Coaches Coaching for the positive

[MamaOf2Gymnasts]

This is from Young Accelerated Group Training - Ask The Gymnastics Coach. Thoughts? And how might this apply when comp girls cheat?

Become the best and most popular coach in the gym by doing the opposite of what most coaches do. Catch your gymnasts doing something right and instantly praise them for it. When you do that, I guarantee they will repeat it and now you and they have the basis to move forward in their gymnastics career. Ignore what you and most other coaches would normally criticize and concentrate on what they do right. No false praise – either real justified praise for progress or good performance or silence from you. Just use positive operant conditioning training that hundreds of behavioral science experiments have proven is the best training method.

 

[Valentin]

Hi,

You know i wish i could say i believe in that?. I think its 100% applicable to younger pre-team gymnasts, its actually a must. But once you are on team, and there are expectations of you, and your coach to produce results, once parental involvement is present, once you have veryyyy limited time and resources to work with, basically unless you are privilaged to work in a environment where all/many major stress factors have been accounted for and removed. You WILL get frustrated.

" Ignore what you and most other coaches would normally criticize and concentrate on what they do right " --- wow that be awesome...can someone please teach me how to do that?

The only way i have seen this achieved is by quite obviously ignoring kids....at instances, and often repeatedly etc.. You can image where that leads to with parents, and results... does not get you very far.. Yeah sure you have 3-4 good kids but you also have 4-5 crappy kids.. Younger kids have been shown to actually respond far better to autocratic coaches, and actually the humanitarian approach has been shown to be quite counter productive towards actual performance results.
So i am just saying that the science does not translate very easily to practice.

My suggestion (which i have learned from error, and failure only) is:
a- When appropriate and possible share responsibility with another coach per group.
b- Keep and active watch on stress and frustrating factors - and IMMEDIATELY find way to circumvent, or eliminate.
c- If you are lucky to be coaching groups of similar age children (rather then levels) coach to the individual, otherwise all i can say is do your best...no good ideas here on this one unfortunately.
d- DO NOT compromise your standards for others, be realistic however, and know what you are after (coaching philosophy).

That is all i got at the moment

 

[niklum]

I think this is very pertinent to behaviors, but it isn't always pertinent to technique, especially when you have team kids. When a girl is arching in her cast and she has a meet coming up, you can't just ignore the arch while praising her for keeping her legs together. She'll take up to .3 for the arch, and let's not forget about her angle, depending on her level. Gymnasts can't always feel their errors, but a kindly-worded correction and drills/spotting to teach her the correct feeling and develop good muscle memory go a long way. We can't ignore bad form or it will beget more bad form. On the other hand, when I have gymnasts behaving badly, I love to point out the person whose behavior I appreciate. Then everyone wants me to say their name in a positive light, which quickly happens.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

the article is good. but too functional. gymnastics is dysfunctional by nature. too many things come along in the development of an athlete where the concept of the article simply won't work. jmo.