The Gymnastics Rush

There is a feeling like no other being able to overcome a fear to realize that you are capable of doing something that so many just dream of.  It is that feeling that pushes gymnast to do better, try again, and keep going.  But how do you culture that desire? Is this even something that you can culture or is it something that you've just got inside you?

Recently I've been working with a couple of kids who are the ideal athletes and have everything you could want. One is so excited about the sport she literally won't quit, you tell her to stop and she keeps going.  She's 7 years old and really is just having fun.  The other is just as amazing and has a drive like I've not seen in a long time.  Both have been forced to overcome coaching disasters and yet both still LOVE this sport with a passion that burns deep within.

"Hard work given time will delete talent" is a very true statement.  And it takes a lot of heart to put forth the effort that being a gymnast takes.  But what if the talented kid takes a big spill and has to come back from a major injury.  Will i have taught them the value of working hard to get past obstacles?  Is it this that destroys that passion?  How do we fuel that fire?

Its easy to let the talented athlete just do what they do because its not difficult for them how do you find the challenges to let them grow as an athlete.  Without challenges though won't the talented athlete loose interest and focus?

Food for thought...I don't have the answers but I know that if you can teach a kid to love hard work, talent aside, that kid will have a life long skill that a lot of kids are missing out on today.  

The Club Kid..

All of us have those kids out there who walked into the gym and said "hey I've done gymnastics, I'm a level 9 at such and such gym." And in our minds we go GREAT!  We'd LOVE to have you on our team, because lets be real, we would all like to be the ones who gets a ton of talent and take state.  Who doesn't want that title.

And as I'm standing at the meet waiting for my level 9 to have her turn we're chatting about how she walks into the gym and does her thing and thats that.  So I as a coach am failing her.  I have to remember that when an athlete of that caliber walks into my program they deserve as much attention as the other kids.  The difference is that the corrections are far more technical and there are things that they can work on but we as coaches have to pay a lot more attention to what those things are.  

Every athlete on our teams deserve the same amount of attention and though it is easy to let the talented ones do there own thing its not fair to them.  Yes these are not really our kids and we didn't teach them the gymnastics they have but it doesn't mean that we can't help improve it.  Keep that in mind the next time your standing next to the vault for that yurchenko and start thinking how do I make this bigger....whats the body doing that we can change and correct.  

I'd almost say that in this respect the group of level 9's walking in might be more of a challenge to improve then the newbie on the team.  How good of a coach am I if all I can do is teach one or the other.   

Just something to think about....

High School Gymnastics Myth

I have run a equipment supply company for several years now and have been in both coaching worlds. I will be the first to admit that my perception of High School Gymnastics was wrong.  Don't get me wrong, we don't have the best equipment, but for the small budgets that we receive our equipment isn't the worst thats out there either.

What we do have is a HUGE variety of talent and a whole lot of fun.  We get everything from the Elite Athlete who wants to have a great experience in the high school sports world and be a normal kid.  To the beginner who legitimately does not know what a handstand is.

As a coach, high school gymnastics is the most challenging position that i've ever been asked to fill simply because when I am in the club world I know that for the next 1-4 hours I'm going to be coaching a certain level.  This is NOT the case with high school.

Once in a while we get lucky and we have a club kid who walks on the team and giving them corrections is the easiest thing in the world, simply because they understand what we're talking about.  Then we have the beginner....now we have to teach gymnastics and create routines to someone who knows very little about the sport and oh yea by the way there are 23 other kids you need to keep safe and keep track of.

With all gymnastics aside, the mental coaching is probably the most challenging part of the sport because who in the world understands the mind of a teenage girl???

So while being a club coach is stressful and we work very hard at keeping athletes healthy and coaching parents in the sport as well, I have to give a lot more credit to the high school coach.  They may not be as unknowledgeable as you might think, but when you have 2 weeks to teach gymnastics and routines, you do what you can.

There is big gymnastics out there, just not always on every team or every time, but the coaches deserve just as much respect as the club coaches.