Coaches Competitive Coaching at 15

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Hi, I am a gymnast who had to take about a 6-month break from gymnastics due to mental health issues. I recently met back with my head coach/ gym owner to talk about coming back to gymnastics and catching up. He suggested I start coaching pre-team/ bronze to get myself back into the gym and after my shift having time to myself to work on rebuilding my skills. I am 15 years old, and I'd say I have a decent amount of knowledge when it comes to gymnastics and coaching. As this has been something, I've always wanted to coach for as long as I can remember. My question is, how do I go about this? Anything I should know before as I think about taking on this role?
 
I think it's a great idea! I don't recommend coaching as a career, but I highly recommend it as a job!

Here's the main pieces of advice I'll give:

1) Coaching is, before all else, theater. Your first, last, and always most important task as a coach is to captivate your audience. Be big and loud and energetic and cartoonish and fun! Don't be the schoolteacher who stands at the front of the class and drones, be the schoolteacher who gets up and dances on the desk while singing about the subject!
If you're fun and engaging and passionate, your students will hang on your every word and put forth their best effort to learn everything they can from you. If you're boring, you could know literally everything there is to know, and it won't matter because the kids won't care to learn it.
I always say that part of every new coaches' homework should be to watch Jim Carrey or Robin WIlliams comedies. Part of what makes both of these comedians so much fun is that they have huge energy that takes up the entire room. You know for certain that every single person in that room is watching and listening to them, because they have this big cartoonish energy that you can't take your eyes away from.
Coaching is improv theater. Be big, b e loud, be goofy, above all be fun!

2) Be like Simone; take care of your own health, both physical and mental. Good coaching demands a lot of physical energy, but also a lot of emotional energy, and it can take a toll if you let it. While working as a coach, be sure to cultivate non-gymnastics skills, keep non-gymnastics friends, keep up with your non-gymnastics hobbies. Don't let gymnastics become the central thing that everything else in your life revolves around. Gymnastics will take over your entire being if you let it; for the sake of your own mental health, don't let it.

3) Always look two levels ahead. If you're coaching level 3s, keep a keen eye on your gym's level 5s. What do they struggle on? Is there any way you can preempt those struggles with your L3s?

4) There is a very simple formula to effectively train any and every skill you can possibly imagine: break it down into pieces that can be done more easily and more slowly in isolation, and see which pieces need fixing. Then take those pieces, and break them down into pieces, and repeat the process. Once you can't break it down any more, and have optimized all the pieces as best you can, build it back up.
Spoiler: you'll find that if you break them down enough, most skills end up being made of a lot of the same components: hollow, arch, handstand, strength, and visual cues.

5) Develop a basic understanding of Newtonian mechanics, and you'll already be more knowledgeable than a (depressingly) large percentage of coaches. If you can explain conservation of angular momentum in a way that a 7-year-old can understand, you're on your way to being a fantastic coach.
 
Thank you for the advice, I greatly appreciate it. Although I do have a couple more questions if that's ok.
1. Why not coaching as a career? For a long time, I wanted that to be my whole job to progress and eventually become an elite or college coach. Since starting high school, I have found other interests, I'm considering for my career choice (such as CS, or other STEM related careers). I'm just simply interested to hearing your opinion on it.
2. Are there requirements to becoming a competitive coach under USA gymnastics that I will have to do?
3. There are USA gymnastics courses that are available to members 14 years old and up. Would those be worth doing?
 
Thank you for the advice, I greatly appreciate it. Although I do have a couple more questions if that's ok.
1. Why not coaching as a career? For a long time, I wanted that to be my whole job to progress and eventually become an elite or college coach. Since starting high school, I have found other interests, I'm considering for my career choice (such as CS, or other STEM related careers). I'm just simply interested to hearing your opinion on it.

Because it doesn't pay enough for what you put into it. Any other job with comparable physical demands (like any construction trade union) will pay better and have better benefits. Any other job requiring comparable niche technical expertise (any industry-specific engineering, for example) will probably pay a LOT more. Coaching to pay your bills means physically and emotionally pouring out everything you have, and barely making ends meet.

2. Are there requirements to becoming a competitive coach under USA gymnastics that I will have to do?
Your gym should be able to tell you what certs you need, and they should pay for you to get them. I don't recall off the top of my head what's required for minor coaches.

3. There are USA gymnastics courses that are available to members 14 years old and up. Would those be worth doing?
Whatever USAG courses you can get your gym to pay for you to take, you should take.

But beyond basic CPR/First Aid/Concussion training, and obvious stuff like "don't abuse your students," most of the good stuff isn't from USAG, but scattered around various coaches' blogs and Instagrams and youtube channels.
 

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