Time with the coach

[sportsmommy]

I have seen several post on here about coach to gymnast ratio. It has led me to be curious about something. At my dds gym she must have very good ratio 6 to 1 on any given night. However, the coaches spend very little time working with the girls individually. She probably spends 10 minutes with the coach at practice 1 on 1. Is this normal? I am curious has to how with a ratio of 15 to 1 how practice runs.

 

[Gymnastfix]

I can say I've had the misfortune to run 15:1 rec gymnastics classes and you get hardly any time with each gymnast. Especially when the session is only an hour long. With warm up and cool down easily taking up half your session there is very limited time to provide feedback on skills. Since most of or drills were done in lines or circuits you could just about watch each gymnast once and shout one point for them to correct before you watched the next gymnast. Vault was the worst to teach in this case, you had a choice of running one vault and have 14 kids waiting for a go or running several vaults and tearing your hair out!

I will add that these sessions were set up by a sports centre who weren't interested in developing gymnasts, just getting as much money through the door as possible. Gymnastics classes was a big seller for them!
Any gymnast I saw with a shred of talent was immediatly given the name of the closest gymnastics club!

 

[wallinbl]

DD's level is currently at a 5:1 ratio (15 girls, 3 coaches). After warmups, they'll split into 3 groups - 1 with each coach. Beam is somewhat simple - there are 10 beams, 5 girls, so everyone gets a beam. The coach is walking around telling them what to work on and is spotting/correcting girls as she walks around. She's giving verbal feedback to the girls she's not directly near at the moment. Bars usually uses a rotation between the low strap bar, the high strap bar, the high bar and the uneven bars. The coach is almost always at the uneven bars spotting and working on form/technique. He's also calling out corrections/instructions to the girls at the other stations. On floor, they're either working drills that require a specific configuration of mats (or TumblTrak), in which case they take turns, or they're doing tumbling on the floor, in which case they're spread out in a line. The coach will correct/spot/work with each of them throughout that rotation. Vault usually involves some drill or actual vaults that are done one at a time.

If you add it up, DD is probably getting 1:1 time a fair bit of practice, but there's rarely a prolonged stretch where a coach is focusing directly on her.

 

[sportsmommy]

That sounds very similar to my dds practice. The only major difference is where her team is 10 to 14 girls to 2 coaches, they dont split up. Her gym doesnt have that much equipment either.

 

[Mack_the_Ripper]

I'm confused as to how exactly a coach would work individually with any given gymnast. At my gym practice works best with a coach who will watch everyone and give them individual advice and corrections, but in a group setting. For example, we'll all be doing routines on beam at our own paces and she might call out "Those jumps were better, Emily!" or "Keep your chest up on the dismount, Robin!" and things like that, and sometimes calls one of us over for more detailed feedback. For somebody watching the practice, it doesn't look like the coach is necessarily interacting with any given gymnast individually, but we find it effective.

We have between a 5:1 and an 8:1 ratio depending on who's injured and things like that. Occasionally we won't break up into groups if a lot of people are gone (the day after a meet, spring break, etc) and will have more like 10:1 or 12:2 in one group. But I don't really understand how your DD could be not getting time with a coach with a 6:1 ratio.

 

[Gymmonkeymomma]

DD's level is currently at a 5:1 ratio (15 girls, 3 coaches). After warmups, they'll split into 3 groups - 1 with each coach. Beam is somewhat simple - there are 10 beams, 5 girls, so everyone gets a beam. The coach is walking around telling them what to work on and is spotting/correcting girls as she walks around. She's giving verbal feedback to the girls she's not directly near at the moment. Bars usually uses a rotation between the low strap bar, the high strap bar, the high bar and the uneven bars. The coach is almost always at the uneven bars spotting and working on form/technique. He's also calling out corrections/instructions to the girls at the other stations. On floor, they're either working drills that require a specific configuration of mats (or TumblTrak), in which case they take turns, or they're doing tumbling on the floor, in which case they're spread out in a line. The coach will correct/spot/work with each of them throughout that rotation. Vault usually involves some drill or actual vaults that are done one at a time.

If you add it up, DD is probably getting 1:1 time a fair bit of practice, but there's rarely a prolonged stretch where a coach is focusing directly on her.

This is how DD's practice works as well. We have 18 optionals split into 2 groups, each with one coach so depending on injury/illness, who needs a 'little extra' on some event, there are usually 7-10 in DD's group. The coaches (5 that coach optionals) rotate depending on event.

 

[Deleted member D3987]

I'm confused as to how exactly a coach would work individually with any given gymnast. At my gym practice works best with a coach who will watch everyone and give them individual advice and corrections, but in a group setting. For example, we'll all be doing routines on beam at our own paces and she might call out "Those jumps were better, Emily!" or "Keep your chest up on the dismount, Robin!" and things like that, and sometimes calls one of us over for more detailed feedback. For somebody watching the practice, it doesn't look like the coach is necessarily interacting with any given gymnast individually, but we find it effective.

We have between a 5:1 and an 8:1 ratio depending on who's injured and things like that. Occasionally we won't break up into groups if a lot of people are gone (the day after a meet, spring break, etc) and will have more like 10:1 or 12:2 in one group. But I don't really understand how your DD could be not getting time with a coach with a 6:1 ratio.

very astute observation, young lady.

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

There's one on one and then there's one on one.

I generally work with groups of 5-8ish kids, depending on the group and the night. How exactly we split everything up varies by event.

On floor, I usually have the kids cross tumbling. I'll give a correction or two, maybe quickly give them a drill to work between turns, then go on to the next kid. So it's one on one, but rarely for more than ten or so seconds at a stretch.

On most other events, there will be stations -- I'll be working most specifically at one station, spotting, giving feedback to a particular gymnast, etc, but I keep an eye on everybody in my group and occasionally call out corrections to kids at other stations, and occasionally even go over to make a quick change if necessary. So in these cases it's probably one to two minutes of 1-on-1 coaching at a stretch, two to four turns per event.

With my boys, I tend to do longer rotations at each event and longer individual turns -- but then, my boys only hit two events per practice, for an hour or so each, whereas my girls hit 4 most practices for 30-45 minutes.

 

[CoachTodd]

If you are talking about a rec class that is about 60mins long and there are 6 kids in the class, 10 mins per kid hands on with the coach is pretty good.
I do most coaching to the entire group while spotting a specific station. I still give corrections to the kids furthest away from where I am while working with the one in front of me.