WAG Coaches - Do you prefer higher scores or higher skills?

[vagymmomma]

I'm particularly interested in getting thoughts from the coaches, but would be interested in anyone's experiences. DD just completed her first two L7 meets. She did pretty well -- easily qualified for state the first meet and AA went up a full point the second meet. She now has a 6 week break before the next meet and we're having a brief conference with the coaches to review areas of focus.

I guess my main question is on beam. She's competing a BWO-BHS series. The first meet she fell on both skills (and didn't get the connection - big deductions + 9.5 SV). Second meet she stuck her series (then fell on full turn ). But it's probably about 50/50 in practice she's sticking it. She's almost always getting both feet on the BHS, but she can't seem to hold it (a single BHS she sticks at least 90% of the time).

More than 1/2 the girls on the team are not doing a BWO-BHS or BHS-BHS connection. They're doing 2 cartwheels or BWO-BWO or some other odd combination. I think DD could stick a CW-CW with connection almost every time (she does it at home "for fun" all the time). So I guess my question is - would you rather have an athlete compete a "higher" building skill or consistently score higher in a meet? My initial thought is to stick with the BWO-BHS (she's only been doing it about a month). Re-reading this maybe it's a no brainer, but I'm just curious what coaches think before we have the conference.

 

[flipflopcrystal]

stay with the bwo bhs. especially in level 7, will make the level 8 transition easier to bhs bhs

 

[gymgal]

Just a parents here - I think this has a lot to do with what type your dd is. My dd has always been the type to choose skill over scores. Her mindset is that she is in gymnastics to progress, not get high scores or high places. I, on the other hand, waiver back/forth - I understand her position but it is hard to sit at meets knowing she could score better doing "simpler" (for her) skills. Case in point, she is planning on putting her full in on floor, even though she doesn't need it (L7). She will probably lose some points on it. But it is good enough to score well so she will like perform it....

 

[Deleted member D3987]

both, to answer your question in the title.

 

[BlairBob]

Kind of depends.

Sometimes, most of the time, I prefer a clean sharp routine. No silly deductions.

OTOH,

Jarvis... sometimes you gotta run before you can walk

Which I mean that sometimes you have to compete a skill that is less than stellar to get experience competing it.
Training hall is different than during a meet.

 

[iwannacoach]

I'm in favor of keeping the more difficult series. She has about 3 months to improve on the bwo-bhs, and if she's been working it for only a month it'll keep getting a little better each week....up to the limit imposed by her bhs.

(a single BHS she sticks at least 90% of the time).

If she improves her single bhs to 95% or better, the series will get easier for her to wrap her mind around....and that's a big deal because many kids work "out of rythym" when they're worried about connecting into a skill that isn't darn near 100%.

You see, their thinking is the bwo is "pretty easy" and the bhs is "just a bit of an effort", and they do a little "stress multiplication" that goes like this......


pretty easy x just a bit of an effort = a big deal.......So hopefully she'll get the bhs down stone cold and have an equation that looks like pretty easy x pretty easy = no big deal.

 

[Granny Smith]

Here is my parental opinion. While she may be able to stick a CW-CW, I think her coaches are thinking ahead. She may score well with a CW-CW, maybe even win beam at Invitationals and such, but when it comes to States if both girls doing a routine hit and one does a CW-CW and the other does a BWO-BHS or a BHS-BHS, the BWO-BHS / BHS-BHS will always win. The BWO-BHS or BHS-BHS is progressive and will take her to the next level as well. When my dd did L7, she had to do the BHS-BHS because the coach never felt the girls would get the connection with the BWO-BHS, so they had to do BHS-BHS. If your dd is already doing the BWO-BHS or BHS-BHS, she should stay with it.

 

[wallinbl]

She now has a 6 week break before the next meet and we're having a brief conference with the coaches to review areas of focus.

She's almost always getting both feet on the BHS, but she can't seem to hold it (a single BHS she sticks at least 90% of the time).

DD is just starting BHS, but with the cartwheel, the answer was high reps - doing 50-100 per practice, trying to do as many in a row as she could without falling off. It wasn't but a few weeks before she was reeling off 40-50 cartwheels without coming off the beam. Perhaps some of the coaches here can shed light on whether the BHS is higher impact than cartwheel and shouldn't have such high reps (in my "advanced" age, I'm much more sensitive to repeated banging on my skeleton).

 

[gymgal]

If she improves her single bhs to 95% or better, the series will get easier for her to wrap her mind around....and that's a big deal because many kids work "out of rythym" when they're worried about connecting into a skill that isn't darn near 100%.

You see, their thinking is the bwo is "pretty easy" and the bhs is "just a bit of an effort", and they do a little "stress multiplication" that goes like this......

pretty easy x just a bit of an effort = a big deal.......So hopefully she'll get the bhs down stone cold and have an equation that looks like pretty easy x pretty easy = no big deal.

This is similar to how dd has explained it to me. Her coaches wanted her to do the bwo-bhs for L7 and she was really hesitant about it - until she started sticking her single bhs almost 100%. Then her mindset changed and she seemed more confident with the idea of the bwo-bhs. She still needs to increase her success rate, but at least with this series, she will always get the connection, which is not happening with the bwo-bwo.

 

[LizzieLac]

Can it be a BHS step-out? I think that is allowed and it may be easier as one foot comes down at a time, as it does with the walkover.

 

[iwannacoach]

DD is just starting BHS, but with the cartwheel, the answer was high reps - doing 50-100 per practice, trying to do as many in a row as she could without falling off. It wasn't but a few weeks before she was reeling off 40-50 cartwheels without coming off the beam.....wallinbl

Generalities considered, I'd start with 15 per day until I was sure everything was fine as far as their wrists, elbows, shoulders and backs are concerned. From that point I'd want to add 5 more reps every few weeks, but can't see a need to go beyond 40 for a growing kid that's trying her best and listening to the coach. For those kids who aren't trying their best and listening to their coach.....it doesn't matter because 100 won't be enough.....if you get my drift.

 

[vagymmomma]

... she will always get the connection, which is not happening with the bwo-bwo.

This is exactly why DD switched to the BWO-BHS. Her problem is consistency with the BWO. She has pretty awful shoulder flexibility to start with and tends to rush the BWO. This connection has forced her to slow down the BWO. She's working the BHS BHS some (they can uptrain if they hit a certain number of routines in practice). It's funny that IWC would say the BWO is easier. That may be true for most girls, but DD thinks exactly the opposite. I think it's just a matter of reps. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they're getting enough reps in practice, so we may need to find some open gym time.

 

[gymgal]

This is exactly why DD switched to the BWO-BHS. Her problem is consistency with the BWO. She has pretty awful shoulder flexibility to start with and tends to rush the BWO. This connection has forced her to slow down the BWO. She's working the BHS BHS some (they can uptrain if they hit a certain number of routines in practice). It's funny that IWC would say the BWO is easier. That may be true for most girls, but DD thinks exactly the opposite. I think it's just a matter of reps. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they're getting enough reps in practice, so we may need to find some open gym time.

Dd is hoping to switch to a bhs-bhs before states in march because she thinks it will be easier too. But right now, there is something going on with her 2nd bhs. Something about an extra arm swing. I have no clue because I have never seen her do this connection.

 

[iwannacoach]

It's funny that IWC would say the BWO is easier. That may be true for most girls, but DD thinks exactly the opposite.....vagymmomma

I didn't say which one was easier either way, just that I prefer the more difficult series the child is considering. There are plenty of kids who seem better suited to bhs-bhs, and others who just can't wrap their minds around anything but the slowest possible entry skill.

 

[iwannacoach]

I didn't say which one was easier either way, just that I prefer the more difficult series the child is considering.

So now I'll weigh in on which of the two series is easier, a bhsx2, or a bwo-bhs. First I want to set a condition that the "sample child" has average shoulder flexibilty and a bhs that stays on the beam 10 out of 10 times, but not neccesarily stuck stone cold 10/10.

In the sample case I'd favor the bhsx2 series for the advantages it provides the gymnast. If your like most parents, you're probably thinking....Yeah, I'll say it'd be an advantage because it sets the kid apart from the others who are working cartwheel series, bwox2, and bwo-bhs. While that's a benifit, the advantage I had in mind has more to do with how our bodies are constructed, how they move best, and very simple "physics".

First, the bhs starts it's motion and builds it's energy while the kid is upright, or at least should be for a considerable portion of the initiation phase. This allows them to create a motion that travels straight away from the end of the beam they face when starting, and to be in a fairly familiar posture during the moment their "direction" is established.

The other skills appear easier to do, and in a sense they are because they are the skills the kids have been doing longer, and can snuggle up to with greater ease. Personally, I can't stick a cartwheel on a line nearly as well as I can a bhs, so I'd have to say the bhs is easier for me from a technical standpoint.....but I'd rather try a cartwheel on a high beam than a bhs... ...just saying.

The next advantage for the bhsx2 is the amount of motion and energy with-in the skill allows a gymnast to "coast" from one skill to the other. The bwo doesn't have the same incorporated energy to allow a coast to the next skill, which forces the gymnast to speed up/accelerate, and that's a source of alignment and square problems. What's worse is the demand of accelerating into the bhs interferes with the childs ability to respond to feedback from the various parts of their body telling them to correct certain things....kinda like walking and chewing gum, but on a much higher level. So while the bwo interferes with a child's resonses to feedback, they're able to comfortably coast out of the first bhs, casually respond to feedback....and position themselves as they extend into the second bhs.

There's more I could include, but I would go on all night.........so let me make an analogy to support the following statement, that "faster is better", well, up to a point.

Think of the a hula hoop, a coin, and a chocolate chip cookie. Each are round, have no ability to "hold their balance", and have absolutley no brains what so ever.....but each of them can balance while rolling, and will do so in a straight line if they have enough rolling energy. The bhs provides a child with the "rolling energy" to continue comfortably into the second skill, and they could do pretty well at it, if only we could get them to drop down to the intelligence level of a hula hoop.

 

[gasrgoose]

If you have confidence in your coaches, then let them decide with your daughter. Our daughter progressed too quickly for her little brain to handle. She was working on BHS-BHS on beam and then started struggling. She's a level 7 and when she learned her beam routine they put in BWO-BWO and a single BHS. The relief it gave her to know she could compete the "easier" series and still be a level 7 was the difference for her.

Now 2 weeks from her first meet she tells me they have put BWO-BHS in her routine instead of BWO-BWO and she's "sticking" 10-15 routines a day.

If I had been involved as a parent I would have only seen the problem that she is not advancing (actually regressing in my eyes) but the coaches understood my daughter and what she needed. They had a similar issue on floor. They tell me some kids that advance quickly will need to take a few steps back periodically to let their brain catch up with what their body is doing. ??Sounds good to me!

 

[shelovestoflip]

My daughter competed cartwheel/roundoff (or is it the other way around?) last season at Level 7. She was not emotionally able to do the BHS BHS so went with the other combination. She scored well at meets (low 9s mostly) and it worked for her. Her coaches are great and didnt' push as they recognized that for her it was mental, not lack of skill.

She is competing Level 8 this season and has her BHS BHS on beam now.

So, I think for some girls, it's a mind game and comes when they are ready. I'm sure age has a lot to do with it....my daughter is now 13....I think younger girls are many times fearless!