Women Coach search

[Peejflow]

I’m a parent looking for insight. We are in Central Texas and have been at a few gyms over the years. There seems to be difficulty finding coaches with experience to coach higher levels. Gyms are able to find rec coaches, but not for team.
Is there a lack of availability? Or is it like education, where teachers feel undervalued and have switched careers? Something else?

 

[Rookie Gym Coach]

I'm not sure, but I think optionals/higher level coaching requires a certain level of expertise that isn't easily found. They need to have the strength and coordination to spot higher level skills on teenage bodies, as well as they need to know how to coach the higher-level skills that are much more dangerous.

Another thing to note, is most rec coaches or high school or college students. They work part-time or temporarily for the money, but it isn't their desired career. Not a lot of people want to be a career coach. Most high-level coaches are career coaches, and high school/college students can probably coach lower-level team, but not optionals.

 

[ryanolympian]

Howdy! Texas has produced some awesome gymnasts over the years, but it is such a big state that the gyms are few and far between. There’s a number of reasons for the lack of qualified coaches. In a nutshell, the pay is low, the work is hard, and melodrama is all over the gyms. Imagine, after a long day at work (many top gymnasts go into engineering or medical fields), you need to cram another 4 hours of hauling mats around for drills, raising your voice to be heard above the noise, repeating heavy lift spots, and occasionally saving a life. It’s rough! And when we decide to have a family, there’s a choice to make between a second job at the gym or time for our own children; unless we start our own gym. I tried this, but it turned out I was the only gymnast in the family and had to let it go. By the time our kids are driving themselves and free time has returned, most people have forgotten our names from national team rosters and our old coaches have retired, so who’s to vouch for our ability? All that said, finding a great coach is worth it. I moved across states for mine. Find a gym with a coach that has consistently created National team members and champions. Avoid trendy gyms and vampiric gym-mom-organizations. All the best.

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

It's... kind of a known problem with this industry that coaches don't get paid anything close to what the work feels like it should be worth.

Other fields with comparable physical demands (such as construction) pay considerably better. Other fields requiring comparable amounts of niche technical expertise (pick an engineering or maintenance niche) pay considerably better.
Even other fields requiring similar levels of pedagogical skill such as teaching -- while they may not pay a lot better -- at least have unions and the protections and benefits that come with them.

I think this is partially the result of being in an industry where the colossal majority of money to be made ISN'T in the high-level stuff, but in the bottom levels. If you're running a gym, your profits come from your rec classes, which can be covered by any high schooler with bare bones gymnastics knowledge. From a pure business perspective, the competitive team (and thus your best and highest-paid coaches) are basically just the marketing department. The unfortunate reality is that if you're a gym owner, there's really not much return on investment for hiring top-notch coaches.