I have doing a study of George S. Patton, Jr and one of his biggest philosophies is that we will never take the same ground twice and we will keep advancing. How does that relate to what I am doing. I have my big objective. Liberate the GOLD medal. I have lots of enemy in between where I am and my goal. I have skills that I must conquer which leads me to this topic. Just because you can do a technique does not mean you own that technique.

I went to the gym this morning and almost kicked over on my first bridge. That means with very little pre-stretch I can almost kick over straight away. That says a lot about the quality of the conditioning of the body. I did my three kickovers and then went to Upslinkies. I got all five on the two panel mat but they were tough and some involved double kicks to get over. I then made zero on the three panel mat. Yesterday I got 5/5 on this previous;y impossible skills and today 0/5. Part of me was disappointed but part of me also knows that I need to keep doing it so that it becomes automatic. Part of the challenge of big breakthroughs is that the weight of expectation is suddenly on you to do it again. You have pre conceived ideas and add more pressure on yourself. I know that in time this will become consistent.

Also by doing the Upslinkies it is making all my other back work so much easier. I now do 5/5 Back Limber Kickoves every morning. The back is so much more open after the Upslinkies that these are getting effortless. I then did my Tumbleweeds (Front Limber Standups). I need to these so it becomes consistent and in better form. This is important for Front Handsprings which is one of the few remaining challenges for Level 5 Floor.

I then worked on Back Walkover as part of the routine and did 5/5 although I did have to double kick on the last one which is unusual. I then did 5 beam slinkies on the floor and got two of them going over smoothly. I then did back bends onto the minibeam and stuck all five. This is a new and critical process for me of getting used to going back and knowing my hands will be on the beam and have a solid grip allowing me to go over.

It is SOOO much harder to do handstands and back walkovers in the beam position than in the normal floor position. I love my coach. This mini beam is going to make such a difference and speed up the skill acquisition. Coach and I are now going after this skill aggressively and a lot of it is getting comfortable trusting to be balanced and go backwards over the beam.

I then worked on handstands and made great progress. I was able to get 8/10 up to count of at least 1Z. I then did my best on pirouette handstands as well with much better form and then did 30 handstands on beam. I am beginning to fall in love with this and now I can do it on the minibeam I can be really aggressive and go for it and feel more comfortable.

I then did my two sets of 21 pushups as requested by coach and my goal is to increase it by one each time I do them until I can do two sets of 100. Finally I made more progress on Sidesplits.

There may not seem to be much progress but the body is slowly getting more comfortable getting there and the goal is to get the point where I can go straight into the splits and sit there for 15 minutes. It is an aggressive goal but I am going to keep working towards it. I also was thinking today that I want to be able to walk around the gym on my hands and come down when i want. I am talking five minutes on my hands and I am strong enough to do it. If I can get there it means my body is so strong and all the techniques on floor, beam and bars will be so much easier.

Another huge day or progress and am so looking forward to training again tomorrow and then three days with coach with week. Loving Life. Go Heroes!!!