Parents Xcel Bronze Training Schedule (hours)

[StrongMom1972]

How many hours a week do your bronze girls practice?

Our gym offers either 2 or 3 hours a week. I feel this is not enough time in the gym to develop their skills and prepare them to level up. As the competitive season moves along, I feel like the other teams are improving their skills and performing better at each meet, while our girls’ skills are pretty stagnant. How can they possibly keep up with only 2-3 hours a week in the gym. I also feel that 1 hour sessions are too short.
What’s it like at your gym?

 

[JBS]

How many hours a week do your bronze girls practice?

Our gym offers either 2 or 3 hours a week. I feel this is not enough time in the gym to develop their skills and prepare them to level up. As the competitive season moves along, I feel like the other teams are improving their skills and performing better at each meet, while our girls’ skills are pretty stagnant. How can they possibly keep up with only 2-3 hours a week in the gym. I also feel that 1 hour sessions are too short.
What’s it like at your gym?

We don't do Xcel Bronze... we start at Silver. Our Silver's go either 6 or 9 hours per week.

 

[Carly]

The gym my kid went to doesn't do bronze either and starts at silver. They do 5 hours a week.

 

[Pineapple_Lump]

I honestly wouldn't bother frequently attending competitions on those hours. Our advanced recreational athletes who do those hours might do 1-2 in house/local meets a year as a fun thing. Learning/polishing routines takes a lot of time.

However this may be a logistics issues for the gym - Finite resources , such as coaches/space in the gym to accommodate the group for more hours. Time and resources are being used on the proven athletes. They possibly still ran the group to give the kids something beyond recreational classes. It also gives the kids a chance to experience competition and see who will actually step up and perform well.
The gym probably knows it is not enough to be successful but from their point of view they are looking at it as progression for the following year.

 

[Pfiga]

Our gym does 4.5 hours per week for Bronze (2 x 2.25 hours), then 6 hours (2 x 3 hours) for Silver and above.

 

[StrongMom1972]

I honestly wouldn't bother frequently attending competitions on those hours. Our advanced recreational athletes who do those hours might do 1-2 in house/local meets a year as a fun thing. Learning/polishing routines takes a lot of time.

However this may be a logistics issues for the gym - Finite resources , such as coaches/space in the gym to accommodate the group for more hours. Time and resources are being used on the proven athletes. They possibly still ran the group to give the kids something beyond recreational classes. It also gives the kids a chance to experience competition and see who will actually step up and perform well.
The gym probably knows it is not enough to be successful but from their point of view they are looking at it as progression for the following year.

I do understand what you are saying. The gym just opened our location within the year and the Bronze team is brand new. All 6 girls have never competed before this season. For my daughter and 1 or 2 others it’s not as relevant as they quite skilled and will probably go straight to gold next season, but for the other girls, it hardly seems fair. I feel like they are being fed to wolves. I feel we were mislead by the gym I guess. They knew we were all newbies and really had no real expectations re how many training hours per week it would take for these girls to hone their skills and advance. If they had sold it to the group as minimal practice hours (i.e. less gym time than all of the other bronze teams that they will compete against) and set realistic expectations, that would have been one thing, but there was no acknowledgement of any of that.

 

[xcelerate]

Our bronzes do 2.5 to 5 hours a week. They go for 2.5 hours at a time.

 

[Coach Kate]

My old.gym just started bronze this year. We consider ourselves a low hours gym and they go twice a week for 2.5 hours.

 

[That_Gymnast]

My old gym has bronzes at 6 hours. They perform mid-upper in competitions, 1 or 2 always 1st or 2nd AA. It’s pretty standard bronze 6 hours, silver 9 hours and gold 12 hours to be competitive at competitions for most girls.

 

[JBS]

Bronze has really become intense in our area. I probably wouldn't take kids out there at less than 4 or 5 hours per week... but there are plenty of clubs that do less than that.

 

[AmiaRay]

We do 2 hours, twice a week for bronze. Our silvers technically do 7 I believe, but many practice modified hours, up to level 3’s 9 hours. Our gym has a slightly strange mesh of 3s and silvers.

 

[newbie504]

my gym does 4 to 6 hours bronze depending on age. I think 2 hours is low. Preteam practices more than that.

 

[sun]

We have two bronze groups - one that trains twice a week for ~3 hours /week and another that trains 3 times a week for ~5.5 hours /week - we started the groups 5 months ago and it is going great.

 

[GymCAMom]

Our bronze trains 2 days 3.5 hours a day so 7 hours total.

 

[MaryBrooke]

My daughter is silver, but at our gym the Xcel girls all train together. So bronze, silver and gold. They are 12 hours a week (3 days x 4 hours). I've actually been concerned they don't get the same attention as the compulsory kids but in doing some research about other local gyms - none of them train this many hours in Xcel.

We're Canadian and as I understand it Xcel is new up here. It has turned out to be perfect for my daughter. I think if she was compulsory she would have burned out by now.

 

[Katie]

My gym starts at Silver with 6 hours (3 hours, 2X a week) Pre team which leads to either Silver or level 3 is 4 hours a week

 

[ckpn]

How many hours a week do your bronze girls practice?

Our gym offers either 2 or 3 hours a week. I feel this is not enough time in the gym to develop their skills and prepare them to level up. As the competitive season moves along, I feel like the other teams are improving their skills and performing better at each meet, while our girls’ skills are pretty stagnant. How can they possibly keep up with only 2-3 hours a week in the gym. I also feel that 1 hour sessions are too short.
What’s it like at your gym?

O wow! I’m a coach and our bronzes practice 3.5 hours twice a week.

 

[tracyweis]

Hi! My Bronze is in the gym 4 hours/week.

 

[Gym_momma]

We did bronze for 4hrs/week last year. Our new gym does 9hrs/week for bronze which seems much more reasonable given there are 4 apparatus to train/compete. We found 4 hours was insufficient to feel properly trained.

 

[MaryBrooke]

I'm really surprised at these low hours -but maybe thats the gap between bronze and silver.