double front into a pit, over rotate a bit, and then you get to smell the smelly pit smell! yuck! my gym really needs to change the pit blocks! they are getting so disgusting. i don't think they changed it since they bought them years and years ago when they put in the pits. how are your gym's pits?

they just changed the pit blocks recently - they are nice and white! matches the chalk that keeps falling in them from the bars! every now and then they empty out the pits and vacuum out the chalk. so, they don't smell bad. :D maybe your gym will change their pit blocks soon.

my club changed the pit foam a while ago too - for the smell, cuz they were old, and also they weren't as fluffy and intact - now we have pretty blocks!

one time we found a bandaid stuck to one of the blocks in the pit....eewww! it must have been left in there from a little kid's birthday party or something. good that the bandaid was face down, huh?! our pits are pretty clean too - the club keeps changing the blocks whenever they are starting to get old.

sometimes you can find socks in the pit also!

You probably could guess that the foam pits aren't just gross for the reason that they're gross and smelly, damp, etc., but for health/germs reasons too - especially with the recent news on Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. gymnasticscoaching brings up this issue very well: [quote]Coach Jacob Small asks about sanitizing foam blocks in our gymnastics pits. Great question. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post. I

Also damp and mold-like foam pits that aren't taken care of can lead to mold, bad for you too. There are lots of foam in the pits, not really like the animal toys. Would spraying be effective? Should also 'refresh' and change them sooner than most gyms do.

[quote=gymnasticscoaching] Step 1 is frequent hand washing, of course. And increased availability of antibacterial gel.[/quote] Actually, antibacterial gel (the gels are weird don't you think? you leave them on your hands and don't rinse them off?) and antibacteria soaps might actually add more bad than good - you think antibacteria sounds good right, but like overusing antibiotics it can do harm by helping create super bugs that are antibacteria resistant and also gets rid of the 'good bacteria' too. http://www.life.ca/nl/107/soap.html -> [quote]There is a great deal of evidence that the use of antibacterial soap in the normal household is unnecessary and causes far more harm than good, both to human health and the environment. Since 2000, the American Medical Association (AMA) has been advising the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to closely monitor and possibly regulate the home use of antimicrobials. At the AMA annual meeting in 2000, Myron Genel, chair of the AMA Council on Scientific Affairs and a Yale University pediatrician, said,

...dont' forget smelly gyms! Some are worse than others!

Thanks a lot