Skip to main content

Who's the best? Guest post from coach Jim Holt

Jim Holt, men's head coach in Scotland, commented rather usefully on my post of 9 April regarding three dimensions of the nature of human movement, which I will partially summarise below.  Jim has now added to this with a video exercise in judgement ... please join in the conversation by adding your comments! 

At root, if we think of gymnastics as ‘human motion’ and we recognize that even the various pieces of apparatus have evolved over a somewhat random development, regardless of the nature of the apparatus, if we agree that gymnastics is (and its rules evaluate or compare some measures of ) ‘human movement’, then the 3 (and only 3!) aspect of same that are measured are :
1 (THE fundamental one) … economy of line or movement
2 Complexity of movement
3 One’s ability to overcome the forces of time and/or gravity (a subset of time in this context).
1    Economy : a straight arm felge handstand is better than a bent arm, not because it is more difficult, although it is, but because it has a better line (i.e. fewer angles … a layout is better than a pike is better than a tuck because of the same principle).
 

 2    Complexity: double double back salto is better IN PRINCIPLE than a full-in which is better than a double … which is better than a single … not because they are harder, but because axiomatically due to our second principle
 

3   A 10 second cross (or high high back salto on floor) is better than a 3 second cross/low flip because we can measure principle #3. 
 
... 
 

Now, to a specific … ‘elegance’ and the ‘aesthetic’ underlie everything about principle #1, economy of line or motion … my personal objection to gymnastics as it has evolved in the 21st century is the blind worship (or less inflammatorily put) belief that ‘additive complexity’ is the direction that gymnastics should go …

Elegance is elegance because it implicitly illustrates a harmony and efficiency in a movement (any movement) that inelegance does not … a Ferrari idling is more elegant than a Hyundai idling, not because it has a higher top-end speed, but because its combination of form and function make it more harmonious, efficient … et al.

Who has the best exercise/elements here? What's the best and WHY?




Or this guy?



Maybe this guy?



Everybody knows this guy



So what do you see? Which is the best? (Not every skill on the best routine is the best, by the way ...). Now the important question ... WHY is it the best?


Comments

  1. Taking the three principles that Coach Holt speaks on into consideration, I would say that the best of the four men shown/examined is Bilozerchev. Liukin is flash, but by being flashy, he loses the economy of movement and ability to overcome the natural forces. Liukin misses his handstands and has a hard time holding his positions for as long a time as Bilozerchev. Artemov is one of my all time favorites, but you can tell he struggles to hold the handstands and positions against the downward pull of gravity. There's a lack of control in his gymnastics that Bilozerchev has. Same with Novikov. It might be because of his youth in that particular exercise, but Novikov seems to struggle with keeping control of his movements. He's a bit jerky and has to fight to keep the positions stable. Bilozerchev, however, has no problem with his exercise. All of his handstands end straight at the vertical, there's no struggle against the downward pull of gravity, and all of the complexity exists without any visible struggle.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Liukin had that bitching face back then and still has it today. Love Bilozerchev I wish he could have won and Liukin wouldn't have even gotten in the podium.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Review of Russian WAG at the 2014 World Championships

The Russians during a team talk in training for the World Championships.  Courtesy RGF Bronze all the way for Russia then.  Beyond the euphoria and surprise of this morning's competition there doesn't really seem to be much to write home about. I am delighted for Aliya personally that the efforts she has made to help the team have provided her with some tangible result, but the principal feeling at the end of the competition is that of relief.  As Vaitsekhovskaya said in her article last week, there were no moments of shock and awe from the Russians, and that's what will be needed if they are to compete for gold medals in Rio (translation available here ). Let's consider a timeline of the competition : before, during and after. BEFORE The promise of a return to the Worlds stage by Viktoria Komova gave Russia a feeling of optimism pre-Russia Cup.  However, Viktoria's performance at this important competition gave little reason for celebra...

Aliya Mustafina - I competed as best I could

Picture credit RGF Aliya speaks in Sports Express http://news.sport-express.ru/2014-05-18/699607 I am very pleased with my performance today, I don't know what the judges didn't like about my bars, but I didn't ask them ... I did my routine fairly well without serious error. On beam I didn't have the start value but I received the highest execution score.  We will try to fix that before the World Championships. Considering the problems I had with my ankle, I think I performed to the optimum at the moment.  I did everything I could. I'm not  the least bit sorry that I performed here -  Very glad that I could help the team. I think my presence made things easier for the girls.   It is very difficult to compete at such serious senior competitions for the first time.  Of course they were very worried.   But I'm sure that with time they will learn to cope easily with their nerves (smiles). 

Sport, friendship and the Olympics - reflections on McLaren report implications for Russian gymnastics

BREAKING - President Putin on the McLaren report -  http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/52537 What is happening today, is perhaps the end of an era.  The end of an era when sport was truly playful, and international.  Will we ever see our athletes in the same way again? The findings of the McLaren report are devastating to me.  They made me think about the value and meaning of the Olympics.  People have written whole books and volumes of books about the history of the Olympics. I am not going to try to unravel all the different strands of the history of the Olympic movement from the Ancient Greeks to the present day.  I'll just reflect here on the current values of Olympism; you can see below an extract from the new Olympic Charter , which was published in 2015. I certainly am inspired by the values of Olympism; I have followed the Olympics all my life.  But unfortunately it seems that they have been under attack, not just in Russia b...

RRG Archive - scroll by date, from 2024 to 2010

Show more