Stay Coach Nistor, Ryan and David recently returned from the Training Camp for 2020 (Olympic) Hopefuls at the L’Institut National du Sport du Québec in Montréal.  The goals of the camp were poetic.  "Solid basics are the cornerstone to learning complex elements, when practiced in combination with increasing strength, flexibility and spatial awareness, there is nothing that can’t be learned. This training camp will focus on improving all of these training components as well as work on the complex elements that we need to compete with the best teams in the world."  Hear, hear.  Stay tuned for some videos of the crazy hard skills they work on.

Coach Nistor, Quinton and Shiven have returned from the Elite 3 Training Camp in Saskatchewan.  Quinton said the three best things were the food, the training, and the pool.  It looks like they had a good time and trained hard.  It is nice to have Nistor and the boys back in the gym though.

​I bet you were wondering "What is an Elite 3 Training Camp?"  ​The MAG All Star Camps Program is a component of the Canadian MAG system for the long term elite development of our upcoming athletes and coaches. These camps focus on specific technical development for basics leading towards more advanced skills on all events, along with sessions related to physical development, psychology, injury prevention, nutrition, artistic development and coach technical sessions. Gymnastics Canada identifies expert coaches who are assigned at each apparatus, and where possible will be consistent from camp to camp. Though technical development of the athletes is one of the goals of the All Star camp program, the camps are also meant to be coach centric. Developing athlete AND coach competencies will enhance the daily training environment in the gyms across Canada, which is essential to long term development.

The All Star camps target young male gymnasts who are currently competing in the Elite 3 or Elite 4 categories – Aged 9-13 years old and their coach.

Tatiana has joined our team as the new Head Coach of the Women's Artistic Gymnastics program.  She arrived on day one with baskets of journals for the girls which they have been using daily to record their progress.  We wish Tatiana and her gymnasts great success this coming year.

While everyone else was relaxing during the summer gymnastics break, the Sandro family was hard at work.  Nistor and family built a new foam pit and deck with some help from Tudor.  The new foam pit and trampoline are great assets for skill development.  Trampolines give you extra air time.  The loose foam cubes in the pit provide a soft landing when learning challenging skills like double inversions.  With the new set up, athletes have the ability to perform bar, rings, and tumbling skills into the pit. 

​Check out the construction process.  Here comes the wood.  There were many, many loads like this making Nistor's van groan under the weight.
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The construction process begins!

​Here comes the foam!  The white foam goes at the bottom of the pit with the blue foam cubes on top.  That is a lot of foam cubes!

The pit is ready to be filled.

The final product looks great!

Congratulations to our girls who qualified for the Level 3-5 Ontario Championships and compete this weekend.

Rebekah and Alivia (Level 5, Age 10) compete Thursday June 9th at 2:15 pm.
Saffron and Brooklyn (Level 3, Age 11) compete Saturday June 11th at 11:45 am.
​​Kiki (Level 3, Age 12A) competes Saturday June 11th at 3:00 pm.

Check out the live stream to watch our girls compete.  ​Have a great competition!  Go GMG!