Lifting mats to reveal gym secrets

Lifting mats to reveal gym secrets

By Esther Hui

Daily Bruin Staff

Gymnastics, like figure skating, is one of those sports that
everybody watches but not many people understand.

UCLA women’s gymnastics coach Valorie Kondos keeps a list of
common misuse of gymnastics terminology in her desk. Among other
things, she stresses that the gymnasts use chalk – not flour – to
maintain a firm grip during performances. Nobody wears gloves on
the bars, and inquiries may now cease as to whether or not it hurts
to straddle a beam – because it always does.

According to Kondos, however, there are other more widely held,
yet incorrect, beliefs about gymnastics, which go beyond
misnomers.

The first thing Kondos stresses is the amount of time during the
competitive season it takes for gymnasts to build up to full
difficulty. Unlike team sports, where different strategies and
plays are similar throughout the season, gymnastics evolves more
slowly. The height of difficulty is reached midseason, and this
difficulty is perfected until the end of the season. If too much
difficulty in routines is used too early, gymnasts could suffer
injuries before the regional and national championships.

During the preseason, Kondos choreographs floor and beam
routines, and the gymnasts learn new moves and practice new
combinations of tumbling passes. At the beginning of the season,
each gymnast experiments to see which tumbling passes work and
which ones are less successful. The Bruins will be nearly one-third
of the way through this season before they settle on their
permanent routines at the UCLA Invitational on Feb. 10.

"We want our gymnasts to grow as athletes," Kondos said. "We
want to have them learning new tricks every year. You don’t want to
put in so many tricks that they’re overwhelmed, but you want them
to be challenged."

In collegiate gymnastics, much more leeway is given regarding
difficulty within routines than in elite gymnastics. Because each
routine is scored from a maximum of a 10.0, extra difficulty goes
unrewarded, beyond being crowd-pleasing. UCLA, along with Michigan
and Georgia, is known for competing some of the highest difficulty
routines in collegiate gymnastics, such as multiple trick tumbling
passes and three floor-tumbling passes instead of the required
two.

"At the beginning of the season, we water down our routines,"
Bruin Stella Umeh said. "We don’t do anything out of the realm of
capability; we focus our attention into getting into the swing of
things. Later in the season, we upgrade our tumbling. Either way we
can compete against Utah, but we want to go above and beyond."

Another unique aspect of collegiate women’s gymnastics is a
virtual disregard for season win-loss record and increased emphasis
on building momentum toward the championship meets. Qualification
for the national championships is dependent solely on the team’s
performance at its regional qualifier.

One reason for not concentrating on track records is that not
many of the top teams in the country are in the Pacific 10. UCLA
was the only Pac-10 team to finish in the top five at the national
championships last year, which was also comprised of Georgia, Utah,
Michigan and Alabama.

Gymnasts also tend to focus on building momentum rather than
consistently winning, due to the importance of timing in
gymnastics. Timing when a gymnast hits her peak in the season is as
much of an art form as is timing when to start flipping during a
dismount. Knowing when to perform what routines can sometimes
lessen the probability of injuries and increase the probability of
hitting when it really counts.

Which is not to say that the gymnasts perform poorly at the
beginning of the season on purpose, so as to increase chances of
doing well at nationals. The upset loss to Fullerton three weeks
ago, as well as the upward of seven falls by UCLA against Arizona
and Stanford last weekend are still disappointing, and in the case
of Arizona, discouraging. But according to coaches, they are not
insurmountable problems, considering how the season is set up.

Pulling together a solid team performance will become more and
more important for the UCLA gymnasts as the season progresses.

"The win-loss record is dependent on scores, and its controlled
by who you’re competing against," UCLA assistant coach Mark Cook
said. "What really counts is what happens at the end of the season.
Ideally, there’s a momentum built throughout the season, so that at
the end you’re at your finest, at your peak."

PATRICK LAM

Olympian Stella Umeh of the UCLA gymnastics team.

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