SCIENCE OF GYMNASTICS JOURNAL
Vol. 6 Issue 2 2014
EDITORIAL
Dear friends,
In front of you is the 15th issue of our journal. To date, we published 91 articles, most of them original, and 4 review articles. This makes quite a good database of knowledge for our sport.
First some housekeeping issues: In the beginning of the year we were informed by our friends from the United States that our website www.scienceofgymnastics.com was not working. We solved the problem and our website is now working properly.
There is still time to apply to Stiftung Universität Hildesheim, Institut für Sportwissenschaft to participate at their conference titled Dimensions of Motor Learning in Gymnastics for 1 September 2014. We will try to provide more information about it in our October issue.
For the second issue in 2014, our fellow researchers prepared seven articles from the fields of history, biomechanics, motor development, judging and the relation between acrobatic knowledge and skiing knowledge. The first article is about 110 years of history of the World Championships (WC) in artistic gymnastics. Its author Abie Grossfeld who attended almost all world championships since 1958 (as a gymnast, coach, judge, journalist, expert, video analyst and perhaps even in some other capacity), including the last one in Antwerp, outlines the history from the beginning in 1903 up to 2013. At this point, let me invite you all to find and submit photos from world championships 1903-1913. The Journal would like to publish them as we believe that it is of great importance that we preserve our gymnastics heritage.
The second article deals with the Code of Points and competition systems from 1896 up to 1912 It comes from Greek authors Georgios Papadopoulos, Vasilios Kaimakamis, Dimitrios Kaimakamis and Miltiadis Proios.
The third article was prepared by William A Sands, Brent Alumbaugh, Jeni R McNeal, Steven Ross Murray and Michael H Stone from USA. They compared two types of springs in floor and their findings are very interesting. The fourth article is from the Czech team of Roman Farana, Jaroslav Uchytil, David Zahradnik, Daniel Jandacka and Frantisek Vaverka. They compared kinematic data for handspring and Tsukahara vaults with the same difficulty value. Their paper shows that handspring vaults require higher amplitude which in other words means they are actually more difficult to perform.
The fifth article from Greek authors Olyvia Donti, Anastasia Donti, Kalliopi Theodorakou presents an overview of choreography preparation in respect of the Code of Points. The article may be of interest not only to those involved in women rhythmic gymnastics but also to those in other gymnastics disciplines.
The sixth and the seventh article are dealing with gymnastics knowledge. The sixth article's authors from Croatia: Zoran Čuljak, Sunčica Delaš Kalinski, Ana Kezic and Burdica Miletic explored the influence of fundamental movement skills on basic gymnastics skills acquisition and found important relationships between them; the authors of the last article from Bosnia and Herzegovina Edin Mujanovic, Almir Atikovic, Amra Nožinovic Mujanovic researched how knowledge of acrobatic elements affected skiing knowledge. The article clearly shows that acrobatic is the base sport: basic skills in acrobatics improve skills and knowledge in other sports.
Just to remind you, if you quote the Journal: its abbreviation in the Web of Knowledge is SCI GYMNASTICS J. I wish you pleasant reading and a lot of inspiration for new research projects and articles,
Ivan Čuk Editor-in-Chief
3