Parents Xcel Practice Hours

[LongHoursNoTime]

How many hours do girls practice each week for Xcel Silver and Gold? And what are the benefits of practicing more or less?

 

[Coach Kate]

It really varies widely depending on the gym. Some gym use Xcel to bypass compulsories so they tend to do more hours. The gym I coached at was intentional about being low commitment so low hours, low cost, and silvers and golds did 5 hours (2.5 hours twice a week) and golds had an optional third day that about 10 total athletes would choose.

The benefit to this is that we saw kids staying in the sport much much longer - platinums did 2x2.75 hours with the third day option and diamonds did 3x3. Kids who otherwise might have quit gymnastics in junior high or high School stayed. We even had burned out athletes come from higher intensity DP drop back into Xcel and find love for gymnastics again. It allows kids to have other interests and activities and gives an opportunity to more people who might not be able to afford a more expensive program. We really tried to make it as accessible as possible.

We did have kids tend to repeat levels, and it's tough to be the very very best while training half the hours as some other programs, but we have had different levels win state and have plenty of individual and state titles each year. All of the kids come up through the rec program so the gym has strong training on coaching basics and xcel coaches learn to be efficient. And then a lot of our Xcel athletes turn around and become rec coaches for those kids to look up to. It really is fun to see.

I was a high intensity DP kid and it was a good fit for me, but I really loved what I saw and experienced as a coach in our low hours Xcel program and grew to appreciate it.