Parents Taking on Corrections

[Gymnast2017]

My daughter is 7.5 years old and has been training for prep 1, with a competition squad for the past six weeks. Before this she was a recreational gymnast for four years.

I’m finding that she is really struggling to take in the corrections she’s being given. In the past six weeks she’s gone from gym just being a bit of a laugh to training nine hours per week and having a set routine on every piece. I’m not sure if this is the reason why, but it just seems she is not in her head at all.

For example I’ve just watched a private session, where the coach has told her to stop twisting her hips on her straight jumps on beam. She told her, showed her how it needed to look and then supported her to do one. Yet she immediately goes back to twisting her hips on her next go. Again she is told, again she twists her hips. After maybe 5/6 times of being told, she’ll do one without twisting her hips but will then have her arms doing something crazy instead.

It’s quite painful to watch, and with so much to catch up on already, I’m worried she won’t progress quickly enough to stay in this team.

Is this normal at this age? It seems the others aren’t as far behind so it’s hard to tell if they can take corrections, as they’re not given anywhere near as many!

 

[rd7]

It sounds like the coach might be trying to correct everything at the same time? After 4 years of rec your daughter will have a lot of habits that are going to take a while to fix. This is because it's muscle memory. How many different corrections is your daughter getting each training session? If it's a lot then mentally it's very tiring because you have to concentrate to change things. Sounds like she is also learning routines on top of that?

Prep 1 is very basic skills and I'm sure your daughter will be fine. They wouldn't have moved her into squad if they didn't see something in her. She many not be a superstar in her first grade but being the best at Prep 1 is no indicator of future success.

Nine hours is a good amount of hours for Prep 1, why does the coach feel that she needs private lessons as well? Sounds exhausting for your daughter. Has she managed to correct any of her habits? If yes then celebrate those and with patience the other things will come in time.

 

[Gymnast2017]

Yeah pretty much! It just seems like a lot for a small brain! The privates are not essential, just encouraged. My daughter seems to take things on board better with fewer distractions, so I’ve let her have a few. There’s also extra sessions most weeks. It brings her average hours to about 12 per week. Though she does a lot of hours, I’m not sure the time is used effectively by the gym, hence the slow progress… half of every three hour session is conditioning