably tell , I very much enjoyed the exhibition. It was definitely one of the highlights of my year so far. It would be impossible, as the exhibition had been on for so long but I wish that there could have been a professional there that I could have posed my questions to. I have so many that remain unanswered.  Whilst viewing the specimens gave me a sense of clarification, I still wanted to touch everything, it was hard not to! I still wish that I had the chance to work on cadavers in college. Although smaller than I expected, I can understand why it might take people hours to get around the exhibition. There is some reading material to explain the specimens on display. I tended not to read these as I was already aware of the information.

Despite the negative reviews and reports, I found the exhibition to be amazing. A fantastic learning tool for anyone, whether you’re in the profession of medicine and biology or not and also for children. There were a few children there who seemed completely clueless to what they were looking at. The origin of the bodies on display is of mixed opinions and ideas, many people insist that these specimens were unclaimed bodies, which appeared to discourage some people from attending. Either way, donated or not, perhaps it would be some small comfort to the deceased that they have, in death, managed to provide such a wonderful educational opportunity for so many people. You are not permitted to take photographs at the exhibition, although these images will never be erased from my mind. I can assure you, the pictures in this blog post do the specimens little justice. I would encourage everyone to attend this exhibition.

Bodies finished in Dublin on July 27^th. A similar exhibition “Body Worlds & The Mirror of Time” is currently running in The O2 in London, from the fantastic Professor Gunther Von Hagen ,whom some of you may know from the Autopsy programmes on Channel 4 some years ago. This exhibition is running until Sunday August 23rd, I think it would be well worth even a day trip to London just to see this –  especially as flights from Dublin to Heathrow are very reasonable at under €100 return! Unfortunately I can’t see myself getting to London before the closing date so I just hope that this exhibition might come to Dublin due to the popularity of Bodies but somehow I doubt it.

When I think about my role as a gymnastics coach, many thoughts and images come to mind. When people I meet for the first time ask me what I do and I tell them I’m a gymnastics coach, they ask me to tell them all about it and have many questions. I tend to give a brief outline, similar to what is written on my CV , simply because I could talk about my role as a coach all day!

My main role as a gymnastics coach is to teach them the core skills of the sport. Being children, they ask many questions. I do my best to answer them but I try to refrain from answering opinion questions, as I don’t feel it is my place to do so. In saying that, I do like to teach them new things outside of gymnastics but I always keep it gymnastics-related as there do need to be some lines drawn between the relationship of a gymnast and coach.  I don’t feel it is my place to tell the children what to eat and what to not eat. It is up to their parents to decide whether they are allowed to eat sweets and drink fizzy drinks, although we do not encourage it in the gym (also because of the sticky mess of clearing up a spilt drink that is anything but water!).  Part of my role as a coach is having the responsibility to educate the children I teach about their bodies. Luckily, this is fusing two of my passions in life; my gymnastics hobby and part of my college education, Anatomy & Physiology. It is extremely important that children are educated as to why they need to look after and respect their bodies. We only have one body and we should do our best to look after it.

 I make a point of teaching my gymnasts about posture, why they should look after themselves and how to do it.  I recently taught my 7 – 9 year olds about posture. They had already been told about standing up tall and keeping their shoulders back and head up on the beam but I wanted to give them a little more information. We had great fun with it, looking at pictures of different postures good and bad. I realised that they understood what I was hoping to get across to them as they began to call a “Lordotic” posture (arched lower back with buttocks sticking out) “Bendy Back” and a “Kyphotic” posture (curved upper back, forward head) “Banana Back”. They have even started to correct me if I slouch!

I promised my gymnasts that I would make them their own “Conditioning and Stretching” book. Since they are young and do not train as often as girls in other clubs that they would normally compete against, they still need to do some additional conditioning at home. This way with pictures and easy to follow instructions, they have no excuses for not doing their extra work at home! It had various stretching and conditioning moves, I also included a small bit at the back about posture. Their parents told me that they were delighted that I had given them this and said that they had even learnt a little bit themselves!

Every so often they ask questions such as “Why when I do this does this bit of my arm move” – as in when they have their arm extended and bent at the elbow and they move their clenched fist, why does their bicep move. In these cases, I give a  very simple explanation about their muscles, sometimes it goes over their head, sometimes it doesn’t .  I just hope that any information that they do retain, how ever small it is, that they benefit from it.