Recent content by AnotherGymDad

No joy, sadly. It's both a blessing and a curse but both of the competitive gyms within range of our home are VERY competitive and so have a very high bar for entry and no shortage of applicants. There's plenty of recreational options around but as I said before she'd really love to do more than...

Very normal as far as I've seen - but think of it more like the probation period when you start a new job rather than the interview. They're just making sure a gymnast is committed, listens, can take corrections and so on, they're not going to drop someone after one bad day.

I checked with a relative who works in airport security here in the UK and he told me that anyone with any experience in the job will be able to tell just by looking whether the white powder on something is worth investigating or not. And also: "The average drug smuggler or terrorist doesn't...

I generally refuse to help with anything beyond "can you hold my legs" type stuff on the grounds that I'm not a coach, have no idea what I'm doing, and could at best teach her bad habits and at worst put her in danger. But that's just me!

I don't have much in the way of advice but I do have a lot of both empathy and sympathy. From my experience the whole set-up in the UK is dreadfully designed for actually developing little gymnasts and keeping them engaged with the sport. You're either on 45 minutes a week of recreational or one...

I told my six-year-old that someone wanted to see how strong she was and how fast she was and how brave she could be and how good she was at listening and that if she worked hard and tried her best she might be able to do MORE gymnastics. No pressure, no prep, no follow-up. And when she got...

Tried getting tickets, failed miserably, will watch on TV. Or maybe buy some lottery tickets and do the hospitality route instead...

Put a load of unpopped popcorn into a pan and turn on the heat. Even though it all looks the same and is exposed to the same temperature change, it doesn't all just go "poof" and pop at the exact same time. But it does all get there in the end. Don't judge yourself relative to others, focus on...

Seconding what others have said here, I've seen girls from my local area switch to both pole vault and weightlifting and quickly find their way onto national development programmes. Everyone assumes weightlifting is for giants, but at Paris next year the lightest women's class is for athletes...

I'm glad it's not just me who find this deeply, deeply weird. Especially when you get two sets of parents talking to each other while pretending to be their own children.

I'd argue that's just the other side of the same coin - lack of understanding and exposure leading to an inability to judge what's exceptional.

Like it or not, gymnastics is only a truly "mainstream" sport in most of the world once every four years. So the general level of expertise and understanding is never going to be that great among people who are not directly involved in it. I guess the guy mentioned in the original post had an...

So do I, and I live here!

That's a really positive way of thinking about it, thank you. I don't want to find myself four years from now being told she's really good but it's far too late to start taking things seriously. Anyway, partly inspired by this thread, we're going to send her to a more competitive club for a...

Thank you! I think my big problem is that I don't want to be seen as one of those parents who DEMANDS to know why their darling daughter isn't being fast-tracked to the Olympics, but I also don't want any potential she has to go to go unfulfilled because I failed to make clear that we'd be...