The gym we are currently at splits some of the levels up. For example one group of level 5s will practice 12 hours a week because they are more talented or because they have a better gymnast body type. The other group will practice about 8-9 hours a week . . . Anybody have any opinions on this?
Well, thanks for asking—I do have an opinion on this. Here it is:
It's quite easy for a concerned parent to feel that dd is somehow being slighted or overlooked by gymnastics coaches; seeing a child relegated to the “less intensive†group might sting. We all want what is best for our daughters. The important question is this: What is best?
Odds are that almost all of those level 5 girls at your gym will leave the sport within a few years, whether they now practice 12 hours each week with the “more talented†group or are relegated to the lower-intensity group and practice 8-9 hours weekly: On average in recent years there have been roughly 17,500 girls competing at that level, compared to the ca. 250 athletes who join an NCAA women's gymnastics team each year; about 85% of the girls who join the JO program leave it by 14 years of age. Accordingly it seems reasonable to try to make a child's experience in gymnastics as positive and enjoyable as possible—long-term success depends on many factors, and some of those factors are clearly beyond the athlete's control. Long training hours certainly increase the gymnastics skills of those rare athletes who survive the orthopedic elimination process and endure to compete at high levels, but I don't think that it's at all clear that, over all, long training hours really benefit the majority of JO competitors—in fact in some ways those long training hours can clearly be detrimental.
Seminal studies by the dean of “expert performance†researchers, Anders Ericsson, showed over two decades ago that long hours of resolutely-focused, deliberate practice sustained over years are the key to developing expertise, and that seems to be as true in gymnastics as it is in chess, mathematics, or music. (For example, the prize-winning young violinists Ericsson studied had by age 18 devoted twice as many hours to solo practice (the most rigorous practice for violinists) as those who grew to become violin teachers.) However, whether it is only a few years or ten or more years from now, your daughter will become a former gymnast, and her expertise in other fields will also depend on how much effort she exerts in those other domains. That raises interesting choices, since each of us is not really trying to produce a gymnast so much as to raise a daughter to become a healthy and happy adult.
