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marie83

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Hi all,

I am just curious and wondered how many hours your level 4 or 5 gymnasts train each week?

My gymnasts are all 2001 born gymnasts (turn 8 this year) and currently train 12 hours a week, made up of 4 3 hour sessions. (they are about the equivalent of level 4/5 gymnasts)

During the summer, rather than increasing, our training time decreases by 2 3/4 hours so I am thinking of offering my gymnasts an extra hour during 2 of our sessions so that they only lose out on 3/4 of an hour. I'm already struggling to fit in everything they need to learn!

How does this compare with your club?
 
During the summer, our girls who will be competing L4 for the first time train about 9.5 hours a week. Our repeat L4s train about 12. Our L5s train about 14.

During the school year, L4s train about 9 or 9.5 hours a week, while L5s train about 12.
 
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Our level 4 girls training 11hrs and the L5 train 14hrs.
Sadly even though these hours are just enough, they are not used as productively as possible because of inadaquate facilities, and apparatus.
It sucks.
 
Our level 4 girls training 11hrs and the L5 train 14hrs.
Sadly even though these hours are just enough, they are not used as productively as possible because of inadaquate facilities, and apparatus.
It sucks.

This is exactly the problem I am having!

Our gym is very small. I have 8 gymnasts in my group and their skill level is extremely varied.

Vault is my biggest problem! I have 2 who are ready to start 1/2 ons, 2 who still can't handstand flatback on 110cm and 4 who are ready to learn handsprings! In 30 minutes and with our lack of space it isn't possible to do all of these things! In an ideal world I'd have flatbacks at one end of the vault run up, handsprings and 1/2 ons at the other. However, due to the number of gymnasts in the gym and the lack of space I can only have one vault set up at a time!

This will change in the summer though so I might be able to make some good progress!

Bars is ok for now as we have 2 sets of bars so I have 2 sets of 4 working together.
However in the summer we will only have 1 set of A bars and a set of P bars so I will have to try and utilise them somehow!

Beam and floor are both ok for now

With the amount of conditioning that the girls have to do we are getting between 5 and 20 mins of actual skill work on each apparatus. Bars is the worst for this as their conditioning is taking 25 mins so we are only getting 5 mins per session to work on skills! Nowhere near enough!

I really need their training time to increase over the summer rather than decrease, but unfortunately I don't think it will happen!
(we decided a few years ago to drop sunday training through August because we found that people just weren't turning up - too tempting to have a family day out rather than coming to gym! (that is the trouble with only having hot weather during the summer!)

If I could just have an extra 3 hours a week I'd be happy!
 
Our L3's are 4hrs. L4's are 9 hours. L5 & up are 12 hours
 
Instead of adding an extra day, can you lengthen the training times that they will have.

During the school year my girls train 9 hours over 3 days, in summer thay train 15 over 5, but it would be easy to do 12 over 3 days, then you could really maximise on the time spent in warm up and conditioning. Also parents would not have to make an extra trip to the gym, and that helps with attendance.
 
That's what I am going to do in the Summer - they will train 4 hours mon and thu instead of only 3. Unfortunately during term time we start at 5pm and finish at 8. A lot of our gymnasts travel quite a long way and can't get to gym any earlier than 5 with school finishing at 3.30 or 4.

Finishing at 9 is also out of the question for now as parent's feel this is too late (we used to finish at 9 but we lost a lot of gymnasts to other clubs due to them not getting home til nearer 10 with the travel time)

It is something to think about for the future though when they are a bit older!

I will enquire as to whether starting at 4.30 might be an option though!
 
Some parents may be open to fewer days and longer trainings if you can explain how more more effective they are in terms of time spent on warm ups and equipment set up on rotations, they also may be more prepared to have later nights if there are just a few of them. But it is def a challenge when parents are driving a long way, and your team is still quite young. Another alternative is to offer a training camp type atmosphere, where the girls come fro a whole day (school hols ect) and you do a whole range of things including dance etc, sometiems you can do this with other groups and really focus on a group of skills.

Good luck, I know it is a real challenge to work in a small space with limited hours. Nice for your girls that you care so much!
 
Some parents may be open to fewer days and longer trainings if you can explain how more more effective they are in terms of time spent on warm ups and equipment set up on rotations, they also may be more prepared to have later nights if there are just a few of them. But it is def a challenge when parents are driving a long way, and your team is still quite young. Another alternative is to offer a training camp type atmosphere, where the girls come fro a whole day (school hols ect) and you do a whole range of things including dance etc, sometiems you can do this with other groups and really focus on a group of skills.

Good luck, I know it is a real challenge to work in a small space with limited hours. Nice for your girls that you care so much!

Thanks for your input, its good to hear a parent's point of view. I will definately look into it.

Our gym runs a summer camp for all ages and abilities - from complete beginners up to our squad gymnasts so I am really going to encourage my gymnasts to come along. It is only an hour and a half each day but I think even that would make a difference, plus it will be more orientated around having fun! (even more so than usual! ;) )
 
Our level 4's train 14 hours a week (4 times a week for 3 1/2 hours), and our level 5's train 16 hours a week (4 times a week for 4 hours)

We are about the middle of the range for clubs in Australia. Here the less competitive clubs train about 8-12 hours a week at 4 and 5. While the more competitive clubs do about 18 hours on average.

We dont change the times at all over summer or anything. As here in Australia the kids don't have "summer". They do get 5 weeks off school in summer over christmas but thats it. So we just follow the same schedule year round.
 
gym time and size

You know I read this and I realize size and time constraints play a huge part in gymnastics training and your ability to compete with other gyms in your area. Im in one of the most intense gymnastic states in the U.S and I have a small gym and time is always an issue. I took 9 young ladies USAG level 4 this last year, none of them ever having done USAG before. My gym has one beam, one set of bars and a single 32X32 spring floor. Our vault runway is Approx. 66 ft long. A far cry from the amazing gyms in the major city 60 miles from here. Im a huge fan of Quality of time spent instead of quantity of time. If your girls want to be great then theyll use and appreciate every minute youcan devote to them. Trust the girls set a circuit for them. While they wait on bars have them do core conditioning, beam try upper body conditioning, vault work technique drills that way you can maximize time spent. On another note those 9 girls were the first in our state ever to qualify all the members to state their first year in USAG, and we placed 6th out of 32 teams. Small gyms can make big marks. Just remeber have fun. Its not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. :)
 
Im a huge fan of Quality of time spent instead of quantity of time. If your girls want to be great then theyll use and appreciate every minute youcan devote to them. Trust the girls set a circuit for them. While they wait on bars have them do core conditioning, beam try upper body conditioning, vault work technique drills that way you can maximize time spent...
Its not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog. :)

Thanks for this. I totally agree! I am a big fan of circuits. There are certain girls in my group who I can trust to get on with the circuit just fine - others will take the opportunity to slack off! "Oh Marie said to 30, so I'll do 15 and hope she doesn't notice!" I've tried to instill in them that they are only cheating themselves and that if they want to get skill x,y or z then they really need to do the conditioning 100%.

My biggest problem with vault really is our lack of space.
I can't set them to do any conditioning in between goes because there is literally no room! Afer a gymnast vaults, they have to walk back up the run way to get back to the start of the run up before the next person can go. There is no other way to get back up there!
We also have to wait until the person on bars has finished dismounting before starting to run, otherwise the gymnast on vault will get squished!
If there is nobody on bars then I can use the bar area for conditioning which I always do, but it only happens on a Sunday!

In fact here is a really old pic of our gym!
2004 :: MAINGYM.jpg picture by wfgsphotos - Photobucket

The vault run up also starts in a separate room, with a really low ceiling!

In the summer we actually move over into a sportshall (we are based in a school) so we have lots more space but only 1 set of bars but it will mean that the gymnasts will have a full length vault run up, a full size floor, trampoline, and just extra bits of space which we can use for conditioning and better circuits. I'm counting down the weeks until we move! 5 to go!
 
Gymnasts of the same age in our gym would do 13 hours a week, over 4 days - these girls have done Grade 14 this year, and most are heading for Elite 4 next year. We are extremely lucky in our facility and having come from a leisure centre program I think I appreciate it more than most. But if it makes you feel better, even with one of the largest gyms in the country the coaches still fight over the vault and pit bars and argue over scheduling!
 

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