MAG I shall conquer you, mushroom!

[rosiekat]

Thought you all might appreciate the doctoring I did on this photo from my son's meet yesterday.

 

[rosiekat]

Oops. Sorry it's so big, I wasn't really sure what I was doing.

 

[gymmomx2]

He will conquer it! It took my son 3 years but he's pretty good at pommel now

 

[MrsAnderson]

I loathe mushroom. Mostly because my son does. He finally FINALLY got past one circle but can still barely (most of time he doesn't) make it to 3 for his routine. Ugh.
Conquer that mushroom, kid!!!

 

[profmom]

My son vanquished and demolished the mushroom, but I think he did too much trash talking in the process, because now the horse has his number big time! But yes, courage -- it will come!

 

[rosiekat]

I loathe mushroom. Mostly because my son does. He finally FINALLY got past one circle but can still barely (most of time he doesn't) make it to 3 for his routine. Ugh.
Conquer that mushroom, kid!!!

Yep. Our fight is getting him to practice the basics consistently so that he can start working on the bonuses (L5). He got the minimum circles down at the end of L4 and over the summer he got pretty decent at them. But because he hates it, he doesn't practice it consistently and so hasn't been able to add on bonuses yet. Everything else he loves, and honestly does excellently to very well in those pretty much all the time. Because of that, he expects to be on the podium for AA all the time, and this season has been sort of confusing for him - he's done well, but not that well. In the 2 weeks since the previous meet, we were able to get him to concentrate and do vault well (he likes it fine, but there's not enough challenge so he tends to be sloppy) and to be consistent on mushroom. He bumped mushroom from 10th to 4th and so placed 1st AA. Now we just have to get him to maintain it!

 

[sce]

Yep. Our fight is getting him to practice the basics consistently so that he can start working on the bonuses (L5). He got the minimum circles down at the end of L4 and over the summer he got pretty decent at them. But because he hates it, he doesn't practice it consistently and so hasn't been able to add on bonuses yet. Everything else he loves, and honestly does excellently to very well in those pretty much all the time. Because of that, he expects to be on the podium for AA all the time, and this season has been sort of confusing for him - he's done well, but not that well. In the 2 weeks since the previous meet, we were able to get him to concentrate and do vault well (he likes it fine, but there's not enough challenge so he tends to be sloppy) and to be consistent on mushroom. He bumped mushroom from 10th to 4th and so placed 1st AA. Now we just have to get him to maintain it!

I'm a bit confused by what you are saying here. "Our fight", "we were able to", "we just ave to".... Who is he dong gymnastics for? Himself or you? Why are you doing so much to get him to concentrate and practice etc? First, it;s great that eh did so well at his last meet. But no one places well all the time and that should not be the focus. Second, who is the "we" that have to get him to maintain anything? He needs to do gym for himself.

Honestly, pushing him when he doesn't want to do it isn't teaching him anything. If he doesn't like to vault or practice mushroom, he needs to learn to do it for himself or not. Maybe not placing well is what he needs to learn that when you don't work hard you don't do well.

 

[rosiekat]

I'm a bit confused by what you are saying here. "Our fight", "we were able to", "we just ave to".... Who is he dong gymnastics for? Himself or you? Why are you doing so much to get him to concentrate and practice etc? First, it;s great that eh did so well at his last meet. But no one places well all the time and that should not be the focus. Second, who is the "we" that have to get him to maintain anything? He needs to do gym for himself.

Honestly, pushing him when he doesn't want to do it isn't teaching him anything. If he doesn't like to vault or practice mushroom, he needs to learn to do it for himself or not. Maybe not placing well is what he needs to learn that when you don't work hard you don't do well.

I totally get you, and realize I didn't explain myself very well. He loves the sport and would live at the gym if he could - I enjoy his love of it but don't have any personal interest in gymnastics, and DH would just as soon he did a different sport (he will always be an athletic person, I think). He's in it because HE loves it. After his first meet this season, he was asking us and his coach what he needed to do to do better, and we were trying to explain how it all works to him. He has expressed to us that he wants to do better and honestly, to be the best. So we're really happy for him at this last meet because he did put the concerted effort into practice, and saw how it did help. I don't care how he places, but like all of us, we appreciate when our kids see the results of hard work, since it's not always evident.

The meme part of it was actually a funny thing I made for him, because he was making the joke about conquering the mushroom. He's totally into superheroes and all that kind of stuff, so he was laughing about it being his nemesis and all.

 

[sce]

The meme is great, I was just observing the language you used when talking about his progress and getting him to practice, focus etc.

 

[rosiekat]

Right, point taken. I don't think I'm "going there," but a reminder to make sure I'm not is always good.

 

[jenjean70]

Our gym has taken the British approach to pommel/mushroom and kills it with numbers. Our kids start practice with hundreds of circles (even if it's one at a time) until they can make 100 consecutively. We had a 9 year old boy do over 500 circles on the mushroom at the Muscle Man competition in September....Crazy! When my son was a level 4 and 5 they didn't do a lot of circles and it was everybody's nemesis. Now our gym consistently wins pommel at most meets. It's all a numbers game.

 

[rosiekat]

We had a 9 year old boy do over 500 circles on the mushroom at the Muscle Man competition in September....Crazy!

Holy guacamole, Batman!

 

[samsmama]

Yikes! That has got to be murder on their wrists.

 

[jenjean70]

Yikes! That has got to be murder on their wrists.

So far we haven't had any kids with wrist problems.

 

[profmom]

I don't want to be a negative Nelly, Jenjean, but our program director and his former collaborator were very much old school lots of circle guys who consistently turned out great pommel workers, but after a recent rash of bad injuries, program director is focusing more on quality of reps and lowering numbers for the optionals. My son trained old school and was a great mushroom worker at L5 and L6 -- and then spent a good bit of his first year of L8 with off and on wrist issues. Even now, when we are going on months without his having had to take several days off horse, he's not back to his former strength on this event The more cautious new regime is helping, but he currently has two teammates recovering from wrist problems. When my son had his troubles last year, we dug into some history, and found more than a few guys from the gym who'd left gymnastics in part or wholly because of wrist injuries. As they get bigger and heavier, if they keep working circles as they are growing, the load on the wrists is tremendous.

If your coaches insist on lots of circles, get your son to work on wrist strengthening exercises now. Rice bucket and theraband several times a week without fail. Pay attention to any significant point tenderness, heat, or redness, and don't waste time getting it checked if he starts complaining of pain. My son had a teammate go to nationals two years ago with sore wrists; the MRI done the week after the meet revealed fractures in the wrist bones for both hands and a fractured ulna. He lost the entire summer and much of the fall. Being the gym's mushroom circle champion at age 9 or 10 will be cold consolation when the kid is 13 - 15 and being told by the orthopedist that he's going to be in a cast for six weeks and then in a brace for months afterward -- or if he is told he's done with gym.

 

[skschlag]

Couldn't agree more with profmom on this one. I think 100s of circles is brutal on those wrists. And by the time it hits...it is too late...they have wrist problems.