Anon Concerned for 5yr old insta gymnast

[Anonymous Post]

Not sure if this is allowed, so please let me know if it is or not and I'll delete this.

I've recently been seeing a 5 year old girl who's name starts with a K (don't wanna give out her first name) on Instagram with a whopping 18.5k followers on her public account. I am not a big fan of these accounts for multiple reasons, but usually I mind my business and scroll along.

But what really caught my eye is how alarming and potentially dangerous her form is. There are several videos of her doing back tucks on beam with no set and landing extremely low, and her doing cast handstands with very poor form (that honestly looks very harmful to her shoulders and back) And there's even a video of her doing back twisting skills with no set and still twisting when she lands (I fear for her ankles)

The taker here is that all of this is done inside of their house. A set of bars, a floor beam, a high beam, a tumble track, and a trampoline, all in her house. All of the equipment reminds me of another gymnast deemed an "future olympic" who appeared on Ellen twice and I'd hate to see this girl go down a path of burn out and hatred towards the sport. Idk if I'm looking too far into this (someone PLEASE let me know if I am) but I'm just concerned this girl is going to injure herself or burn herself out. I've heard of too many cases where things like this happens...

 

[Anonymous Post]

Yup, sounds like a surefire path to burnout if she's lucky and injury if she's unlucky.

And you know it's all the parents' doing. Doubt it meets any legal criteria for exploitation, but that's absolutely what it is.

Unfortunately, I doubt there's much that can be done about it.

 

[Anonymous Post]

Exactly, and it's so frustrating. I've seen very little comments pointing this issue out too, but when I do see one, the comment isn't taken well by others. Today I even saw a USAG Judge giving her tips on her form and informing the parents that she may not be ready for these skills and someone responded "she's 5- let her have fun" ....like yeah let her have fun until the poor girl injuries herself doing skills she's not ready for :/

 

[gymgal]

I don't think there is anything you can do. You could possibly comment on it but from what I have seen with others, you will just get flamed and then blocked and it won't change anything. My recommendation is to stay away from these accounts. The more you watch these the more others will show up on your feed. I watched a few of these one time while trying to find a girl that was mentioned here. After that, all I seemed to get were suggestions for more of the same. It was so frustrating. Took weeks for my feed to settle back down.

 

[Anonymous Post]

That particular little girl came up as a topic of discussion here before. It's a shame, but there is absolutely nothing to be done but shake your head and hope it turns out okay for this child. When gymnastics is over- and I'm guessing sooner rather than later due to injury or burnout, her Instagram page will go on featuring her with the next thing- acting, modeling, singing, etc. Sadly, there have always been parents eager to exploit their child's precocious talent and/or looks.

 

[Anonymous Post]

Oh I know the account. I watch enough elite gymnastics on Insta so that it loves to recommend little instagymmies in my feed and that particular account is…..a lot.

To be positive, I will say the kid seems genuinely into it, and seems to have a lot of raw talent. And she’s extremely cute.

But the rest is a worry. All that pressure on her very young joints. No sense of pacing whatsoever, skills being chucked long before they are ready. There were some very scary handspring videos a while back, with her elbows buckling and her head getting awfully close to the ground. What is really interesting is the unevenness of it all. Big skills are being chucked, but basics are missing - if you look at her dance during routines it looks like any random five year old’s would, as do her vault runs etc. Basically if it doesn’t look good for the ‘gram, it doesn’t seem to be a priority which makes one suspect that the conditioning required to create the protective strength to make the big skills safe possibly isn’t a priority.

To me it seems like mum has a pretty dolly to dress up for pageants and photograph flipping and tumbling. I suspect there is a lot of love there, possibly just not enough contemplation of the future.

What I think most darkly about is the gym. A big high profile gym. They know better and they are enabling this. You’d think that this gym, especially, would be all about not allowing their gymnasts to do big skills that aren’t yet ready.

 

[Anonymous Post]

Oh geez.

The insta/YouTube gymmie trend has taken off in recent years. No matter what we do parents will be posting their gymnasts on social media. I wouldn't do it, but it will happen. And there's no harm and a lot of fun watching little Suzy do her first back handsprings. Even more fun if little Suzy ends up being a really good gymnast in 10 years. However there is a lot of harm in little Suzy chucking skills that are unsafe.

You don't know the girl personally, there is not much you can do. Unfortunately, if coaches and parents enable home training and unsafe tricks it will go on for a few years before in most cases the poor girl is injured or just uninterested. Maybe you could leave a comment on her page-??? May not do much but worth a shot???

These are the kind of people that need to hear that there is no rush to Level 10. These are the kind of people, however, that don't want to hear that, and for the most part are not on chalkbucket.

A very unfortunate situation, but out of your control.

 

[Anonymous Post]

Oh geez.

The insta/YouTube gymmie trend has taken off in recent years. No matter what we do parents will be posting their gymnasts on social media. I wouldn't do it, but it will happen. And there's no harm and a lot of fun watching little Suzy do her first back handsprings. Even more fun if little Suzy ends up being a really good gymnast in 10 years. However there is a lot of harm in little Suzy chucking skills that are unsafe.

You don't know the girl personally, there is not much you can do. Unfortunately, if coaches and parents enable home training and unsafe tricks it will go on for a few years before in most cases the poor girl is injured or just uninterested. Maybe you could leave a comment on her page-??? May not do much but worth a shot???

These are the kind of people that need to hear that there is no rush to Level 10. These are the kind of people, however, that don't want to hear that, and for the most part are not on chalkbucket.

A very unfortunate situation, but out of your control.

 

[JBS]

I think it’s strange to post this much stuff for a 5 year old… but I really don’t see anything that would be considered that dangerous. I only looked at a few posts… but gymnastics is dangerous in general. All I really see is some basic bars and some back tucks.

The cast handstand is great… having a 5 year old that can cast handstand is always a bonus.