Gymnasts HS Gymnastics

[gymnast17]

How big of a commitment is HS gymnastics? I know this varies from state to state and county to county. A teammate of mine who was a level 8 said she had to train 8 hours a week for school. Do us gymnasts have to meet the practice hours requirement for both club and school? I don’t think I can be doing 15.5 hours a week.
I plan on trying out this year and I’m not sure what to expect.

 

[Coach Kate]

My experience both in the area I grew up in (southeastern Wisconsin) and the area I've lived in as an adult (Seattle/suburbs) is that it's pretty much every day (5 days) 2-3 hours a day. The season is relatively short, but it's, in my experience, pretty typical of most high school sports.

At our gym, we were Xcel only and allowed for some modifications to the schedule for the girls who wanted to do high school gym.

 

[mom2newgymnast]

It definitely depends. Maybe you can say what state you are in, so you can get a better idea? My daughter is on her high school team in NC and the practices are only 2x a week, maybe 2 hours? I'm not sure exactly because she almost never goes since she is a level 10 club gymnast. They compete platinum level skills so she usually just does a couple of routines during her club practice and that is all. But I know other states are very different.

 

[GymnastPotterhead]

For my school, non-club gymnasts practice about 2h/week for 1-2 weeks before competition. They are usually gymnasts who retired recently. Club gymnasts (like me) just do some routines in regular practice (no extra practices). We practice 16h/week anyways so it doesn't make sense to add more hours.

 

[Mthegymqueen]

This is will my first year doing high school (and will be an individual athlete), and I will practice 2 extra hours a week for high school with another team. This is mostly due to most of the people in my area doing HS already compete at other gyms, so they don't want to add on too many extra hours, where it is hard to balance both club and HS.

 

[That_Gymnast]

I personally do HS gymnastics but my club coach is also varsity team head coach so it works out well. I do 18hrs a week as a L9, then during HS season I attend the required amount of practices to compete which is about 3 per week but I only participate in one or two since I need the remaining time to do homework.

 

[gymnast17]

So I see it’s around 2-3 days a week for 2 hours. Our club coach requires us to share our practice information with her, so maybe she would be able to be more understanding? Plus I am not competing until after the seasons over.My school doesn’t have a team at the moment, but the athletic director said that we will not be joining another school. I’m assuming that he would just choose the club gymnasts and then have them compete at meets? Is that possible. We don’t have a coach at the moment, and all of th winter sports are already having interest meetings and clinics. Sorry for asking so many questions, I just don’t want to commit to something I know I can’t handle physically (I have a knee injury that kept me out of half the season last year).

 

[HopefulGymnast]

You mention a club coach and an athletic director. Could you ask either of them for a short talk to ask your questions? Make sure you have a short note with bullet points of your questions so you don't forget things.

 

[gymnast17]

I already asked the athletic director and he’s unaware of practice times at the moment. I could try talking to the coach.