Coaches Creating effective practices.

[Aero]

Hello fellow coaches. I've been having a blast running my new Xcel team in its first month. It's a great feeling to finally see something take off that you've been creating from the ground up. Anyways, the purpose of this post is a call out to other coaches to see how they generally run there practices. I feel I've been doing a decent job so far of keeping the girls learning and having fun at the same time. However, I am brand new to this, so I figure any advice would be helpful.

Some details about my program and girls:

• It is the only team at my gym.
• My gym is quite small and is basically a rec only gym.
• We have a nice-sized foam pit, along with a trampoline, tumble track, rod floor, spring floor, and bar entering it.
• We do not have a regulation size floor (40' x 40'), nor do we have a full length vault runway.
• I currently have 12 girls.
• The youngest is 5, the oldest are 9.
• Highest difficulty skills being done by some of the girls are round-off back handspring (freshly learned in rec before team and sloppy), stalder press handstand (almost on her own, like 85-90%), free hanging pull over, backward and forward walkovers, standing back handspring, and backward hip circle.
• Practices are held once a week for two hours (will go up to six hours a week in the summer).
• Skill levels range a lot, as well as strength and flexibility.

So, judging from this information, what would be some suggestions to a new coach like me? Also, perhaps you could give a brief rundown of how you run your lower levels, like a skeleton of your structure, perhaps even some specific examples of how you would run a certain series of stations or a tried and true process of teaching a certain skill. I am currently focusing heavily on muscle tension in skills, along with body shapes and other form exercises, including basic dance positions. I'm also reinforcing their basic skills and reteaching certain things with good form and introducing more conditioning and stretching. I plan on competing later this year in the fall.

Thanks for any help you can provide. I really love this resource!

 

[Deleted member 14190]

Hello fellow coaches. I've been having a blast running my new Xcel team in its first month. It's a great feeling to finally see something take off that you've been creating from the ground up. Anyways, the purpose of this post is a call out to other coaches to see how they generally run there practices. I feel I've been doing a decent job so far of keeping the girls learning and having fun at the same time. However, I am brand new to this, so I figure any advice would be helpful.

Some details about my program and girls:

• It is the only team at my gym.
• My gym is quite small and is basically a rec only gym.
• We have a nice-sized foam pit, along with a trampoline, tumble track, rod floor, spring floor, and bar entering it.
• We do not have a regulation size floor (40' x 40'), nor do we have a full length vault runway.
• I currently have 12 girls.
• The youngest is 5, the oldest are 9.
• Highest difficulty skills being done by some of the girls are round-off back handspring (freshly learned in rec before team and sloppy), stalder press handstand (almost on her own, like 85-90%), free hanging pull over, backward and forward walkovers, standing back handspring, and backward hip circle.
• Practices are held once a week for two hours (will go up to six hours a week in the summer).
• Skill levels range a lot, as well as strength and flexibility.

So, judging from this information, what would be some suggestions to a new coach like me? Also, perhaps you could give a brief rundown of how you run your lower levels, like a skeleton of your structure, perhaps even some specific examples of how you would run a certain series of stations or a tried and true process of teaching a certain skill. I am currently focusing heavily on muscle tension in skills, along with body shapes and other form exercises, including basic dance positions. I'm also reinforcing their basic skills and reteaching certain things with good form and introducing more conditioning and stretching. I plan on competing later this year in the fall.

Thanks for any help you can provide. I really love this resource!

==
Best thing you can do is ask one of the top gyms in your area to come and shadow them. Spend one entire day with the pre team and 3's on just bars. If that goes well and they don't mind then add another event the following week. What area of the country do you live in?

 

[Aero]

I live on the East coast, in New Jersey. That's certainly an interesting idea. I've never thought about going outside my gym. You think a gym would just let me come in to do that?

 

[gymisforeveryone]

I learned a lot by watching and discussing with one more experienced coach. Here are the most important things I learned:

1) Different warm ups at different practice days, but same routine every week. We started by having a tumbling / acrobatic (lots of handstands, rolls, handstand hops, cartwheels etc) warm up on Mondays and dance (leaps, jumps, kicks, turns) warm up on Thursdays. Make sure that your warm ups are instructive and at the same time warm the body and prepare it for workout. Now when my girls practice four times a week the warm ups are

- tumbling / acrobatic
- beam basics OR dance OR both (this always includes resistance band kicks on floor)
- cardio (we usually have an obstacle course around the floor. they jump over rails and blocks and hola hoops, do straight jumps of spring board or mini trampoline etc for 15 minutes) and handstand work which includes 1 minute handstand facing a wall, on floor and with a partner supporting. usually we end the warm up by having a handstand contest
- game or running errands and doing sprints and some conditioning on floor

2) Don't make everyone do the same drills! If you for example do floor work try to differentiate the exercises by having wedges, spring boards, panel mats and blocks . Make sure they pass beginner drills before moving forward. For example if you work on back back extension rolls make the younger and weaker ones do them down a wedge to front support or even normal straight arm back rolls. At the same time the higher level gymnast can do the skill down a panel mat and when they can do it perfectly from there you can move them on floor without the mat.

3) Always use skills progressions and be patient! Don't have a child who cannot back handspring on tumble track practice round of back handsprings on floor etc.

4) SIDE STATIONS SAVE LIVES! You can do hundreds of different side stations. Be creative and have a list of them so you can always add some more stations if there is too much standing in line. With the little ones I would have one FUN station, for example falling back into pit or hanging on rings or something like that and a few conditioning stations. If I have 10 kids I always make up at least 5 stations total

5) If you don't have too many bars settings use floor bars and men's parallel bars and sticks for side stations. And on bars you can always have two different stations side by side with little ones on low and high bar. We only have one setting of bars so our practice on bars was usually like
- glide on the left side of low bar
- spotted pullover - cast - back hip circle on the right side of low bar
- hollow and arch holds or changes on the left side of the high bar
- hanging pullover on the right side of the high bar
- floor bar handstand hold and giant drop on the stomach
- pike press hold on parallettes
- straddle press from standing (against spring board / wedge )
- pull ups on high men's parallel bars
- casts on men's parallel bars

6) Make conditioning as fun as possible and do it a LOT

7) The most important thing: PLAN every practice beforehand

 

[gymisforeveryone]

I forgot to mention

8) JAOvideos! They taught me SO much about breaking the skills down and they are absolutely worth seeing. Especially back hip circle, back handspring, handstands, casts, pull overs, kips! http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgyWZMwOZJWIuelkLbpcSNg

 

[BarCoach]

Just want to second going to another gym/coach to shadow. I learned so much that way, just from watching. I also watched many videos (I bought from gym smarts but maybe you can find some to borrow) and read tons. It became my obsession but I did become a much better coach.

 

[iwannacoach]

Just want to second going to another gym/coach to shadow. I learned so much that way, just from watching. I also watched many videos (I bought from gym smarts but maybe you can find some to borrow) and read tons. It became my obsession but I did become a much better coach.

You should be able to find a gym where you can shadow if there's more than one in your area. You should shadow at more than one gym if you get the chance. When you shadow you need to notice what's being done, how it's presented, the level of intensity...... all the way down to the energy brought to the group by the coach and the same contribution from the kids.

Consider what you see as examples and possibilities that may, or not, be of use to you. Just because somebody does something that produces "the desired effect" doesn't mean it's a good fit for you. Think of what you see as information that you can use to your advantage in the same way you would a buffet line...... just because it's there doesn't mean you have to put it on your plate.

One of the factors that determines a group's success is the balance between the skills the coach and kids want to do and the amount of training time available to make that happen. Kids frequently take information in from their surroundings, and as these kids get a bit more savvy they'll notice when there's something out of balance.

A specific example is the amount of time and work it takes to learn a back walkover on beam. That skill is a mile stone for many kids, and being able to do it implies that other skills of slightly higher risk and difficulty are genuine possibilities. The reverse is true when kids with too little training time are asked/allowed to work on skills they don't learn in a reasonable amount of time. The kids will assume their lack of progress is due to their lack of ability, and not make the mental connection that they were destined to failure because they had too few hours to train.

My suggestion is you choose their skillwork carefully to keep things within their grasp and use those successes to build up the groups esteem. You'll be able to teach more difficult skills when your hours go from 2 per week to six. That's a pretty reasonable amount of time for an Exel group, and you'll have a lot of fun with it.

 

[Deleted member 14190]

I live on the East coast, in New Jersey. That's certainly an interesting idea. I've never thought about going outside my gym. You think a gym would just let me come in to do that?

===
Just call the Head coach and ask for permission. But pick a gym that is a good distance from you, so you won't be trading gymnasts ever (50 miles +). And here is a side note,,, My rule is,, If a gym is nice enough to allow me to attend a workout, I will never accept a child from that program, unless the gym says YES PLEASE, (and in that case I probably won't take them because they are problems).. Hope that helps.

 

[gymdog]

You could try contacting Tony Retrosi (probably has info on his site called Gym Momentum). He wants to help all coaches learn developmental gymnastics. He also has a camp each summer you could possibly coach or shadow at. I'm not sure how far his gym (Atlantic Gymnastics) is but it's pretty far, east NH, however his camp is in NY I think.

 

[chalkbowl]

Tony's camp will be near Boston this year:

http://www.gymmomentum.com/gym-momentum-training-camp/

He also does other camps & clinics, always happy to help Most coaches I've spoken with have been very receptive of letting me come & shadow, I've never had any issues. Just reach out and ask!

 

[Deleted member 14190]

Tony is great, very open and helpful.

 

[BarCoach]

I did some shadowing in Tony's gym and he and all his staff were very open and inviting. A wonderful experience. I recommend it!

 

[Aero]

@gymisforeveryone | Thank you so much for the valuable tips! I'll definitely put some of that to practice. I think my problem currently is that I need to create more side stations, especially ones that fit the kids skill levels as universally as possible. I don't quite know what to do yet with the kids that are better as far as mixing them with the kids that need more work. One station will be super easy for one girl, where the next girl it will be just right. You seem to have the right idea with your advice about having more progressive drills that the girls must "graduate" to.

As far as Mr. Retrosi's camp, it says on the Gym Momentum page that his camp is focused on optional level gymnasts level 6 - 10 and elite. I'm sure if I attended the camp I would certainly gain a lot of useful information, but my gymnasts are no where near those levels. Would it be worth it to go to a higher level camp when my girls are still so novice?

 

[iwannacoach]

Gymnastics is based on a set of sound principles that can be applied to skills as basic as a roll back to candlestick and as advanced as the most amazing skills ever done. You may even see a few forward and backward rolls presented to gymnasts that will then be asked to do them to world class perfection. A little after that the same kids will be asked to use the same muscles, or parts of, to do some high intermediate skills.... and up.

The biggest drawback to going to the camp as you've described it is going back to your gym and realizing you gotta wait a few years to teach some of the stuff you saw those basics positions were used for.

Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

 

[PalmTree]

===
Just call the Head coach and ask for permission. But pick a gym that is a good distance from you, so you won't be trading gymnasts ever (50 miles +). And here is a side note,,, My rule is,, If a gym is nice enough to allow me to attend a workout, I will never accept a child from that program, unless the gym says YES PLEASE, (and in that case I probably won't take them because they are problems).. Hope that helps.

What about if you regularly compete against this gym because you live in the middle of nowhere, but their gym is 150 miles away? And they are a National Team Training Center that has turned out Olympians? Do you think it would be okay to ask? I have wanted to shadow their practices for a while but am too intimidated.

 

[Deleted member 14190]

What about if you regularly compete against this gym because you live in the middle of nowhere, but their gym is 150 miles away? And they are a National Team Training Center that has turned out Olympians? Do you think it would be okay to ask? I have wanted to shadow their practices for a while but am too intimidated.

==
Of course. Just ask.

 

[iwannacoach]

I knew a guy who walked into a top gym that regularly put kids onto the national team. He had no experience at all, but that wasn't a problem for the gym owner so he ended up shadowing for a number of months before being asked to stay at the gym in a coaching position. He ended up working with many kids who were quite far along in their efforts to make it to the top, including genuine olympic hopefuls.

That story took place decades ago and may not happen in the same time frame today, but the sentiment of teaching new people remains in many of us no matter how high a level we've coached.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

What about if you regularly compete against this gym because you live in the middle of nowhere, but their gym is 150 miles away? And they are a National Team Training Center that has turned out Olympians? Do you think it would be okay to ask? I have wanted to shadow their practices for a while but am too intimidated.

Donna, Bill, John and Robin would welcome you with open arms. you want their number?

 

[PalmTree]

Ha not the gym I was mentioning! Are you saying Parkettes? I'd love to shadow them too, but they're quite a bit further away!

 

[gymdog]

They also will do clinics btw. If you have a parents association or booster club since it's something only for team they may be able to budget the expense of bringing a coach as a clinician. Sometimes just as cheap as you traveling and staying there, PLUS the. The coach can work with/spot/explain directly with your students and create lessons and drills using the stuff available in your gym.