If you want to be the best, you need to train like the best. Here is a link to a great self-help article on the strength and flexibility exercises that Olympians use. In trying to understand these exercises, I did an image search so that you can see what the article is trying to describe.
Recommended by Carrie Gaerte
Carrie Gaerte is a physical therapist and athletic trainer for USA Gymnastics, and she recommends the seated spinal stretch, the reclined half-pigeon and the achilles extension.
Exercises recommended by Team USA water polo athletes
Water polo athletes, Kami Craig, Courtney Mathewson and KK Clark build their strength and endurance with these routines: the leveled plank, the dumbbell step up, and the step jump.
Exercises recommended by coach of gold medal-winning wrestler Helen Maroulis
The coach of gold-medal winning wrestler, Helen Maroulis, recommends push ups, the dumbbell row and the pause squat in Maroulis’ training regimen.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the revelations by The Indianapolis Star of sexual abuse of teenagers and pre-teens by coaches and officials within and affiliated with USA Gymnastics.
At the time, IndyStar was aware of about 50 cases. Now they report they have uncovered through police files and court case documentation that hundreds of gymnasts have been abused in the past 20 years.
“At least 368 gymnasts have alleged some form of sexual abuse at the hands of their coaches, gym owners and other adults working in gymnastics. That’s a rate of one every 20 days. And it’s likely an undercount.”
The IndyStar’s most recent article on this travesty provides a fascinating analysis of a sports organization and its affiliated officials, coaches, and gym owners in denial. Here is a good chunk of that shocking analysis in full:
USA Gymnastics focuses its efforts to stop sexual abuse on educating members instead of setting strict ground rules and enforcing them. It says it can’t take aggressive action because member gyms are independent businesses and because of restrictions in federal law pertaining to Olympic organizations. Both are contentions others dispute.
Gym owners have a conflict of interest when it comes to reporting abuse. Some fear harm to their business. When confronted with evidence of abuse, many quietly have fired the suspected abusers and failed to warn future employers. Some of those dangerous coaches continued to work with children.
Some coaches are fired at gym after gym without being tracked or flagged by USA Gymnastics, or losing their membership with the organization. USA Gymnastics often has no idea when a coach is fired by a gym and no systematic way to keep track. Ray Adams was fired or forced to resign from six gyms in four states. Yet some gym owners hired Adams, believing his record was clean.
Though the vast majority of officials put children’s well-being ahead of business and competition, some officials at every level have not. Coaches suspected of abuse kept their jobs as long as they accepted special monitoring. Others were allowed to finish their season before being fired. In 2009, Doug Boger was named a USA Gymnastics Coach of the Year and was sent to international competition while under investigation for alleged sexual abuse.
Victims’ stories have been treated with skepticism by USA Gymnastics officials, gym owners, coaches and parents. Former gymnasts Charmaine Carnes and Jennifer Sey said they felt pressured by Penny not to pursue allegations of abuse by prominent coaches Don Peters and Boger. Carnes said she thought Penny tried to keep the claims about Boger quiet for as long as possible to protect the sport’s image and win championships, a characterization that USA Gymnastics disputes.
Women’s gymnastics have made tremendous strides, winning team gold at the 2012 London Olympics as well as the 2016 Rio Olympics. But I’m curious – I’ve seen or read no reaction from the coaches and athletes at the apex of the USA Gymnastics pyramid: the Karolyis, the members of the women’s Olympic gymnastics team, and their parents. Their silence may be the result of counsel provided to them by the advisors that surround them. But at some point, they need to lead in this pivotal moment, this crisis of confidence in women’s gymnastics.
Thanks to The Indianapolis Star, we now know that leaders in USA Gymnastics, the governing body for gymnastics in America, were aware of coaches who sexually abused female gymnasts over the past two decades at least, many of whom were under-aged. We also know that USA Gymnastics did little to prevent further abuse unless a parent or the police pushed them to act.
According to The Indianapolis Star, USA Gymnastics have detailed and sometimes voluminous documentation on coaches accused of sexual abuse, but those documents have not yet been disclosed by USA Gymnastics. We know about these cases today primarily because the journalists of the Indy Star went through police and court records, uncovering details of the cases. They also learned about a so-called policy that provided the rationale for USA Gymnastics officials not to take any action despite knowledge of the abuse.
Current USA Gymnastics president, Steve Penny, in a court deposition said “to the best of my knowledge, there’s no duty to report if you are…if you are a third party to some allegation.” Penny’s predecessor, Robert Colarossi, stated that a reason not to report abuse to the police was “concern about potential damage to a coach’s reputation if an allegation proved false,” and that he “inherited an executive policy of dismissing complaints as ‘hearsay’ unless they were signed by a victim or victim’s parent – a policy that experts said could deter people from reporting abuse. It’s not clear exactly when that policy was created or by whom.”
The Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence is a nonprofit organization that focuses on scientifically research-based explanations for mental health issues. In one of their articles, entitled “Eight Common Myths About Child Sexual Abuse“, the Leadership Council gives insight into why many of us allow sexual abuse to continue.
Few people are aware of the true state of the science on child abuse. Instead, most people’s beliefs have been shaped by common misconceptions and popular myths about this hidden crime. Societal acceptance of these myths assists sex offenders by silencing victims and encouraging public denial about the true nature of sexual assaults against children. The Leadership Council prepared this analysis because we believe that society as a whole benefits when the public has access to accurate information regarding child abuse and other forms of interpersonal violence.
Here is the list of myths:
Myth 1: Normal-appearing, well educated, middle-class people don’t molest children.
Myth 2: People are too quick to believe an abuser is guilty, even if there is no supporting evidence.
Myth 3: Child molesters molest indiscriminately.
Myth 4: Children who are being abused would immediately tell their parents.
Myth 5: Children who are being abused will show physical evidence of abuse.
Myth 6: Hundreds of innocent men and women have been falsely accused and sent to prison for molesting children.
Myth 7: If asked about abuse, children tend to exaggerate and are prone to making false accusations.
Myth 8: By using repeated interviews, therapists or police can easily implant false memories and cause false accusations among children of any age.
I could only presume, but if we consider the leaders of USA Gymnastics to be of normal mental health, then they too accept many of the myths above as fact. In many cases, I’m sure they took the word of the coach’s over the children.
“Where’s the proof?”
“These are normal-appearing, well-educated men. Can’t be true.”
“If a child was really being abused, she would definitely have told her parents.”
“And what would happen if we falsely accused a coach? Oh, the shame.”
We were shocked to learn in 2002 of the cases of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, and that Church leaders dealt with the situation by rotating abusers to new parishes without explanation.
Many were outraged in 2011 by the fact that the president, the athletic director as well the football head coach at Penn State University were aware of allegations that the football team’s assistant head coach was molesting children, and did nothing.
And in 2016, we are again aghast about news that USA Gymnastics simply kept quiet despite case after case of sexual abuse allegations against coaches in its organization.
It is inconceivable to most parents that their child would be abused by people they know, and in whose care they entrust their child’s well-being. And yet, in the afterglow of the Rio Olympics, when the Final Five, the young American female gymnasts, dominated in the women’s gymnastics competition to easily take glory and gold in the team competition, we find USA Gymnastics in retreat.
According to The Indianapolis Star, officials of USA Gymnastics were aware of sexual abuse of female gymnasts, including pre-teens, for years, often doing nothing or acting only if asked.
USA Gymnastics were given a detailed complaint in 2011 about 2010 national Women’s Coach of the Year, Marvin Sharp, but only reported him to the police after a second allegation of abuse of a 12 year old, four years later.
USA Gymnastics apparently has a large dossier of complaints against a coach named Mark Shiefelbein, but the parents of a 10 year old abused by Shiefelbein, who went to the police, was surprised to learn that USA Gymnastics knew he was a serial sexual abuser and did nothing.
USA Gymnastics knew about a coach named James Bell and his cases of sexual abuse at least 5 years before being arrested for molesting three gymnasts in 2003.
USA Gymnastics was told by a gym owner in 1998 that a coach named William McCabe “should be locked in a cage before someone is raped”. Despite knowing of at least four complaints against McCabe, USA Gymnastics allowed him to coach for seven more years.
Kaylin Maddox Brietzke was a gymnast under the guidance of James Bell, and many years later in this interview, eloquently expresses the emotion of that vulnerability of her childhood and that betrayal by adults and authority she naturally trusted.
Any corporation that puts their reputation above safety, honestly is not something I want to be a part of at all. And I was a part of USA Gymnastics for a very long time. It doesn’t matter who you are protecting. It doesn’t matter that they are a part of your organization and you want to save face. How about saving me.
What will people be wearing for Halloween? To be honest, sports is not the greatest well from which ideas spew. But here are a few ideas, which are clearly influenced by pop culture in America.
Be a Gymnast: Little girls all over America will dress up as The Final Five, no doubt. Just don’t try to buy an original Final Five leotard. The leotards, with their glittering Swarvorski crystals, cost anywhere from USD700 to 1,200 to make each one. My guess it’s easy to find replicas for cheaper. One of the more popular people to honor with a Halloween costume was Fierce Five gold-medal champion, McKayla Maroney, whose look of disappointment on the medal stand turned into a internet meme. Three years ago, a woman with Bell’s Palsy dressed up like Maroney because “It was the first time in months I got to look like I was intentionally making a face and it has helped me deal with the slow recovery a little better.”
Be Original: Paralympian Josh Sundquist, who lost his left leg due to cancer, has competed in the Paralympics as an alpine skiier, and is a popular motivational speaker. He is also known for his one-of-a-kind costumes for Halloween. See him put together his outfit as “Lumiere” a character (essentially a talking candle stick) from the film, Beauty and the Beast.
Be a Kid and Have No Choice: Shaun White is a two-time Winter Olympics gold medalist in the halfpipe, but when he was a kid, his parents put him in prison for Halloween – old-school lock up style that is. Here he is, with his two older siblings, in a TBT Halloween picture from three years ago.
When famed Czech gymnast, Vera Caslavska, passed away last month, there was a section in a Guardian article about Caslavska that shocked me. In 1968, the Soviet Union’s women’s gymnastics team defeated the Czech team to take gold at the Mexico City Olympics. The Soviet team was said to have apparently employed a most horrifying doping technique.
To counter Caslavska and her team-mates, the Soviets took extreme measures. “In any other country it would have been called rape,” one of the Soviet coaches said a quarter of a century later, after one of the gymnasts had told a German television interviewer what happened.
Doctors had discovered that pregnant women could gain an advantage in muscle power, suppleness and lung capacity, because they produced more red blood cells. So all the gymnasts, two of whom were 15 at the time, were forced to become pregnant before the Olympics: if they did not have a husband or boyfriend, they were made to have sex with a male coach. Anyone who refused was thrown off the team.
After 10 weeks of pregnancy every gymnast had an abortion. They won the team gold medal by a fraction of a point, with Czechoslovakia second.
Wow.
This can’t be true, I thought. But it was reported in a major newspaper, I rationalized. But coaches could never get so many people to do this, I countered. But it’s been reported not only in the press, but also in documentaries, I learned.
The story first emerged in a major BBC documentary series in 1991 called “More Than a Game”. Then in 1994, a German RTL documentary featured, Olga Kovalenko, a member of that 1968 Soviet gymnastics team, who revealed the sordid details of pregnancy doping.
But as Elizabeth Booth explains in this detailed blog post in November, 2015, it appears this sensational story of rape, pregnancy, abortion and hormones is bogus. The biggest hole in the story was the German documentary’s claim that Soviet Olga Kovalenko was revealing all. Apparently, the woman in the documentary was not Olga Kovalenko. The real gymnast, the one who competed in Mexico City on the Soviet gold-medal winning team, took a Russian sports magazine to court in proving that she was not a victim of rape doping.
Here’s how Kovalenko explained her surprise at this incredible story in a 2001 interviewa 2001 interview with a Russian journalist:
Once, German broadcaster RTL screened an interview … with my double! A certain woman who said that she was Olympic champion in gymnastics, Olga Kovalenko. (I actually took the surname of my second husband, but then divorced and again became Karaseva.). She gave a sensational interview, saying that the USSR coach forced the girls to get pregnant and then at the ninth or tenth week to have an abortion! Doctors know that at these times there is a sharp increase in the levels of male hormones in the woman’s body, which in girls increases physical strength and brings new resources of life, a feeling of elation. It is meant to be a kind of doping. “That’s how we won,” – these are the words of the imaginary “Kovalenko”.
Of course, this interview was published by many news agencies, newspapers and magazines. The Moscow correspondent of the Spanish newspaper “ABC” Juan Jimenez de Partha somehow tracked down my phone and asked about the meeting. Imagine his disappointment when I told him it’s easy to prove that it is a pure fake. At the time, when my “understudy” was broadcasting live on abortion, I was on a sea cruise. There is evidence in my passport!
Then “Paris Match” reporter Michel Peyrard, who had seen the “tremendous” interview on RTL, flew in to see me. He was pretty surprised that I could speak perfect French, but also frustrated because he found no resemblance to the “Olga from Germany”.
In the end, as Booth explained, the suspicion of doping in the former Soviet Union was high at the time the story came out, as it is today with Russia, and thus our resistance to believing a story like this, even one as fantastical as this, has been low.
At the time the papers – quality and tabloid press alike – had little good to say about the sport. A high profile rumour was also circulating that the female gymnasts were fed drugs to delay puberty, including one case where an ‘expert’ (we never found out exactly who) had observed photographs of a gymnast where her physical development had actually receded, rather than progressed. The words ‘I would believe anything’ summed up the attitude of many in the press at that time.
Peter Vidmar takes silver in the all arounds at the 1984 Olympics. Koji Gushiken of Japan took gold
Until 1984, the USA men’s gymnastics team had never won team gold at an Olympics. That breakthrough in Los Angeles was due to the efforts of team members Bart Conner, Timothy Daggett, Mitchell Gaylord, James Hartung, Scott Johnson and Peter Vidmar. Vidmar in particular shined, also garnering a gold in the pommel horse and a silver in the Individual all-around.
Vidmar is a popular motivational speaker and talks often about how he learned a lesson in Budapest, Hungary, about the importance of not only taking risk, but committing to taking risk. Those who do, often end up champions. But Vidmar, like many champions, learned this lesson the hard way. By falling.
It was 1983 and Vidmar was with his coach, Makoto Sakamoto, competing at the World Championships in Hungary. Vidmar was getting ready for his horizontal bar routine, a discipline of strength for Vidmar. But for some reason, he was having difficulty with his differentiating move, a risky set of maneuvers that would give him invaluable points for difficulty: As he explained in the book, Awaken the Olympian Within, “it called for me to swing around the bar, then let go, fly straight up over the bar into a half-turn, straddle my legs, come back down and catch the bar. Trust me, it’s hard.”
Concerned that he was not able to execute the moves during his warm up just prior to the finals, Vidmar allowed fear and indecision to creep in. He talked to his coach, who gave him straightforward advice on technique, but Vidmar was not feeling confident. He decided to drop the maneuver and forgo the potential 0.2 points. “Why not? I’d lose the two-tenths of a point for risk, but I could still score as high as a 9.8. That would put me on the winner’s rostrum for sure. That would mean a medal, maybe even a silver.” But he also realized just as quickly that dropping the move would mean losing the World Championship. After all, champions go for it, and someone else would.
This was the mental state of Vidmar as he stepped up to the horizontal bar and started his routine. And after his back flip with half-turn in the pike position he reached for the bar. And as Vidmar says, “the bar was not there.” He fell three meters to the floor, face down in the mat. He got back up, finished the routine, and ended up eighth of eight.
As his coach, Sakamoto tells it, Vidmar was not a happy camper.
During the medal presentation, I innocently asked, “Pete, what happened?” “What happened?” Peter responded, face red with abject disappointment. “I’ll tell you what happened!” he continued angrily. “I reached out to catch the bar, but the bar wasn’t there. That’s it!” He picked up his bag and stormed out of the arena in a fit of rage. I had never seen Peter behave this way.
Later at the hotel, Vidmar had cooled down. Sakamoto caught up with him and according to Vidmar, said this. “This is not the end. Everything is valuable experience, even competition. What you did tonight can be a valuable learning experience. You can benefit from this.”
Vidmar credits that moment as crystalizing an important learning moment for him in his road to becoming a champion. “I didn’t want to hear it but I knew he was right. That fall taught me something that I somehow hadn’t completely learned until that night: Never, ever take anything for granted. Especially don’t take risks for granted.”
Vidmar learned a lesson in committing to risk, to working hard to mastering the challenge so that the work and potential for failure is far outweighed by the reward. “I realized,” Vidmar says, “that I had made the decision to take the risk, but I had forgotten to really prepare myself for taking it! Knowing how important that particular skill was…that I couldn’t leave out that trick and still win the title, I should have been better prepared. I was certain to have to take the same risk at the Olympics and no matter how the skill might feel in warm-up, I had to commit now to taking it there as well.”
And the rest is history. Vidmar worked on that routine, overcoming fear and doubt, and stuck a perfect 10 in the horizontal bars en route to a silver medal in the All Arounds at the Los Angeles Games.
31 JUL 1984: THE UNITED STATES TEAM CELEBRATE AFTER RECEIVING THEIR GOLD MEDALS FOR THEIR VICTORY IN THE MENS TEAM GYMNASTICS COMPETITION AT THE 1984 LOS ANGELES OLYMPICS. THE USA TEAM COMPRISES PETER VIDMAR, BART CONNER, MITCHELL GAYLORD, TIMOTHY DAGGETT, JAMES HARTUNG AND SCOTT JOHNSON.
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