Competitive | High School DECEMBER

12 KGTC Divers are heading to Langley on December 7-8, 2019 for the Candy Cane Meet & the qualifier to the 2020 BC Winter Games. Good luck to all our divers, and a special shout out to Shea LeDrew, Annalisa Bynoe, Jace Shantz, Declan Rasmussen, and Ryan Sherlock as they hope to earn a spot on the Zone 2 BC Winter Games Diving Team.

NCCP LEVEL 1 DIVING COACHING COURSE A HUGE SUCCESS - Thank you to BC Diving, Pacific Sport Interior and the City of Kamloops for assisting KGTC to host the Beginner Instructor Course in Kamloops on November 16th - 17th, 2019. We had 7 participants who completed the course with flying colours. This is a great step forward for the sport of diving in Kamloops and we are really fortunate to have such great coaches also now cross-trained to deliver diving classes as well. The kids in Kamloops just won the lottery and we wish the participants all the best as they continue to move forward to becoming fully certified!

According to Christopher Sommer, a well-known gymnastics coach, rings are the single greatest tool ever made for developing upper body strength, and something I include in every training program I write for clients with access to them beyond the beginner stage.

Even though they may look like a relatively simple training implement, I need to stress the fact that you shouldn’t underestimate the usefulness and difficulty of training with gymnastic rings.

Push-ups on the ground, dips on bars or L-sits on parallettes are no comparison to performing these exercises on rings. In fact, they’re not even in the same ballpark. A guy could easily be able to do 20 bodyweight dips on a dip station, yet not be able to perform a single good rep on rings. They’re that hard.

If you haven’t already experienced the great training stimulus that gymnastic rings can offer, here are 6 reasons why you should include them in your strength training program.

Reason #1 – Great Upper Body Strength & Size Gains

While professional gymnasts make advanced ring movements look like child’s play, they’re anything but. The strength and body control they’ve built over the years is absolutely insane, and goes underappreciated by the lay public as they have no point of reference for how hard controlling the rings really is.

Don’t believe me?

Set up on the rings in the “support position” – with your body straight from head to toe, elbows locked straight and shoulders externally rotated so that your thumbs are pointing to 11 and 1 o’clock. Now time yourself maintaining that position for as long as you can without letting the elbows bend or rings turn in.

The vast majority of people new to ring training can’t hold that stance for 10 seconds – even though it’s the most basic position out there and involves no movement!

With that out of the way, ponder for a moment about the fact that pro level ring routines include several extremely high-skill movements while lasting up to a minute or slightly longer.

I hope you’re starting to gain an appreciation for what these superb athletes are capable of. When it comes to putting some quality muscle on your frame, the rings can also help in that department.

Take a look at the upper body development of a ring specialist like Yuri van Gelder or Chen Yibing. Apart from some light pump work with weights to keep the joints healthy, all they do is practice their gymnastics routines, and they’re jacked out of their minds.

So if anyone tells you that you can’t build great strength or an impressive physique with bodyweight training only, they obviously don’t know what they’re talking about.

Reason #2 – Excellent Abdominal Development

If you’re after sick abdominal strength and aesthetics, advanced bodyweight movements performed on gymnastic rings will help more than any crunch or sit-up variation could ever do in achieving that.

When people ask me for the best abdominal exercises for “six-pack abs”, I tell them:

“Work up to the following:

• ring push-up 60 kg for reps
• ring chin-up 20 kg for reps
• ring L-sit 10+ seconds

That should keep you busy for a while.”

That definitely draws some blank stares.

But the fact remains that when you perform push-ups and chin-ups on rings properly, your abs will get a lot stronger since they have to work much harder to stabilize the body as opposed to a push-up on the floor or a chin-up on a fixed bar.

L-sits are a fairly low level ring skill that just about anyone should be able to achieve over time. Doing those exercises (and their harder variations) will give your abs a whole new level of definition – as long as nutrition is on point.

When you reach (and exceed) the numbers I’ve listed above, your abs will be significantly stronger and visually more appealing than from all the hundreds of crunch variations you’ve been performing at the end of a workout thus far.

Tired of doing hundreds of crunches? Try some L-sits on the rings!

Reason #3 – Safety

Another benefit of training with rings is that they allow for natural movement of the joints to occur.

Some people experience shoulder pain when performing dips or chin-ups on straight bars even without any external load. Since the bar is fixed, you can’t move freely and that could lead to joint problems down the road.

With chins on rings, for example, you can start with your palms facing away and finish with your palms facing you or you can keep a neutral grip the entire time. It’s up to you and can be dictated by what feels safest and most natural for your body.

Reason #4 – Strength Transference

Gymnastics coach Christopher Sommer has mentioned that typical weight training methods involving barbells and dumbbells are not conducive to excelling at gymnastic strength training, yet the opposite tends to be true – gymnastic strength training has great transference to most physical activities in the weight room.

As an example, I heard him say at a seminar he offered last year that his young gymnasts can jerk 1.5x body weight without ever having touched a barbell strictly as a result of training for their sport.

In another interview, he stated:

“Gymnastics training does indeed build incredible strength. For example, I was not a particularly strong gymnast, yet I was able to do a double body weight dead lift and weighted chins with almost 50% extra body weight on my very first weight training attempts.

One of my student’s, JJ Gregory, far exceeded my own modest accomplishments. On his first day of high school weight lifting, JJ pulled a nearly triple body weight dead-lift with 400 pounds at a body weight of 135 and about 5’3″ in height.

On another day, he also did an easy weighted chin with 75 pounds, and certainly looked as though he could’ve done quite a bit more. We’ll never know for sure because the cheap belt I was using at the time snapped.”

Probably wouldn't struggle with a body weight bench press

Mastering your own body brings about huge proprioceptive and neural increases, which can never hurt even if your goal is lifting big weights.

• Sunday, December 22 | Cancelled | WAG 5 | WAG 14
• Tuesday, December 24 |Cancelled | All WAG
• Wednesday, December 25 | Cancelled | All WAG
• Thursday, December 26 | Cancelled | All WAG
• Friday, December 27 | Cancelled | WAG 16|18b
• Sunday, December 29 | Cancelled | WAG 5 | WAG 10.5 | WAG 14| WAG 7| WAG 16|18b
• Monday, December 30 | Cancelled | WAG 10.5 | WAG 7
• Tuesday, December 31 | Cancelled | WAG 5 | WAG 14 | WAG 16|18b
• Tuesday, December 31 | 10:00-2:30 pm |WAG 18|22
• Wednesday, January 1 | Cancelled | All WAG

• Tuesday, December 24 | Cancelled | All MAG
• Wednesday, December 25 |Cancelled | All MAG
• Tuesday, December 31 | Cancelled | All MAG
• Wednesday, January 1 | Cancelled | All MAG
• Thursday, January 2 | Cancelled | All MAG

• Saturday, December 7 | Tumbling Cancelled
• Saturday, December 14 | Cancelled | Competitive Nationals
• Sunday, December 15 | Makeup Class for Dec. 14 | Competitive Nationals
  • [regular training times]
• Monday, December 23 | Cancelled | All TG
• Tuesday, December 24 | Cancelled | All TG
• Wednesday, December 25 | Cancelled | All TG
• Thursday, December 26 | Cancelled | All TG
• Friday, December 27| Cancelled | All TG
• Monday, December 30 | Classes Resume | All TG
• Wednesday, January 1 | New Years' Day | All TG

• Wednesday, December 18 | Last Day of Training | Learn to Train
• Thursday, December 19 | Last Day of Training | Competitive
• Monday, January 6 | All Diving Programs Resume

• Sunday, December 22 | Training
• Sunday, December 29 | Training
• Monday, December 30 | Training
• Sunday, January 5 | Training Cancelled | Registered athletes are attending HS - High School Invitational, Delta

The Schedule of Events is located within the Meet Package; scroll through the pages to locate both the BC Winter Games Trials and Candy Cane Learn to Dive Schedules.

There is a mandatory team meeting at 6:30 pm at the Holiday Inn (8750-204th Street, Langley) then a brief team swim on Friday evening December 6th, 2019.

Best of Luck to all participants!

WITHDRAWAL | SCRATCHES

• Deadline without Medical Note: December 14 [KGTC administrative fee of $25 applies]
• Deadline with Medical Note: January 1 [Host Club fee + KGTC administrative fee of $25 applies]

Contact Registrar for process; fees apply.

Coming Soon

Coming Soon

Coming Soon

Kelowna Fall Invitational | November 9, 2019

Eleven KGTC Divers represented our club at the first local event of the Season. Congratulations to Jared Roberts, Spencer Dick, Nathaniel Wiedenman, Shea LeDrew, Torrun Maurice, Seth Bose, Mason Hill, Ryan Murphy, Ryan Sherlock, Solomon Wong and Jace Shantz for displaying great diving techniques so early in the 2019-20 diving season. We are looking forward to building upon this great start and hope Shea didn't burn out the judges score cards with all of the 8's and 8.5's she was getting! Well done Divers!