Wow! You sound like a great coach! I wish I had known about this and my son's coaches had known about this before he went through his super freak out last year and had issues the three years prior. I think he is working through them well now and going for new skills he is afraid of so that is a positive...but this information could have saved a lot of heart ache!
He is.
The lesson here is , it’s natural to get depressed, it’s natural question your body, it’s natural to question your mind, oh and... never give upI was a gymnast, and coaching is fun . That's pretty much it.
Privates can help for sure. And yes practice can overcome a natural aptitude for a skill. Gymnastics is pretty unnatural.
Again, apologies for all my running sentences and grammar.
Injury and Mental Rehab
Injuries are a part of any sport so thousands of articles exist about this topic. I am going to share what we do when a gymnast sustains a long term injury. My definition of a long term injury would be a break, surgery, tear, or anything that puts the kid out for at least a couple months. Everything I am sharing is about keeping them in, I will not be going over any medical advice.
It is very important in my opinion to make sure the child is in the gym every single day for workout. They should be present for at least half the workout. During this time they do some conditioning / flexibility (whatever body part isn’t injured). And most importantly they will be watching and learning simple technique. My motto when they get injured is… “you are going to get better at something while you are injured, and gain knowledge at the same time”.
I will also ask them to go to the meets so they feel that connection to the team. Think about it, ever see an injured football player not on the sidelines during a game? So send them to the meets with another parent if you don’t want to torture yourself with music. J This is important!
Okay so those are the nuts and bolts, now lets talk about the mental aspect of it all. I am very upfront with the kids and parents. We talk about the depression that goes along with injury, because it is very real. (not all kids go through this) We talk about how normal it is to be depressed and to just come to us and talk about it. I use analogies like, “A child with a serious injury is very much like a child floating in the middle of a pool, slowly sinking. Our job is to stand on the side of the pool and encourage them to swim to us. If need be we will come in and get you, we will not let you fail”. It is common for athletes with long term injuries particularly bad ones to second guess continuing . I always ask parent to be absolute and tell the kids this. “no you loved gym prior to your injury and the ("johnsons") do not quit when we are injured. You will come back and then we can address quitting if you still want to, but until then… Not a chance”. Obviously its up to the parents to take this approach or not. If they are not willing to do this then our odds just went the wrong way.
Mental Rehab, Getting an injured athlete to wake up and return to full capacity takes time. I engage in several conversations with them about this, during rehab and when the time is right (physically and mentally) I tell them to wake up! I really do. It kind of helps them to push and reassures them that they are better now.
As a coach we have soo many stories of very talented kids who suffer season ending injuries and no one to share them with So here is one story that I would like to share.
I started coaching Kendal when she was 6. We brought her up from preteam all the way to level 10. She was generation 2 of our program so we were pretty proud of her and a few others that joined her. Kendal was on top of her game, she was Western national champion on vault, 2nd all around, then went 10 and won beam and Vault at state … colleges were all looking at her big time. Until.. Her ankle swelled up one day in for no reason , then she got "the" MRI. That tough little kid competed a whole season on a broken tibia at the base where it meets the foot… yea she said her ankle was tender, but just taped it and went on. As it turns out it was a hairline fracture that didn’t heal and a cyst developed. Surgery was in order. Okay so this is not an injury with a track record, it’s one of those weird injuries that doesn’t really have a record of gymnasts returning etc.. Many in the community wrote her off, and there was a lot of uncertainty of what the ultimate outcome would be physically, could she continue? Would the ankle heal up? Would she ever vault again? How long was the lay off? The prognosis was not good, “you are going to miss the entire season and we hope to return next season”. She was devastated, but her Dr assured her that she would in fact return. (very important, excellent Dr).
Surgery came and went, things were going fine and then 4 months later the bottom dropped out. She was in a deep funk. Colleges weren’t interested anymore, she wasn’t coming back as fast as she thought, etc… The staff, her parents and her teammates did EVERYTHING to keep her in our site. She absolutely was second guessing herself. We talked and we talked and we talked and we talked and she was down but never gave up, No way. She was hanging from a tread but refused to let go… When she was down we picked her up and dusted her off, when she wanted days off her parents would maybe give her one, but usually just dropped her of at the door. When she was upset we listened and gave her a dose of reality. “you loved it before your injury, it will pass”. When she cried we hugged her. She came to gym when she didn’t want to, she dealt with the pain when she didn’t want to, She continued not knowing anyone who had returned from this injury…. because she knew in the end… It would all pass. (You have to drill this into your kids.)
Kendal missed the whole 2015 season, and did her first meet in January of 2016, it was a travel meet to Texas and she went all the way to that meet to just do beam. I knew at that moment we had her back . The next meet she competed beam, bars and… Vault! Actually placed second on vault with a 9.55. Kendal ended up coming in 2nd AA at state that year and qualified to Nationals. In 2017 She got a 37.8 at regionals and qualified to Nationals again.
Kendal graduated high school this year and bid farewell to all of us 2 months ago. She is now a member of the top 10 D1 Gymnastics Team. So proud !
Again, apologies for all my running sentences and grammar.
Injury and Mental Rehab
Injuries are a part of any sport so thousands of articles exist about this topic. I am going to share what we do when a gymnast sustains a long term injury. My definition of a long term injury would be a break, surgery, tear, or anything that puts the kid out for at least a couple months. Everything I am sharing is about keeping them in, I will not be going over any medical advice.
It is very important in my opinion to make sure the child is in the gym every single day for workout. They should be present for at least half the workout. During this time they do some conditioning / flexibility (whatever body part isn’t injured). And most importantly they will be watching and learning simple technique. My motto when they get injured is… “you are going to get better at something while you are injured, and gain knowledge at the same time”.
I will also ask them to go to the meets so they feel that connection to the team. Think about it, ever see an injured football player not on the sidelines during a game? So send them to the meets with another parent if you don’t want to torture yourself with music. J This is important!
Okay so those are the nuts and bolts, now lets talk about the mental aspect of it all. I am very upfront with the kids and parents. We talk about the depression that goes along with injury, because it is very real. (not all kids go through this) We talk about how normal it is to be depressed and to just come to us and talk about it. I use analogies like, “A child with a serious injury is very much like a child floating in the middle of a pool, slowly sinking. Our job is to stand on the side of the pool and encourage them to swim to us. If need be we will come in and get you, we will not let you fail”. It is common for athletes with long term injuries particularly bad ones to second guess continuing . I always ask parent to be absolute and tell the kids this. “no you loved gym prior to your injury and the ("johnsons") do not quit when we are injured. You will come back and then we can address quitting if you still want to, but until then… Not a chance”. Obviously its up to the parents to take this approach or not. If they are not willing to do this then our odds just went the wrong way.
Mental Rehab, Getting an injured athlete to wake up and return to full capacity takes time. I engage in several conversations with them about this, during rehab and when the time is right (physically and mentally) I tell them to wake up! I really do. It kind of helps them to push and reassures them that they are better now.
As a coach we have soo many stories of very talented kids who suffer season ending injuries and no one to share them with So here is one story that I would like to share.
I started coaching Kendal when she was 6. We brought her up from preteam all the way to level 10. She was generation 2 of our program so we were pretty proud of her and a few others that joined her. Kendal was on top of her game, she was Western national champion on vault, 2nd all around, then went 10 and won beam and Vault at state … colleges were all looking at her big time. Until.. Her ankle swelled up one day in for no reason , then she got "the" MRI. That tough little kid competed a whole season on a broken tibia at the base where it meets the foot… yea she said her ankle was tender, but just taped it and went on. As it turns out it was a hairline fracture that didn’t heal and a cyst developed. Surgery was in order. Okay so this is not an injury with a track record, it’s one of those weird injuries that doesn’t really have a record of gymnasts returning etc.. Many in the community wrote her off, and there was a lot of uncertainty of what the ultimate outcome would be physically, could she continue? Would the ankle heal up? Would she ever vault again? How long was the lay off? The prognosis was not good, “you are going to miss the entire season and we hope to return next season”. She was devastated, but her Dr assured her that she would in fact return. (very important, excellent Dr).
Surgery came and went, things were going fine and then 4 months later the bottom dropped out. She was in a deep funk. Colleges weren’t interested anymore, she wasn’t coming back as fast as she thought, etc… The staff, her parents and her teammates did EVERYTHING to keep her in our site. She absolutely was second guessing herself. We talked and we talked and we talked and we talked and she was down but never gave up, No way. She was hanging from a tread but refused to let go… When she was down we picked her up and dusted her off, when she wanted days off her parents would maybe give her one, but usually just dropped her of at the door. When she was upset we listened and gave her a dose of reality. “you loved it before your injury, it will pass”. When she cried we hugged her. She came to gym when she didn’t want to, she dealt with the pain when she didn’t want to, She continued not knowing anyone who had returned from this injury…. because she knew in the end… It would all pass. (You have to drill this into your kids.)
Kendal missed the whole 2015 season, and did her first meet in January of 2016, it was a travel meet to Texas and she went all the way to that meet to just do beam. I knew at that moment we had her back . The next meet she competed beam, bars and… Vault! Actually placed second on vault with a 9.55. Kendal ended up coming in 2nd AA at state that year and qualified to Nationals. In 2017 She got a 37.8 at regionals and qualified to Nationals again.
Kendal graduated high school this year and bid farewell to all of us 2 months ago. She is now a member of the top 10 D1 Gymnastics Team. So proud !
