WAG Continued beam momentum

[B.Gold]

My DD (11 yrs old) has been struggling with her beam connection for several months. There was a point where she was on the cusp of getting it consistently, then lost it over the summer during recovery from a minor injury. Then, some fears have crept in with the advent of puberty. I've tried to be relaxed about it because I know this is a pretty typical skill for a gymnast to struggle with and she will eventually get it.

Her gym event-coaches. My DD has worked primarily with the same beam coach for several years; I like and trust this very experienced, successful coach. But.... ya' know how sometimes another coach can come in, see something different, and have greater success with a kid who has stalled out?

Over the holidays, with coaches taking time with their families, she has had a couple coaching substitutes on events. The substitute beam coach, who the girls rarely see, really resonated with my DD. My DD has progressed more in the last week, on her beam connection, with the sub than she has in months with her regular coach.

I have observed the primary difference between the two coaches is, her regular beam coach counts on the girls to completely self-motivate, while the sub actually pushes my DD along through her fear on high beam. Apparently, my DD responds better to being pushed along a bit. And I've learned, through discussions with my DD, my DD wants to be pushed.

My question is this. Her full time coach will return sometime next week. What can I do from the sidelines to keep the forward momentum going on her connection? I've thought about scheduling some privates with the sub, but I can't bear to insult her regular coach in this way and I won't do it. But I'm certain my DD will lose all this forward progress once the coach returns. Any other thoughts on specific things I can do to help her?

 

[GYM0M]

I think a very experienced coach would understand the privates if explained correctly. But maybe you should ask for a meeting with her regular beam coach to gain her perspective on your DD's progression or lack of. It's been my experience that coaches typically respond well to all situations that are handled correctly and respectfully.

 

[profmom]

Tell your daughter to talk to her coach. At 11, she is old enough to start handling these interactions directly. Is she bothered about the connection? If so, encourage her to take ownership of doing what she wants to do to get it.

My DD, who had a lot of beam issues, says now that she finds pressure sets easier than independent assignments, but she's becoming more practiced at putting the pressure on herself when she needs to get it done. What you don't want is skills happening because the child is more afraid of the coach than the skill, or that can only happen with one particular coach.

 

[gymdilettante]

I agree with profmom...your daughter is old enough to express to her coaches when a certain approach might work better. Your role in that case would be helping your daughter figure out the best way to phrase it (assuming she wants to say anything...I wouldn't push her to if she doesn't). If referring to the sub coachwould cause hard feelings, then she can say something like "I've been really wanting to get my connection down solid so I just wanted to let you know that I've noticed that often when I'm pushed a little when I'm scared, I can usually get past my fear"

Hopefully this would also teach your dd to respectfully express her needs to authority figures which is sometimes hard for girls.

 

[Short Balding Guy]

B.Gold; First congrats on your gymnast making progress! Seeing progress goes a long way to making the series dynamic and aggressive in competition.

I agree with the idea of checking in with your DD's full-time coach. Your DD's full-time coach has gone way done the path, walked/taught/coached the BB series for 360+ days on this difficult task - let her finish the path or have the option to share the path.

In the gym the mental and physical strength to execute the BB series well mirrors the mental and physical strength of other event skills and their connections. I, like most coaches, teach the difficult mental strength in coordination over many events. Lots to consider and without a conversation with the coach an important nuance may be missed. Parents that I speak to only get an interpretation from their athlete, hear snippets of entire workouts or watch from a distance and miss nuances or goals.

Congrats on your gymnasts connecting with the visiting adult coach - that is great! As to learning style. It is important to have athletes develop their proficiency at many learning styles. I find it hard to imagine that your DD's full-time coach does not know how to connect with her athletes. Check with the coach as to what other dynamics are present in the everyday workout.

While I have typed the above, I have many times experienced a visiting coach with an accent, a pretty coach, another teams coach saying mostly what I have been saying (many times same words and analogies/metaphors) and the athletes "getting it." I have learned to shrug my shoulders and celibate the athletes learning moment. Frequently I consider using a different language or adopting an accent in the gym to quit repeating those coach words - arms at your ears/ribs under/hollow/high relieve' ....you get the drift.

The art is to have learning moments frequently.

Best, SBG -

 

[gracyomalley]

Sometimes a different approach works wonders, but my personal caveat would be that with a feared skill, sometimes a kid will "push through" the fear for a visitor...or perform it in certain circumstances to please an individual (NOT THEMSELVES). My kid may be totally different from yours, but she connected BHS-BHS or BWO-BHS beautifully in all meets for 2 season of L7 with tears and panic - never fell or missed, but still has issues with any beam connections...did it for the coach.

She will do series for any coach who she feels close to, and has recently done then for a new coach who pushes the girls - as a challenge. Her HC and I are waiting for her to hopefully get through her vestibular issues and finish growing (likely soon - and topping off at a whopping 4' 9" or so at 12), and for her to do connected series FOR HERSELF. New HC also dropped the difficultly significantly (somewhat to DD dismay) to get her to just practice the feeling of connecting things. When she feels like it she'll do a bunch on low beam these days. Old coach was actually a wonderful beam coach - girls did well and always were "ahead" in beam skills....but the emotional connection OVER the difficult/feared/stuck skill got in the way in the end - DD couldn't figure out what was her issue or separate the gymnastics from the feelings for the coach/skill/failure to "conquer it", etc...perhaps this is why a different coach sometimes makes a big difference - its back to just the gymnastics.

 

[gymdilettante]

Sometimes a different approach works wonders, but my personal caveat would be that with a feared skill, sometimes a kid will "push through" the fear for a visitor...or perform it in certain circumstances to please an individual (NOT THEMSELVES). My kid may be totally different from yours, but she connected BHS-BHS or BWO-BHS beautifully in all meets for 2 season of L7 with tears and panic - never fell or missed, but still has issues with any beam connections...did it for the coach.

She will do series for any coach who she feels close to, and has recently done then for a new coach who pushes the girls - as a challenge. Her HC and I are waiting for her to hopefully get through her vestibular issues and finish growing (likely soon - and topping off at a whopping 4' 9" or so at 12), and for her to do connected series FOR HERSELF. New HC also dropped the difficultly significantly (somewhat to DD dismay) to get her to just practice the feeling of connecting things. When she feels like it she'll do a bunch on low beam these days. Old coach was actually a wonderful beam coach - girls did well and always were "ahead" in beam skills....but the emotional connection OVER the difficult/feared/stuck skill got in the way in the end - DD couldn't figure out what was her issue or separate the gymnastics from the feelings for the coach/skill/failure to "conquer it", etc...perhaps this is why a different coach sometimes makes a big difference - its back to just the gymnastics.

Wow very on point. .. that all makes a lot of sense. I think the point about doing something for a new person could definitely be a factor. I also think that the idea of doing your skills for you - not for a coach or a parent or to win or be the first to get the skill on your team - is important but at the same time sometimes you need that external factor to get you over the hump. It's a bit of a balance because too much reliance on coach's approval or winning or being the best on the team can definitely backfire but those external factors can drive one to better oneself in those moments when the intrinsic motivation isn't there.

Op, is this a question your daughter came to you with? Did she notice a difference between the coaches and express a desire to have her coach be more like the sub coach? If not perhaps it is best to let it go for now.

 

[B.Gold]

Op, is this a question your daughter came to you with? Did she notice a difference between the coaches and express a desire to have her coach be more like the sub coach? If not perhaps it is best to let it go for now.

I don't watch any practices so all of this has come directly from my DD. @Short Balding Guy you may be right I may be missing some nuance. but yes, she has expressed to me she wished her regular beam coach's style was more like the subs.

I read your advice @profmom this morning and LOVED it. After practice I had a conversation with her throwing it back in her lap. She had the sub again today and is currently so fired up about her connection that she is more than willing to have her own conversation with her regular coach on what she needs from her. I'm really proud she was open to the suggestion.

 

[B.Gold]

Sometimes a different approach works wonders, but my personal caveat would be that with a feared skill, sometimes a kid will "push through" the fear for a visitor...or perform it in certain circumstances to please an individual (NOT THEMSELVES). My kid may be totally different from yours, but she connected BHS-BHS or BWO-BHS beautifully in all meets for 2 season of L7 with tears and panic - never fell or missed, but still has issues with any beam connections...did it for the coach.

She will do series for any coach who she feels close to, and has recently done then for a new coach who pushes the girls - as a challenge. Her HC and I are waiting for her to hopefully get through her vestibular issues and finish growing (likely soon - and topping off at a whopping 4' 9" or so at 12), and for her to do connected series FOR HERSELF. New HC also dropped the difficultly significantly (somewhat to DD dismay) to get her to just practice the feeling of connecting things. When she feels like it she'll do a bunch on low beam these days. Old coach was actually a wonderful beam coach - girls did well and always were "ahead" in beam skills....but the emotional connection OVER the difficult/feared/stuck skill got in the way in the end - DD couldn't figure out what was her issue or separate the gymnastics from the feelings for the coach/skill/failure to "conquer it", etc...perhaps this is why a different coach sometimes makes a big difference - its back to just the gymnastics.

Up until now my DD skill progression has been fairly easy. This is the first time she has had to mentally work through a skill and I feel she is at a cross roads to determine if she really has the mental chops for this sport. I have always said if fear and panic sets in preventing my DD from progressing on any event I would strongly encourage her to move on and try another sport.

How long are you, (and other parents) willing to help your DD through her fears before saying "enough is enough"? What are the signs that it's time to pitch it in?

 

[B.Gold]

^^^ sorry gracyomalley this wasn't to pick on you. Your response triggered this question that I always have in the back of my mind regarding this sport. Maybe I'll start a new thread to get more responses.

 

[gymmomtoo]

Up until now my DD skill progression has been fairly easy. This is the first time she has had to mentally work through a skill and I feel she is at a cross roads to determine if she really has the mental chops for this sport. I have always said if fear and panic sets in preventing my DD from progressing on any event I would strongly encourage her to move on and try another sport.

How long are you, (and other parents) willing to help your DD through her fears before saying "enough is enough"? What are the signs that it's time to pitch it in?

I'd give her as much time as she wants. If she starts saying it's not fun and she wants to quit then we'd look for other sports. With that said my girls had to decide each may whether to continue with team. My older dd would struggle with new skills and fears end of summer and want to quit but she kept her commitment and by spring she was back to loving it. When spring came and she still wanted to quit then she did!

 

[gracyomalley]

No worries I didn't feel picked on! DD had never had fears and progressed well (l7 at age 10) until the series issue. But puberty and rapid growth, as well as rotating coaching changes/loss, occurred at same time. This fall DD took almost 2 months off. I encouraged her to go back when she realized there was nothing else she wanted to do and that she didn't feel "done" with gym. I'm letting her make her own choice about whether to compete at all this year (she's not at this point) and her coaches are giving her time to train what she feels up to - she's slowly working back to full L7 skills, and a little dabbling in the stuff she needed to perfect for L8 - still quite a few hang ups but each step she's taken has been her own choice.

I do, as a mom, feel that "this can't go on forever", both financially, and because it won't be healthy longterm if she doesn't get back to "full participation". There are so many psychologic challenges with being 12 alone; add in a high pressure sport and the temperment that goes with it, and for my DD the journey has been one toward added confidence at this point - I certainly hope that translates into her being able to master all those skills and more, but my real goal with this is that she finish gymnastics (whenever she is truely ready) feeling like she's learned to take on challenges, get through hard times, understand her limitations, and make conscience decisions about how she approaches them. We are in a small state in a small region, and gym/coaching options are quite limited. There are no Elites within 200 miles, and only 2 kids have gone on to college gym from this area in the last 10 years - BUT 2 have! So, its not about getting to the Olympics here (even for kids with much more talent than mine), but about so much more.

For my DD pressure from outside made both her challenges worse, but also made her unsure of if she even liked gymnastics at all - she needed to see for herself - and I am grateful she now has a coach that left all doors open for her - and friends who have been very mature in trying to understand her choices. Each kid will be different in what works for them - but although its key to let them know that what they decide about gym is their choice, its also key to guide them through the issues involved. I wish the best for all, this tween/teen thing is hard!

 

[Short Balding Guy]

B Gold; Gracyomallery's post and your response have triggered in me the desire to contribute again. What has gymnastics given my daughter and when to "pitch it in?"

My gymnasts and I have a day off today! I am home in my study completing workout planners for 2015 (and working on a presentation I will give shortly to a U.S.A. corp. 15 Development Team.) I have been thinking about your post this morning. Truthfully, I have a couple of athletes who are, mostly similar, struggling with BB series and it brings me back to your post.

Today I am focused on long-term goals so I offer the following addition to this thread:
I know and hopefully have communicated clearly to our clients (parents) that on BB, a reduced FX surface of 5M long and 10cm wide, that the gymnast learns acute concentration. The concentration is acute thru learning focus on parts. I do see a large part of my daily efforts teaching/coaching focus & concentration. Athletes who master this work thru the different USA-G levels and skills, including series are successful at gymnastics and life.

Gymnastics BB skills, at the levels we are speaking to, equip you with skills that will get you a job. I retired from senior management in a U.S.A. corp. 50 company (more than 10 years ago) and would put a resume from a gymnast who went the distance on top of a 'Hire" pile. Concentration and focus have been proven over time. Probability is high that when pressure increases they will be consistently high performers. I speak on occasion to Corp. Management Teams and emphasize these learned traits as being valuable to building success in the business world. I will include in my next presentation a vid of an athlete thru the stages of learning and performing a double back on FX. I have a vid compilation over 2 years that show the beginning drills, TT, FX work, attempts, progressing, 1 st comp and Regional competition performance. Building - almost all get the point and see the focus and concentration over a long span of time. Back to gymnastics...

When to pitch it in? Gymnasts should retire when they have given it their all and are not progressing. Those who are charged with their best interests and care should assist with the teenage mind on defining "all" and "progressing." "All" is a coach and parent understanding, coordinating with the athlete. "Progressing" is mostly a coach and athlete understanding and a parent recognition.

I read from this thread that your daughter is progressing and putting effort and passion at the sport - not time to "pitch it in." When to "pitch it in," all three (coach/athlete/parent) will know.

As to coaching/teaching tactics I am confident that with your HC being a professional, a conversation with your observation of improvement and the methods/tactics used will be helpful and elicit change. Parents have a tough job and almost all the coaches I come into contact with respect and do listen. A visiting coach "pushing your daughter thru fear on BB" is part of the art of coaching and I, like most coaches, enjoy being a better artist or at least a learning adult.

Best and Happy New Year to you and your DD, SBG -

 

[B.Gold]

No worries I didn't feel picked on! DD had never had fears and progressed well (l7 at age 10) until the series issue. But puberty and rapid growth, as well as rotating coaching changes/loss, occurred at same time. This fall DD took almost 2 months off. I encouraged her to go back when she realized there was nothing else she wanted to do and that she didn't feel "done" with gym. I'm letting her make her own choice about whether to compete at all this year (she's not at this point) and her coaches are giving her time to train what she feels up to - she's slowly working back to full L7 skills, and a little dabbling in the stuff she needed to perfect for L8 - still quite a few hang ups but each step she's taken has been her own choice.

I do, as a mom, feel that "this can't go on forever", both financially, and because it won't be healthy longterm if she doesn't get back to "full participation". There are so many psychologic challenges with being 12 alone; add in a high pressure sport and the temperment that goes with it, and for my DD the journey has been one toward added confidence at this point - I certainly hope that translates into her being able to master all those skills and more, but my real goal with this is that she finish gymnastics (whenever she is truely ready) feeling like she's learned to take on challenges, get through hard times, understand her limitations, and make conscience decisions about how she approaches them. We are in a small state in a small region, and gym/coaching options are quite limited. There are no Elites within 200 miles, and only 2 kids have gone on to college gym from this area in the last 10 years - BUT 2 have! So, its not about getting to the Olympics here (even for kids with much more talent than mine), but about so much more.

For my DD pressure from outside made both her challenges worse, but also made her unsure of if she even liked gymnastics at all - she needed to see for herself - and I am grateful she now has a coach that left all doors open for her - and friends who have been very mature in trying to understand her choices. Each kid will be different in what works for them - but although its key to let them know that what they decide about gym is their choice, its also key to guide them through the issues involved. I wish the best for all, this tween/teen thing is hard!

Your DD is exceptionally lucky to have both such a supportive mom and supportive coach. It sounds like you have done everything to create an environment where she will be able to find success.

 

[B.Gold]

B Gold; Gracyomallery's post and your response have triggered in me the desire to contribute again. What has gymnastics given my daughter and when to "pitch it in?"

My gymnasts and I have a day off today! I am home in my study completing workout planners for 2015 (and working on a presentation I will give shortly to a U.S.A. corp. 15 Development Team.) I have been thinking about your post this morning. Truthfully, I have a couple of athletes who are, mostly similar, struggling with BB series and it brings me back to your post.

Today I am focused on long-term goals so I offer the following addition to this thread:
I know and hopefully have communicated clearly to our clients (parents) that on BB, a reduced FX surface of 5M long and 10cm wide, that the gymnast learns acute concentration. The concentration is acute thru learning focus on parts. I do see a large part of my daily efforts teaching/coaching focus & concentration. Athletes who master this work thru the different USA-G levels and skills, including series are successful at gymnastics and life.

Gymnastics BB skills, at the levels we are speaking to, equip you with skills that will get you a job. I retired from senior management in a U.S.A. corp. 50 company (more than 10 years ago) and would put a resume from a gymnast who went the distance on top of a 'Hire" pile. Concentration and focus have been proven over time. Probability is high that when pressure increases they will be consistently high performers. I speak on occasion to Corp. Management Teams and emphasize these learned traits as being valuable to building success in the business world. I will include in my next presentation a vid of an athlete thru the stages of learning and performing a double back on FX. I have a vid compilation over 2 years that show the beginning drills, TT, FX work, attempts, progressing, 1 st comp and Regional competition performance. Building - almost all get the point and see the focus and concentration over a long span of time. Back to gymnastics...

When to pitch it in? Gymnasts should retire when they have given it their all and are not progressing. Those who are charged with their best interests and care should assist with the teenage mind on defining "all" and "progressing." "All" is a coach and parent understanding, coordinating with the athlete. "Progressing" is mostly a coach and athlete understanding and a parent recognition.

I read from this thread that your daughter is progressing and putting effort and passion at the sport - not time to "pitch it in." When to "pitch it in," all three (coach/athlete/parent) will know.

As to coaching/teaching tactics I am confident that with your HC being a professional, a conversation with your observation of improvement and the methods/tactics used will be helpful and elicit change. Parents have a tough job and almost all the coaches I come into contact with respect and do listen. A visiting coach "pushing your daughter thru fear on BB" is part of the art of coaching and I, like most coaches, enjoy being a better artist or at least a learning adult.

Best and Happy New Year to you and your DD, SBG -

Wow, how interesting it would be to watch a video of the two year progression toward a difficult skill. It would put into perspective the hard work and dedication of gymnast and coach.

Your response is precisely what I needed to hear. (I've read it at least 5 times already) What I'm getting is that ultimately, it's not the actual elusive BHS/BHS connection that is so important, but the trials getting there that matter and those trials are what will build strength and character in the gymnast. In addition, you're saying it will be very obvious when the time comes to pitch it in, not only to her coaches but to my DD and me as well. That's reassuring to hear.

The only true fear I have regarding gymnastics is all the opportunities my DD will miss out on continuing to be a gymnast. But you make a very strong case, having had the opportunity to hire gymnasts as adults, that it's a risk worth taking. Thank you for putting so much thought into this post.