Anon "bad" teams vs. "good" teams

[Anonymous (2eda)]

Everytime I go to meets there's usually two or three teams that you know will always win the team awards. Usually they're the giant teams who train a lot more hours than the smaller teams (like mine, which is all Xcel btw), but there's 1-2 small, low hour, Xcel teams that DO consistently have 1st place individuals and teams.
My question is, what makes the "good" teams better than the other teams? Is it coaches? Equipment? What are the factors other than training hours?
I'm xcel gold and often place/score the best of my team with low 36 AA. What's the differences that make my team score lower?

 

[Anonymous (2eda)]

Also, I forgot to add, are there any things I can be doing myself to help improve my scores? I really want to get better but I'm not sure how.

 

[Coach Kate]

Speaking from a low hours team that won team titles at 5-9 hours a week Xcel bronze-diamond, it starts with a strong feeder program. They trained coaches and developed our rec curriculum so everyone coming through it was well conditioned with strong basics. Then you get into making the most out of practices, routine construction, and attention to detail.

 

[Anonymous (6eeb)]

Speaking from a DP perspective, but often the dominant teams are huge and/or have very strict rules for move-ups and repeats. And are very selective about who can join the team in the first place. So the girls dominating the podium are repeating their level or maybe were one girl chosen from a pool of 10 in a rec class to get to do pre-team.

I know other teams that do it with superior coaching or training as mentioned above.

 

[Anonymous (f24f)]

My daughter is on a team that just about always wins team awards and in our case it's the coaches. We were at a previous gym with them and they also won there; they aren't necessarily picky about move ups/level repeats, though it does happen, but they know how to create super clean routines that minimize deductions. They'll continue to make routine tweaks throughout the season to improve scores as well. Our team is comprised of 11 level 7's, most of the girls are first year.

 

[Anonymous (8f76)]

A lot of the DP teams that are “good” are very selective about who they bring into their program. They do also have good coaching, but a lot of it comes down to the talent.

 

[Anonymous (3a74)]

I think generally it’s the coaching - obviously hours and facilities help, but they’re not everything. There’s a local gym that generally do pretty well despite having a tiny space with minimal equipment, our gym do well despite much lower hours than pretty much every other gym in the area, and there are some gyms we compete against who do much higher hours and have great facilities and equipment who generally do pretty poorly at comps. Hours and equipment aren’t everything

 

[Dahlialover]

1. Selectivity of entry into the team program.

2. Focus on form, proper technique, and training efficiency.

3. Training up and competing down.

 

[Anonymous (78f1)]

In our state several of the "good" teams are known to have a requirement that gymnasts repeat each XCEL level 2-3 times and compete the bare minimum skills even on their 2nd or third year. We have watched them warm up with higher level skills then compete flawless basic routines and get multiple 9.9's and 10's. I don't agree with this strategy and think it is unfair to the gyms who do things the right way and don't hold girls back just to sweep the podium at every meet. I have no idea how the coaching or training hours compare to our gym though.

 

[Gymnast_13]

This season our level 2-8 teams have been undefeated. Our gym isn't very well known in the gymnastics world (but famous in the TnT world) but the coaches are really good and they don't just keep people on the same level forever and get bored. But honestly I think it's the coaches and how supportive they are.
My old gym is very well known and have amazing facilities but okay coaches and they're having a terrible season this year.

 

[Gymnast_13]

In our state several of the "good" teams are known to have a requirement that gymnasts repeat each XCEL level 2-3 times and compete the bare minimum skills even on their 2nd or third year. We have watched them warm up with higher level skills then compete flawless basic routines and get multiple 9.9's and 10's. I don't agree with this strategy and think it is unfair to the gyms who do things the right way and don't hold girls back just to sweep the podium at every meet. I have no idea how the coaching or training hours compare to our gym though.

I agree. Making gymnasts repeat skills and have to do super basic skills even if they have clean advanced skills in unfair on the gymnasts. For the gyms it might be great because they win but the gymnasts probably get bored and quit.