Sovetsky Sport. November 16, 1961. You have to be able to win. There are no other recipes. In no sport does victory come by chance. And especially in gymnastics: "good luck" or "bad luck" are completely excluded here - confidence, reliability, and durability are needed. And to acquire these qualities takes more than a day or two. Moreover, their acquisition is not at all adequate for repeated participation in competitions. The organization of training is of great, if not decisive, importance.
Originality, uniqueness, and talent by themselves have never led or will lead anyone to victory in gymnastics. The mere exclusion of unique elements does not give an advantage to a young athlete over a very experienced one. Endless repetition of the same unyielding trick during training will also not always add to success. Sometimes it even makes sense to abandon such an element and take on another one that is more suitable for the athlete in nature.
Moreover, in gymnastics there is a fairly large set of age-old preparatory exercises, thanks to which an athlete can master and subsequently perform one or another element in any situation. I have to repeat this rather well-known truth only because recently more and more often notes are being published in which "stunt work" is being criticized, and even stated that it is supposedly the result of "the bad influences of the circus."
First of all, here the initial positions are completely wrong. The laws of circus art (as well as gymnastics) require from the actor absolute guaranteed accuracy and one hundred percent confidence in performing the trick. However, it would be funny if the circus demanded only this. In the meantime, it first of all recommends to the actor a lot of different exercises, which certainly lead him to the absolute execution of the trick. That is why it seems that instead of belittling the role of the circus, we should condinue to learn a lot from it, because the most important thing for sports is "reliability recipes." Then, finally, we will stop witnessing numerous falls at competitions during the execution of double somersaults, etc.
I don't like unreliability. If you are learning a difficult element and you can do it every other time, as they say, it's better not to include it in your performance program. Wait until you feel completely confident. Sport is not an adventure, and you shouldn't rely on luck or chance.
We often talk about the willpower of an athlete, but here, in the work of chance, it has nothing to do with it! Willpower is not developed and is not tested by the fact that you have included in your program an element that did not fully succumb to you in training. Whatever you say, deep down you will still be afraid for a happy outcome. What kind of struggle for victory is there, what kind of "concentration of will" can we talk about?
Unfortunately, at the previous Olympic Games, some of our gymnasts included elements in their programs that they had not mastered enough. We, the coaches, knew about this and still did not exclude these elements in a timely manner. The result is known - the men's team lost to the Japanese. During the last trip to Japan, our men's team won against the hosts: many of our athletes' routines were simplified.
Here they might say to me: how strange it is for you, comrade Mishakov! On the one hand, you seem to advocate for athletes to include tricks in their routines, and on the other hand you claim that victory came after difficult elements were excluded from programs! However, there is no difference in this. I am for complex beautiful elements, organically woven into the routine, but only if they are truly mastered to the end. I am categorically aginst tricks that are performed for the sake of a trick, and I am not entirely confident about it. The strength of a gymnastics competition winner is in his confidence. He must know for sure that he can perform every exercise in his program at any time. And here, obviously, psychological preparation for the competition plays a major role. My students (incidentally, this is typical for the students of most Ukrainian coaches) very often during training, especially before competitions, perform their exercises for evaluation. Their comrades or coaches act as judges here. The routines are performed at full strength, and then all the mistakes for which fractions of a point were deducted are carefully analyzed.
Our training system also takes into account the certain nervous exhaustion that awaits the athlete during competitions. That is why we specifically accustom gymnasts to performing the routine from the first attempt and after a very short warm-up. Sometimes we specifically change the equipment. The bars on the parallel bars, for example, are either harder or softer, and you can never tell in advance which ones you will get at a competition. You have to be ready for any tests.
Our gymnasts' pre-competition training begins a month before the performance. At this time, we never learn any new elements or routines. At this time, the athletes train perhaps less than before, but each time (twice or three times) they go through their program from the beginning to the end at full strength. Therefore, they feel completely confident at competitions.
The specifics and subtleties of team competitions are little known to the general public or gymnastics fans. Not all spectators know, for example, that perhaps the most important thing here is the balance of power within the team. Here is a specific example. At the Moscow world championships, Valentin Muratov was the first to go out to most of the apparatusses in the USSR team. Many spectators thought it was strange. Usually (although I personally don't think it's mandatory) the weakest members of a team start their routine first. Muratov, although he was the world champion and winner of the European Cup at the time, was not in his best shape at the start of the Moscow championship due to fatigue. But only his team members knew this! The authority of the world champion usually has an irresistible effect on the judges (let's be honest). And the lesser-known masters who performed after Muratov received higher marks than those that would have been awarded to them if they had appeared on the platform before Muratov...
Further. For example, I will never, during a competition, send a short athlete with a shorter range of motion to the apparatus after an athletically built tall gymnast. The impression will hardly be in his favor, although he will perform all of his routines much cleaner.
It would be impossible to put our gymnasts Sofia Muratova and Galina Rudiko next to each other for performances. Muratova is distinguished by academic, strict, very precise execution of all gymnastic elements. Rudiko had less polished technique, but her performances were distinguished by special softness and famininity. In order for Muratova and Rudiko to give the team the greatest number of points, an interval was needed between their performances - the performance of some third athlete.
There is one more small but important remark here. You can't accustom athletes to only one specific alternation of apparatus. What if there are changes to the current Olympic apparatus arrangement? What if you have to start, say, not with the horizontal bar but with the rings, and this option turns out to be the most difficult of all the others?
Gymnastics should choose the safest path. Think about it.
A. MISHAKOV, Merited Coach of the USSR