Thoughts on OPEN GYM?

[gymnastjaiderz1106]

My coaches say, NO OPEN GYM! It messes you up, and ruins your skills....

But, I completely disagree! I LOVE open gym, Me and one girl on my team go almost every Saturday, Its so fun to help with learning new skills, perfecting skills, and sometimes meeting new friends...

I have found that it doesn't mess me up! It helps a lot...What are your thoughts?

 

[Aussie_coach]

In Australia you don't see open gyms anywhere, I have never even heard of a club offering it. My guess is that it would be an insurance nightmare for us.

 

[GymSurvivor]

I love open gym as well!
But one thing my coaches say that makes complete sense to me is to only work on skills your working on in class unless you get permission from them.
So when I was working on my FHC and just couldn't get it, it really helped to go to open gym and work it over and over again.

But I could understand some not liking it. Esp. if a gymnast goes and works on completely new skills.

 

[All Chalked Up]

I've never been to real open gym, but we did it for the end of practice once and I love it!

 

[Northstar2400]

for the optional gymnasts we can't go to our gyms normal open gym b/c wehavepractice at that time but our head coach started a team open gym for 3 hrs and its 3 team coaches supervising the 2 "open" events at a time and this way its safer to work on harder/new skills

 

[B Gymnast]

I love open gym!! My gym doesn't practice a lot, so for me it's just more practice time

 

[iBleedChalk]

How would open gym mess you up? Unles you're attempting dangerous higher level skill without a spot, I don't see the harm. I love open gym, especially when you meet new friends and get to bring friends along Plus, whats wrong with practicing and perfecting the skills you already have? It's better than sitting at home watching tv.

 

[Optionals United]

Ibleedchalk it can mess you up in the sense if you are just learning a skill and you go to an open gym and pratice it wrong it creates bad habits. same with a home trampoline if you work on skills wrong it messes you up in the long run.

i love open gym!! it gives you time to mess around and do stuff you wouldnt normall do in pratice. it also lets you do skills that you are having trouble with at your own pace.

 

[d0nut_l0ver]

At my gymnastics camp, we have open gym for an hour and it is AWESOME! I get to go wherever I want and practice whatever I want... I usually go to beam, it's my weakest! I often don't get to do things that I want to do during training, so open gym lets me do tricks that I didn't do earlier.

 

[gymgirl1129]

My coaches are all for open gym and sometimes we have them for our optionals at our gym. Our coaches sometimes come with us to open gyms at other clubs because they like to still help us with what we are working on or just like to go and see other gyms. I remember me and my friend went to another gym with a pit to work on different things we couldn't do in our gym because we don't have a pit. Our coaches came to help us but we needed her and needed to use other equipment.

For me personally though, my one coach gave me one rule, "No bars at other gyms". This was because I went to open gym at a gym I have been to before and peeled jumping to the high bar. This began a mental block that lasted almost a whole season and as a level 8 a mental block of jumping to the high bar is not really that good as you can assume. We wanted to avoid more mental blocks, especially on bars, because I get mental blocks quite frequently. If I want to get over my mental blocks I usually ask my coach to come in for a private lesson instead of going to an open gym so thats the only time I prefer to not go to open gym, butdon't think my coach would mind if I still went to one.

Besides that our coaches think going to open gyms are good because we can work on other skills we can't do during practice and they like we can use other equipment and get opinions from other coaches.

 

[GymDot2x]

I think open gym is a good thing. I mean, it gives you a chance to work on what you're having trouble with. I think its more beneficial to just work on things that your coach has already introduced to you, or you know how to do properly so you don't mess yourself up. I see what they're saying...but as long as you don't practice skills with bad form or the wrong way, I don't see how it can hurt.