Hello!
I have a couple of questions relating to how gymnastics is taught at the earliest levels. Here they are up front, but the backstory follows...
My questions:
1) At what age does gymnastics start being taught in a formal way? In other words, when does it stop being “play” and turn into “training”?
2) Is modern gymnastics teaching all about doing something one way?
3) Is it detrimental to a child (especially a 3 year old) to do something “out of sequence” or “too advanced”?
I have a 3 year old daughter who LOVES gymnastics. My wife was also a gymnast up until her teenage years (20 years ago), and she has always wanted our daughter to get into the sport. After watching some video clips from the USA Olympic Trials, and my daughter was hooked! She is constantly doing vaults, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor routines all over the house. She knows all the names of the American women gymnasts. We followed this interest and signed her up for some children’s classes at a local gymnastics training center. She loves them!
Last weekend, after the structured part of the class was over, the kids got some free time to play around on whatever apparatus they wanted. Our daughter got on a balance beam which is 6 inches off the ground. She’s pretty good already at keeping her balance on it. While she was on it, I asked her, “Why don’t you try a twirl?” She was game, and did a nice little twirl, but fell off at the very end. No big deal, only 6 inches off the ground. My wife got all over me about it. “You can’t ask her to do that! She has to learn how to balance first! That’s like asking a child to start swimming right in the deep end of the pool! I was a gymnast, and you can’t do it that way!”
This incident made me curious about how sports are taught to really young children in the very beginning, and then transition into more serious interest in the sport. In the past 20 years, we have made lots of changes in how we teach sports. It used to be that every sport was taught in a very traditional, regimented way (“My way or the highway”). I admit, I don’t know much about gymnastics, but I can find similar trends in a sport I do know - golf. 20 years ago, every golf coach tried to teach what was thought to be the “perfect” golf swing, modeling it after Ben Hogan. That was considered the right way to do it, even if a person’s body type and ability made it impossible to achieve. 20 years ago, a guy named Tiger Woods showed up. He started a whole trend of making fitness a big part of the game, and golfers became real athletes. And since then, the trend is more toward taking a player’s natural swing and getting the most out of it, instead of trying to force him/her into an “ideal” golf swing. Athletes are cross training to challenge their minds and muscles to perform at a higher level. Being boxed in to just one way of doing things could very well slow down skills development.
I imagine the same thing has happened in gymnastics in the past 20 years. Of course, I get that there needs to be some structure and tradition in gymnastics training. But the statement “She’s not ready for that! Things have to be done in a certain order!” doesn’t sit right with me.
I am a believer that children should be allowed to explore and push their limits for many reasons - it creates a sense of adventure, instills confidence, and establishes a mindset of “try again” if they fail. This is, of course, with limitations. If my daughter is trying something blatantly dangerous, I give her a warning about it. And honestly, she is very good about knowing her limits/boundaries. There are plenty of things she doesn’t want to try because she is not comfortable with it.
My wife could be completely right about this, but maybe she’s not. I just feel that I need to hear the opinions and experiences of people who are involved in gymnastics right now, as opposed to how it was 20 years ago.
Thank you!
I have a couple of questions relating to how gymnastics is taught at the earliest levels. Here they are up front, but the backstory follows...
My questions:
1) At what age does gymnastics start being taught in a formal way? In other words, when does it stop being “play” and turn into “training”?
2) Is modern gymnastics teaching all about doing something one way?
3) Is it detrimental to a child (especially a 3 year old) to do something “out of sequence” or “too advanced”?
I have a 3 year old daughter who LOVES gymnastics. My wife was also a gymnast up until her teenage years (20 years ago), and she has always wanted our daughter to get into the sport. After watching some video clips from the USA Olympic Trials, and my daughter was hooked! She is constantly doing vaults, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor routines all over the house. She knows all the names of the American women gymnasts. We followed this interest and signed her up for some children’s classes at a local gymnastics training center. She loves them!
Last weekend, after the structured part of the class was over, the kids got some free time to play around on whatever apparatus they wanted. Our daughter got on a balance beam which is 6 inches off the ground. She’s pretty good already at keeping her balance on it. While she was on it, I asked her, “Why don’t you try a twirl?” She was game, and did a nice little twirl, but fell off at the very end. No big deal, only 6 inches off the ground. My wife got all over me about it. “You can’t ask her to do that! She has to learn how to balance first! That’s like asking a child to start swimming right in the deep end of the pool! I was a gymnast, and you can’t do it that way!”
This incident made me curious about how sports are taught to really young children in the very beginning, and then transition into more serious interest in the sport. In the past 20 years, we have made lots of changes in how we teach sports. It used to be that every sport was taught in a very traditional, regimented way (“My way or the highway”). I admit, I don’t know much about gymnastics, but I can find similar trends in a sport I do know - golf. 20 years ago, every golf coach tried to teach what was thought to be the “perfect” golf swing, modeling it after Ben Hogan. That was considered the right way to do it, even if a person’s body type and ability made it impossible to achieve. 20 years ago, a guy named Tiger Woods showed up. He started a whole trend of making fitness a big part of the game, and golfers became real athletes. And since then, the trend is more toward taking a player’s natural swing and getting the most out of it, instead of trying to force him/her into an “ideal” golf swing. Athletes are cross training to challenge their minds and muscles to perform at a higher level. Being boxed in to just one way of doing things could very well slow down skills development.
I imagine the same thing has happened in gymnastics in the past 20 years. Of course, I get that there needs to be some structure and tradition in gymnastics training. But the statement “She’s not ready for that! Things have to be done in a certain order!” doesn’t sit right with me.
I am a believer that children should be allowed to explore and push their limits for many reasons - it creates a sense of adventure, instills confidence, and establishes a mindset of “try again” if they fail. This is, of course, with limitations. If my daughter is trying something blatantly dangerous, I give her a warning about it. And honestly, she is very good about knowing her limits/boundaries. There are plenty of things she doesn’t want to try because she is not comfortable with it.
My wife could be completely right about this, but maybe she’s not. I just feel that I need to hear the opinions and experiences of people who are involved in gymnastics right now, as opposed to how it was 20 years ago.
Thank you!