Hi gymdog,
Interesting and insightful points. I would say that my DD is neither the most graceful ballerina or the most athletic gymnast. She loves both and I feel that ballet has helped her gymnastics and gymnastic has helped her ballet. By combining the two, she is becoming the best gymnast that 'she' can be and also the best ballerina that 'she' is capable of becoming.
I can see how she has benefited in ballet through increased strength from gymnastics conditioning and I also see where her gymnastics has benefited from ballet in her flexibility, beautiful lines, and her dance elements. For us, the merging of the two disciplines has shown improvements in both.
I think when you combine body type, ballet, gymnastics, work ethic, competitive spirit and mental toughness you give yourself a competitive advantage.
While I believe gymnastics needs to be fun, I don't see any disadvantage for giving yourself more tools to use to excel in this sport. It seems as if the merging of the two disciplines would be a perfect blend, I'm just curious why it hasn't caught on here in the United States.
Well, I think like anything, it is a matter of opportunity cost. 45 minutes six days a week is a lot of time on top of gymnastics training. The above mentioned countries have very different systems than the US which tend to be more nationalized, and the kids who show promise are really the only ones who are picked. Americans have different expectations. I had a Romanian coach my first several years in gymnastics who went to Bela's school, and America is completely different when it comes to gymnastics for a lot of cultural reasons. Of course things are changing there too from what I hear. Employment is different, the way things run are different. Many American coaches are not trained in ballet and there's no national system hiring all these people, so it's just a weakness in designing a central program. If we want to live a typical American lifestyle, something has to give. However I will note that American gymnasts are among the best in the world - we've shown that centralized, intensive training systems of only the best kids aren't necessary to produce a top-notch national team.
However many competitive teams do incorporate ballet training. Both of my old teams certainly have, and so does almost every other large-ish gym in the area. It's just not that intensive.
I think it's great if a kid also likes ballet. Would I put my daughter in intensive ballet if it wasn't her passion (let's say she doesn't outright hate it, of course that would make the answer obvious), because it helps gymnastics (we'll assume for simplicity she
really likes gymnastics), no. Gymnastics simply isn't worth that much to me that I would be looking to maximize the experience that much beyond finding a healthy training environment. In the end I just don't think it's that important that for the benefit I would give up the time and money unless she really wants to progress in ballet. For a lot of people, gymnastics and dance lessons both are probably prohibitively expensive.
For me, I didn't like ballet and it wasn't going anywhere, so there was no use continuing it. I had to choose either way because my mom couldn't do all of these things with all kids (my sisters both chose dance then later rhythmic gymnastics). Sure, I like to see gymnasts who are
good at ballet, just like I like to see girls who are good at gymnastics. But merely taking ballet won't make you good at it, just like taking gymnastics doesn't make all kids much good at it. It will expose you to a greater variety of movement, which will help in any other athletic endeavor. But I took years of ballet and had basically below average optional dance and no great extension. I just wasn't good. It's okay. I was good enough at gymnastics. I have a strong toe point, but it's not from dance. It's because I have high arches, strong feet, and I had a romanian coach who would push my toes down to the floor in pike when I was younger.