Parents Non Score Related Goals

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Amanda

Proud Parent
Hi! I've read the advice on here to encourage our child to have non score related goals for a meet. I think that's a great idea. My dd has her first travel meet and is hoping to possibly hit the mobility score for Level 4. It will be her first meet competing as a L4. Not sure yet if we will want her to move up if she hits the score, but I will save that for another post IF she meets the score! Can anyone share goals your child has had that are not overly related to scores? Seems like if it is too skill related (staying on the beam for her cartwheel would be nice!), it's pretty connected to score. For her first level 3 meet (first time ever competing), I encouraged her to complete all her routines and end each with a smile- I think she could go a little more specific with this one. Thanks!
 
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DD's goals at her last meet were: put her kickover on the beam, get a good vault (this is a big struggle for her and "good" in her case means running fast and not splitting her legs to throw her weight over), remember not to rush through this one piece of her floor choreo that she sometimes doesn't really hit, hit her full candlestick position (she has a perfect one in practice, but rushes in meets), and be tight on her bars.

In the past it's been to stay in high releve on her beam turn, to get her feet together in her round off, to not bend her back leg in her split jump, etc, etc. Usually it's something she's been working hard on in practice, or something she nails in practice but sometimes misses in the meet. (So, something she can probably be successful at.) It is not tied in any way to score except that all improvements to gymnastics improve your score. You celebrate achieving the skill goals regardless of the numbers. She has had meets where she has not placed in anything, but has felt successful because she hit most of her personal goals. She has SUCH a healthy an balanced view of what meets do and don't mean, and I think it's because her goals are never related to placements. I hope it stays that way.
 
I agree that goals unrelated to score means choosing something that you have been struggling with but want to do better on. I think the goal needs to be set before the meet (maybe after the prior meet) so you can focus on it at practice before the meet.

For my dd, these goals in the past have included not to fall on beam after she fell on the same element 3 meets in a row (which meant improving that element), to cast higher on bars, to keep legs together on casts when she was having issues with sometimes separating her legs, bigger, prettier leaps, etc.

Most of those things would result in a better score, but you can’t always compare scores or placements from meet to meet. At one meet, the floor judges might be really strict but the beam judges might be really generous and even though you do the best floor routine ever, your score might actually be worse than at the last meet. And even though your beam score is awesome, maybe you wobbled a lot more than usual. And if it just happens to be a more competitive meet, you might place worse even though you had a great meet.
 
My dd doesn’t set herself goals, but after a competition she will highlight what went well and what she felt was a real accomplishment, I started to encourage this after I found comparing scores from one competition to the next wasn’t really beneficial as her best ever beam routine (not just imo but also her coaches) one season was actually the lowest scored, (the beam judges scored everyone very low that day).
I don’t encourage my dd to set herself goals for competitions as I don’t think it would be beneficial for her, she suffers with anxiety, as the type of things set might set herself are not falling off beam, well setting that as a goal or not she’s going to try her hardest to stay on but if it was a goal it could become all consuming and then she would beat herself up about it if she fell.
She does set herself goals for training.
 
At her meet this past weekend, my daughter's goals were:

Beam- hit her full turn
Bars- really high cast
Vault- legs together
Floor- straight body position on her layout (not piking down) and to really perform it
 
In L4 it was to make DF (under my breath) Cartwheel. She had a hit rate of about 30 percent.

Now it’s make her connection on beam. Get to HS on bars.
 
Last meet for DD her goals were to try her 1.5 back twist on floor and to do a passable high bar cast. DS wanted a six for six meet with no falls and not many landing deductions on floor. Not sure what her goals will be for her next meet. DS's will be the same for the rest of the season. A reach goal for him is to insert one of the following skills into his routines this season: crappy planche on rings, Magyar on pommel horse, or Bhavsar on pbars. (All of these things are much more likely to happen next season.)
 
This past Saturday, Short Stack's (L6) goals were:

Vault--get a good block
Bars--get CHS as close to vertical as possible (without going over)
Beam--stick her press handstand mount (she'd been wobbling & falling all week)
Floor--good height on her FT

Even if she is kind of upset about a rough meet, she has usually met at least one of her personal goals. So we shift the focus to that accomplishment. It really helps her put things in perspective.
 
Ooh boy. Level 4. A monster in itself. Here is what I would shoot for, and forgive me if your kid has all of this done pat....but if one thing on the list helps you, I will consider it a victory
(pick one from each list, or if you are really ambitious, go for two....my kid usually has a few per event now, but she is in optionals)
Bars: straight armed kip, shoulders over on squat on, MAKE the squat on, body tight jumping to high bar, making kip on high bar, making kip on high bar with straight arms, keeping legs together on candlestick and dismount, STICK the dismount
Beam: no wobble on cartwheel-stick it!, ditto the full turn, hold the handstand, go for 180 on the jumps, hold the handstand on the dismount, stick the landing, smile during routine-especially when hitting a skill
Floor: smile during routine, no extra steps on tumbling passes, make second bhs as good as the first, no "flying" out of front tumbling pass, stay with the music and "be" the music, jumps/leaps 180
Vault: run like hell (ok change the working, hah!), hit springboard where you need to, good block, straight arm block, look for landing. I did not put stick landing here, because I know of coaches who feel that if you have an amazing fhs vault, sticking the landing is very hard to do. But heck, I'll throw that in there also, just in case your girl's gym isn't like the ones I know.

"general" goals: hit 4 for 4, hit 3 for 4, make routine (on event that is a struggler), hit all tumbling passes, STAY ON BEAM (Please God), get OVER the vault table, make entire bar routine without anything extra added.

The absolute last thing i would be thinking about is the scores. My kid recently had some amazing events at a meet, they were epic....and scored lower than they ever had-the scoring was consistent across the board. And none of us cared. The joke was the judges were fed stale bread and instant coffee by the host gym! LOL. My kid is young, but seasoned, and she truly understands that it is not about the scores. It's about the routine. I do realize many others out there are not this way. At pickup tonight, they were running late, so I was making small talk with another mom...I asked how her child did at the meet (daughter is a different level) and the mother proudly said she had won the all around. I said that's great, but how did she do? The mom looked at me like I had 3 heads, and said well she won....what do you mean? I said, was she happy with how she did on her events? Did she pull off the *********** in her ******** routine?(won't say what it was but it was something that had been haunting her, all the girls knew about it, because of the 'drama' she had over the skill). The mom said yes she did, but she only took fourth in that event and her score was not what it should have been. I said how awesome it was that she pulled off the skill!!! :)

So, yes, call me crazy. But heck....focus on something other than the scores. It's much easier this way, and way healthier.
 
My daughter’s Current goals are to consciously work on being a great leader for her teammates, keeping a positive attitude for herself and helping her team do the same, and taking everything day-by-day. She is facing a long recovery from a significant injury, but I think they are great goals that anyone can work on.
 
Honestly, once we gave up on meet goals my DD had much more relaxed meets. This past week she set a single goal. She met it, but it ended up being her most stressful meet of the year, and it was the sixth meet. It was also the only meet of the season with a fall. I’m not deciding between causation and correlation here, but she put the pressure of meeting a goal on herself and then fell apart. She’s usually calm, happy, relaxed, and solid.

Long story short, I have come around over the years to guiding her to have no goals for individual meets at all. Or you could say the only goal being to relax and have fun.
 
We set a few goals at the outset of the season, mostly it was to improve throughout the season. Very broad, it could be get a new high score it could be land a skill we struggle with etc. As time has gone on we don't talk about goals as much. At the beginning of the season we always talk about being a good sport and no tears unless you are hurt, if you fall head up we will kill it next time.
 
Non-score-related goals are the best, but my daughter has not been very interested in sharing them with me and I'm not sure how often she sets them. The big ones I know of have been

Remember to salute after the floor routine.
Successfully compete straight-arm kip (that was back in L3).
Vault without crashing.
Vault with only one block.
Excellent presentation on floor.
Demonstrate a positive attitude throughout the meet no matter what happens. (I must admit that I dictated this one and offered a reward. In my defense, I was desperate and it seemed to work.)
 
Honestly, once we gave up on meet goals my DD had much more relaxed meets. This past week she set a single goal. She met it, but it ended up being her most stressful meet of the year, and it was the sixth meet. It was also the only meet of the season with a fall. I’m not deciding between causation and correlation here, but she put the pressure of meeting a goal on herself and then fell apart. She’s usually calm, happy, relaxed, and solid.

Long story short, I have come around over the years to guiding her to have no goals for individual meets at all. Or you could say the only goal being to relax and have fun.
I understand this logic also! I think it depends on the kid. My kid loves having goals for each meet, and while she wants to hit them, if she doesnt, she doesnt....but having them is what she seems to thrive on this season. Ironically, its the first season she has had goals, haha. For whatever reason, she wants them, writes them down, and then marks them off. My little data entry girl, lol.

When i competed (different sport) I did not do the goal thing other than a general sense, i.e., qualify for nationals this season. I would have got way too stressed out, and put too much pressure on myself. For me it was better to think just GO for it and be the beast you know you are. So yes, totally get where everyone is different.
 
I will add that I would really like to see my daughter setting very specific goals that would help her perform better and score higher, such as "feel legs glued together on casts" and "[do whatever specific thing it is that gets the beam handstand vertical]." Duyetanh's post has several good examples of these types of goals for bars and vault. My kid is not yet at the point where she truly thinks this way, but she's slowly learning.
 
Or you could say the only goal being to relax and have fun.

^^ This is a good one. Honestly, even non-score related goals are tough because it's not like any of these kids go out there and try to fall on beam, or get a bad block on vault, or take an extra step after a tumbling pass. My DD has fallen on her full-turn on beam at almost every meet this year (she sticks it about 90% of the time in practice but is obviously having some kind of meet/full turn mental thing). I would LOVE for her to stick beam at state (her next and final meet of the season). But I definitely do not want her setting that goal because I don't want her to feel doubly discouraged if she falls (especially if beam is an early event). If I'm going to help my DD set goals, I try hard to find things that she can actually control -- smile, say an encouraging word to each teammate, etc.

On a related note, no matter how rough a meet, there is always some positive take-away. That is where the focus should be in my opinion -- even more so than goal setting. My DD fell twice at a meet this season for the first time (beam, of course, and then very uncharacteristically went over the bar in handstand).... BUT she had a "career high" score on vault. So it was a "good bad meet" according to DD. At a different meet, a teammate known to be emotional had a fall and a missed skill, and didn't have particularly great scores on the other two events either.... BUT she didn't cry and remained a good teammate throughout. I mentioned to her mom that she should be proud at how much maturity and resilience her daughter had shown. The mom hadn't thought of the meet in the way -- but when you look at the big picture, there is almost always a positive take-away.
 
I understand this logic also! I think it depends on the kid. My kid loves having goals for each meet, and while she wants to hit them, if she doesnt, she doesnt....but having them is what she seems to thrive on this season. Ironically, its the first season she has had goals, haha. For whatever reason, she wants them, writes them down, and then marks them off. My little data entry girl, lol.

When i competed (different sport) I did not do the goal thing other than a general sense, i.e., qualify for nationals this season. I would have got way too stressed out, and put too much pressure on myself. For me it was better to think just GO for it and be the beast you know you are. So yes, totally get where everyone is different.
I totally get that too. Even with my DD, there are general season goals- be a good winner and a good loser, give anyone struggling a pep talk before the meet starts, an quality for states. Those were made before competing began, and seemed to have no effect on her- they were the obvious things that barely needed to be goals. My kid is SO stressed with school pressures this year that I think it was really important that gym not be a source of any pressure at all. We’ve mostly succeeded there, and I’m really happy with that. My kid is a junior though and college stuff is already in high gear. I think Amy year before kownshed have been a little more like your girl.
 
Honestly, once we gave up on meet goals my DD had much more relaxed meets. This past week she set a single goal. She met it, but it ended up being her most stressful meet of the year, and it was the sixth meet. It was also the only meet of the season with a fall. I’m not deciding between causation and correlation here, but she put the pressure of meeting a goal on herself and then fell apart. She’s usually calm, happy, relaxed, and solid.

Long story short, I have come around over the years to guiding her to have no goals for individual meets at all. Or you could say the only goal being to relax and have fun.

I agree with this. I attempt to teach DD gymnastics happens during practice. Practice is the time to concentrate and to give 100%. The meet is time to show off what you have perfected and to have fun with her team, knowing inside that every skill performed during the meet has been executed 100's of times in practice. Her goals for meets are be confident and be proud.
 

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