Parents Hi - New Here! How many coaches does your child have?

[EastCoast]

Hi All
My dd is training on a pre-team 3 days per week/2 hrs each day. (6hrs total). She previously had 1 coach that she was close to who left the gym in the fall. She now has a different coach each practice day (3 coaches). Is this normal? I have seen a tremendous decline in motivation from her since the schedule shift. The communication with parents has severely suffered as well. Thanks for any feedback you can provide. Looking forward to getting to know everyone here!


EastCoast
DD 7yo pre-team, DS 9yo tumble/trampoline

 

[cher062]

technically she has 2 coaches but all the team coaches work together. so on days where the lower levels are practicing they will each take an event and rotate the teams through. There are a total of 6 team coaches between L4 - 6, L 7- 8 and Prep Op.

 

[Gymnasticgrandkids]

Welcome to the CB...and to answer your question, our girls have a different coach for each rotation...although all the coaches can teach any of the rotations, they seem to specialize in the one they teach regularly.

 

[emorymom]

We had that situation on our previous home school swim team. 3 coaches took turns coming in for practice. It wasn't ideal IMO. But you take what you can get if everything else is good.

Currently DD does 2 x 3 hours and there are about 15 girls in her group and 3 coaches that work all at the same time -- at gym. At our new swim team she has 2 coaches and usually it is both but sometimes it is one or the other.

 

[2littlegymnasts]

DD's gym has 6 coaches. Her team(level 1) has 3 coaches that they work with on a regular basis. Sometimes the head coach will work the girls if he thinks they need a little more help. The other two will fill in if the regulars are not there.

 

[maddiemei]

My DD has about 6 coaches. Most of the time they are all there. They do it so that all of the coaches get to know the girls. It works out really well. It's so that if a particular coach can't make it to the meet, then another coach who knows the girls is able to step in. Our gym host a lot of meets and most everyone is busy with that, but there is always a coach there who knows the girl and their little quirks . My DD loves it. When you ask if she has a favorite, she says yes and then she ends up naming them all.

At our old gym there were 2 coaches - a husband and wife. The husband would mostly do bars/vault and the wife would do floor/beam. It was kind of hard during practice because they had about 3 levels at the same time. The level my DD was on would always get shafted and end up with the mother of one of the girls who was on another level. She was a part time coach.

 

[marie83]

Hi, Welcome to the CB!

At our club, team gymnasts seem to have 2 coaches - usually 1 highly qualified one and an 'assistant' who is qualified at a lower level. We like to have consistent coaching, so we only allow coaches to attend team practices if they can commit to all 4 days (unless they are one of the lower qualified coaches - some of those do all 4 days, others will do only 1 or 2)

We have noticed that the girls really don't benefit from having different coaches on different days as they are told different things by each one and there isn't much consistency in what they are learning, unless it is very well planned and both coaches stick to the plan!!

 

[lhmom]

Welcome! At my daughter's gym, they have 4 coaches (that includes the head coach) for the team. Two of those coaches also work with the pre-team girls several days a week. When my daughter is there, all four coaches are there and the levels rotate to each coach (one works beam, other bars, etc.). Hope this helps!

 

[UnoMas]

Our gym has about 7 coaches. My younger daughter typically has one coach for two days, another coach for 1 day, and yet another coach the other day. My older daughter usually has one coach 2-3 days and another coach the other 1-2 days. Our head coach only works with optionals. I don't love the daily change in coaches...it seems like they may be hearing different things from different coaches and I think that makes it especially hard on my younger daughter. Also, there are at times different expectations among coaches. My younger DD will do certain things by herself for certain coaches but is content to let other coaches spot her or help her.

 

[Dezi]

My dd has one head coach who oversees every thing and a beam and floor coach, vault coach and a bars coach. So a total of 4.

 

[Bajanswife]

At our gym there are generally 3 main coaches for the team, 1 coach who mainly does rec but he will assist with team when needed, and one assistant coach who is working with the L2 and L3 teams. There are a bunch of other assistants that work with rec groups.

The owner and head coach has taken DD's L4 group under her wing and is mostly coaching them completely, on everything. This was a conscious decision by the HC because they were only borderline ready to move up to L4 in September, and she wanted to work with them to get them up to scratch.

Being with one coach only has its advantages (she knows them very well on all the equipment), but also its drawbacks - DD did bars the other day with one of the other team coaches, and he was getting some performances out of them with negative incentives. Their regular coach tends to use more positive incentives (e.g. tattoos). Both can work, but I think they work better overall when mixed up i.e. the girls will get immune to the "treats" they can earn after a while, but if you throw in some push-ups for sloppy work and some competition, it shakes them up a bit.

There is one other drawback to being trained by the owner/HC - she's often being distracted by parents who need to speak to her, pay her etc. Her phone rings or she gets texts, and she can't afford to ignore them all the time because she has a business to run. The other coaches can give 100% attention most of the time. She cannot afford to hire anyone to take care of the admin functions of the gym - it would cause our gym fees to get too high, and she wants to keep gym as accessible to as many kids as possible.

 

[twoofthem]

We have 14 total from pre-team to lvl 10. One coach and asst for our pee-wee group, 4 for our A/B team (who also do lvl 4), 3 others for lvl 5 (3 of them do lvl 6), 4 for lvl 6 though often the optional coaches will coach or jump in for this group, 7-10 have a group of 6 coaches. Some of the parents feel we do not have enough coaches for the size of our team, which at last I heard was 120 girls total. Though they do offer 2-3 training sessions for the 7-10's so that group gets broken up.