In Malcolm Gladwell’s book, he wrote that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in any field, and gymnastics is probably the one sport on earth that is out to prove that theory to be true. 

After coaching for almost two decades, I can honestly say that at least once a week, there is some athlete within my program that wants to quit. The desire to leave the sport is typically preceded by either doing bad in a meet, getting chewed out by a coach, or being told to do burpees until their arms fall off because they failed to follow directions for the umteeth time. There are many reasons why an athlete typically wants to quit a sport, and to be honest, most of them usually amount to bullcrap. Although there are legit reasons, such as education, health, and finances, for not continuing with a sport, quitting just because they are mad, struggling, or frustrated is not one of them and is entirely unacceptable. The reasons an athlete can give for quitting typically fall under a three or four buckets. These buckets in no particular order are laziness, fear of failure, lack of or unrealistic expectations, which is like the second but different, and the lack of discipline. In this blog, I am going to take time and break down the various buckets and how to avoid the “early retirement syndrome” from a sport in the future. This is a scorching hot topic with a lot of pieces, so instead of writing one long-ass blog, I am going to break it up into four or five digestible blogs, with this blog being the first. 

Before we jump into the blog, let me take time for a free plug. Gymnastics season is coming, so if you are looking for some cool, unique gymnastics spirit tees, hoodies, and sweatshirts, head on over to https://gdswagshop.com/ to see what we have to offer. Also, follow us on IG for discounts and early release items @ Gymnastics Dad.   

Parent the #$%# up (Discipline)

News flash, coaches, don’t instill discipline. They just build off the discipline that has already been established in the home. Therefore, if discipline has not been established at home, there is nothing for a coach to build off of. Most good coaches are not passive people. Competition and the desire to win have made them very results-driven, matter-of-fact, direct, and assertive. To the typical person, this can come off as rough around the edges but they are not. If you are a passive parent who tries to avoid conflict with your children, then being coached by a person who values competition and athletic growth may be hard for your child to handle. Good coaches want to win or at the very least see progress, “periodt.” Anything that gets in the way of that is an unneeded distraction. So if a child that has to be coddled or persuaded into performing may not fair well with competitive coaches. Good programs operate like “ole skool” households,  they are dictatorships, not democracies.  

If your child wants to quit because their coach is viewed a mean and/or unapproachable, then parents might have to ask themselves if it is a coaching issue or “me” issue. If your parenting style isn’t conducive to a coach’s training style, then conflict will occur. The child will get mixed messages and process a coach’s reaction to a situation incorrectly. Being pissed at something an athlete did poorly in a competition doesn’t mean a coach dislikes the child as a person. It simply means the coach is irritated with that athlete’s action in that snapshot in time but it has no impact on their future impressions of the child. As a child, I was raised in the era when parents told their kids what to do. My household was a miniature version of North Korea. My mom commonly said things like, “when I want your opinion, I will give it to you” and “speak when spoken to.” What, seriously? We frequently heard things like, ”You eat what I cook, or you don’t eat.” As I got older, I understood what my mom was telling me with those statements.  It was that a child needs to stay in a child’s place. I hadn’t earned the right to have an opinion. I was broke and homeless. My parents might have been middle class, but my broke ass was destitute, and boy did they let me know it. Thanks, mom(sarcasm). I didn’t have any life experiences, and therefore I needed to rely on my parents and my village to make decisions in my best interest, even if I didn’t believe so at the time. I can’t count how many sports, clubs, and organizations I have been in over the years because my mother thought it was good for me. I don’t think I even knew what quitting was, much less I knew quitting wasn’t an option. If I got chewed out at practice and came home mad, my parents would say something to the effect, “your ass better do better next time, so you don’t get cussed out”…really? I don’t think my parents even looked up from what they were doing when they said it. My parents were no joke, and my coaches were no joke, so when my coaches chewed me out for doing something wrong, it was similar to my experiences at home. Due, to the conduciveness in my experiences between home and the teams I was on I never felt put-off by a coach coming down on me.  I wasn’t coddled at practice which was fine because I wasn’t coddled at home either. 

In closing, I can’t understand why parents would allow a child with no resources and no life experiences to potentially make a life-altering decision. When my older children wanted to quit a sport, my answer was simple “that decision is above your pay grade.” I have a simple rule to playing sports, always leave on top. It is easy to quit after a good ass-kicking or after a good chewing out by a coach. Name one athlete that walked away from a sport after a successful season…(I’ll wait).

If an athlete has many of the physical tools necessary to be successful and only requires a little mental grit and elbow grease to take the next step, instead of allowing them to bail on the sport, make them knuckle up and go through it…..nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream and you can’t short cut success.

Part Two is coming in the next seven days. Follow me on IG to get an alert. 

The post My Gymnast Wants To Quit The Sport appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

Good day readers welcome back to another installment of Gymnastics Dad blog. I haven’t posted in a while because I have been down in the lab developing a new platform called chalkyhandsprofiles.com, where gymnasts can set up and maintain their athletic profiles. I was searching for a profile site to load my daughter’s profile since she is moving to Level 9. After doing some research, I realized that none of the companies I researched offered quite what I was looking for. Having built a similar platform when I was a booster club president, I know the features that are needed to increase the odds of parents CONSISTENTLY updating it. Being a web developer for the last 17 years, I figured, might as well just build what I want and offer it to anyone else who might be interested. If interested in learning more about Chalky Hands profiles, visit www.chalkyhandsprofiles.com.

Before we get started, I want to send a shoutout to Summer Levell for being selected GDN Apparel Student-Athlete for July. Summer is a soon to be  Level 8 gymnast. To learn more about Summer, and to watch some of her Level 7 performances visit HERE. 

In this blog, I am going to talk about the college recruiting process for sports, and assumptions parents make when it comes to the recruiting process. I am also going to talk about how those assumptions can potentially cost an athlete a scholarship. I decided to write this blog because since being in the pre-release phase of Chalky Hand Profiles, I have had a lot of parents pre-register for the platform. One of the most common questions I get is when should a parent set up a profile for their athlete? I think the answer to that question will differ depending on who you talk to. Although I don’t have first-hand knowledge of best practice on when to set up a recruiting profile as this is my first go around. Someone who has been in the recruiting game for a while told me that by Level 9, a gymnast should have a profile.

~By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Benjamin Franklin~

Being a track coach, I have had the opportunity to send several athletes to college on a track scholarship. Although I don’t have direct knowledge of what it takes to earn a gymnastics scholarship, what I do know is that gymnastics has a lot in common with track and field, so my guess is many of the principles of recruiting are the same. The two most important things that both track and gymnastics have in common is that they are both individual sports with relatively small budgets. Having a low budget has a pretty significant impact on how much a college can recruit. Of everything I have learned about the recruiting process for track, the biggest thing is that regardless of sport, earning a scholarship always boils down to preparedness and avoiding taking things for granted.

Mistake #1: “If I build it, they will come.”

The first mistake I see parents and athletes make when it comes to recruiting is developing the “Noah’s Ark mentality.” The Noah’s Ark mentality is when parents believe that if an athlete performs well in competitions, then the recruiters will come, and that is so not the case.

In general, every year, there are typically a couple of athletes in a given sport that every college is gunning for. From a recruiting standpoint, there is “dat athlete,” and then there is everyone else. You can usually identify “dat athlete” in a competition because they are the person everybody is “oohing and ahhing” about. If your child is “dat gymnast,” then you are pretty much set. College coaches will damn near sell the farm to recruit your child. Still, if your athlete is not “dat gymnast,” then you best have your ducks in order when it comes to college recruiting. Your gymnast earning a college scholarship will primarily come down to how efficient and organized you are at representing your gymnast and their body of work to a college recruiter. Remember that even if your child is a local superstar or an Instagram sensation, that doesn’t mean that their value is the same on a national level. Colleges are not confined to the local area when it comes to recruiting. Recruitment is typically a national thing and, in some cases, a worldwide thing.

Mistake #2: “My coach should help with the recruiting process.”

The second mistake I see parents make is when they are under the belief that it is part of the coach’s responsibility to help athletes earn a scholarship. Listen, parents, coaches are responsible for dozens of athletes in a given year, and each of those athletes has the same goals and aspirations as your child to earn a college scholarship. A coach’s job is to get your athlete performance-wise in a position to receive a scholarship. Still, much of the leg work in getting on a college coach’s radar is primarily up to you. Understanding a youth coach’s actual role in the recruiting process will help parents get ahead of the game. I have seen too many athletes regardless of sports graduate high school never receiving a scholarship because they were waiting on the coach…. don’t be that person.

Mistake #3: “Things may come to those who wait, but only things left behind by those who hustle.” – Abraham Lincoln (I think….)

Ladies and gentlemen, of all the cardinal sins that happen in sports recruiting this is probably the gravest. I don’t know how many athletes miss out on opportunities because they waited too late to get into the recruiting game or wanted to wait for the college of their choice, and they never came. Guess what people, damn near every gymnast that I know, want to go to UCLA, my child included. Although college recruiters can only reach out to you after a certain time, you can start researching them at any time. Find out who’s on their roster now, who will be on their roster when you apply. Learn what that particular coach is looking for in an athlete. How deep the team is with athletes. Find out the team’s strengths and weaknesses and if your strengths help to fill a gap. All those questions come after you ask the most important two questions, do you want to go to that college(outside of the team) and do they have your field of study.

Mistake #4: You’re resume sucks, that is all!

My first resume sucked! Oh my gosh, it was horrible! I remember having to take a seminar in my senior year in college that taught us how to write resumes. By the end of the workshop, I had an excellent starter resume, or so I thought. You are probably thinking, what does a resume have in relation to getting recruited. Well, online profiles primarily serve as an athlete’s resume and are critical in the recruiting process, especially if done right. At the very least athletic profiles tell a college that you are serious about the recruiting process. Athlete profiles serve as a way to centralize an athlete’s information in one location. When you first build your resume, you put stuff on it that you “think” are vital to potential suitors. Very quickly, you learn that it is not the information they are looking for. The earlier you’re gymnasts start their online profile, the sooner you can learn what information colleges are actually looking for. Athletic profiles, like resumes, are living documents that change over time. The more you feed it information, the faster it can grow, and the better it will be. Free plug, if you are reading this, you really need to sign up for the waiting list on www.chalkyhandsprofiles.com. You won’t regret it. You might actually win a free account. Lastly, no, social media accounts are not substitutes for online profiles. They are fine as “in addition to’s,” but they should not serve as a replacement. There are dozens of technical reasons why using social media as the primary platform for your online profile is a bad idea, but the first non-techie reason is that NOT EVERYONE USES IT. Also, the response of “you can follow me on IG” doesn’t sound like the best response to a recruiter saying “where can I learn more about you from”….just sayin.

The last mistake and I think the most detrimental of all is when parents hoard knowledge. Youth sports, in general, is a vicious environment, but it seems like in gymnastics, it’s kicked up a notch. Some parents think that by attempting to keep knowledge from other athletes that somehow increases the odds of their gymnast getting recruited…yea, no, it doesn’t work like that. Truthfully most of the information that parents have is readily available on the internet if someone looks deep enough. Secondly, by hoarding information you are not preventing anything, you are pretty much just delaying the inevitable, at best. What you are doing is preventing yourself from gaining the knowledge you might have not otherwise known. As a booster club president at our old gym, I set up a conference call for the gym parents with a well-known company that specialized in gymnastics college recruiting. Bringing in a college recruiter wasn’t something I had to do. I could have kept the information to myself or between my level. Still, my thinking was that the long term benefit of having that knowledge in house would create an opportunity for the program to start building pipelines to different colleges. Yes, in youth sports, there is such a thing called pipeline programs. Pipeline programs are programs or coaches that develop a relationship with particular colleges, and kids from that program tend to have a better chance of being selected by that school than other recruits.

In closing, in a post-COVID-19 world, companies across all spectrums are revisiting the way they do business. Efficiency is king now. It is going to be more critical than ever to be as streamlined as possible in the recruiting process. If you have read my previous blogs, then you know that I view gymnastics as an investment, this shit is too expensive to just be for “play play.” For me, I would hate to have invested all this money in gymnastics for my daughter just to fall short at the end because I didn’t have my shit together. When it comes to college recruiting, efficiency is critical…” food for thought, now you do the dishes” – Jay Z.

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The post College Recruiting (Myths and Assumptions) appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

 Hey, Gymnastics Dad Nation, and welcome back to another blog. First and foremost, I want to give a big shoutout to all our frontline workers. You guys are the most amazing people on the planet, bar none! GD Nation and I genuinely appreciate everything you have done and are continuing to do for us. Since the world seems currently on house arrest due to the Coronavirus, I figured I’d write a quick blog to give GD Nation something to do besides vegging out on Netflix’s. As a blogger, you realize how much your daily interactions in life impact your blogging. When something like a pandemic takes out your daily routine and communications, so too goes what you blog about. Being a blogger during a pandemic in the area of youth gymnastics is not easy. I try to strike a balance between providing interesting material to read yet, avoiding being a painful reminder that sports have been temporarily stripped from us. Fortunately, the idea of this blog came after having a conversation with the fam while having breakfast. 

 Before we get started, I want to send a shoutout to Connor Preston. He is the first athlete selected in our new monthly feature at GDN Apparel called Gymnast Spotlight. He was actually the gymnast for March and was slotted to be featured in March’s blogs, but then the Coronavirus blew everything up. Moving forward, every month, we will spotlight a different gymnast for their accomplishments in and outside the sport of gymnastics. To learn more about Connor, please visit here. Now on to our regularly scheduled programming.

 ~The Scene (Picture this….)~

It’s a Sunday morning, and I finally decide to get motivated to cook breakfast around 11:30 am. I mean, the family has to eat, right? After surviving a mental flogging from my wife over the fact that I continue to wash clothes but never fold or put them away, can we sit down to eat. The minute my wife says, “would you mind…” I know sh$t is about to go all the way left. fellas, FYI, “would you mind” is code for “I have told his ass about this a million times, and he keeps doing it.” But, I did manage to talk my way out by leveraging an”ole skool” strategy of “if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, then baffle them with bullcrap.” After munching down a few pieces of bacon, I looked over to my daughter and said to her, “Hey, girly, you ready to head back to practice yet.” Her response was “kinda, but I am not feeling that double back on the beam yet.” At that point, I realize her statement gave me an opening to satisfy my coaching fix. Still, I needed to do a balancing act between being a coach and a dad. I figure this is an excellent time to dip into coaching mode and explain to her the benefits of preparation and reducing the amount of rust when getting back in gymnastics shape. For the last 3 weeks, her gymnastics coaches have been doing a virtual practice, which is fantastic. In conjunction with the coach’s practices, we have had a conditioning plan in place since they shut down the state. Still, even with that, my internal coaching clock is starting to tell me that we need to kick it up a notch. 

~The Convo ~

Our conversation that morning was about preparation. In a nutshell, I was trying to express to my daughter the importance of staying ready, so she doesn’t have to get ready when she returns to gymnastics. This pandemic has created a situation where young athletes have to rely heavily on household discipline and dedication to maintain focus on training. Continuing to train outside of the purview of coaches can be difficult for anybody. If you come from a household where general fitness is not typically a priority, it is almost impossible to maintain. In sports, it is not always about the training ability of a coach. In many instances, parents are looking for someone who can motivate their children. They are looking for someone who can have those hard conversations with their kids. In a nutshell, parents are quite honestly looking for someone who can get in their “kiddos” asses and motivate them to be better athletes and people. Being able to manage training during this pandemic will give athletes a considerable advantage when returning. 

~The Timeline~

The game is simple, reduce the amount of time it takes to get back into prime gymnastics training shape. The faster an athlete can get back in shape, the quicker they can get back to sport-specific training. At breakfast, I told my daughter that most people don’t consider how condensed their timeline to competition season will be when they return back to the gym. I told her to factor in the traditional schedule to the first competition and then decrease time due to the pandemic. For every one week that an athlete eats terrible and doesn’t exercise, then that is additional two weeks of work to get back in shape. The negative impact of lack of training can be exponential, depending on the athlete and the family situation. For my daughter, who is moving to Level 9, her first meet is typically around the first week of December. If the meet time frame doesn’t change, that means currently, if they return back to training in June, we will lose approximately two months of training time that need to be accounted for. This pandemic is condensing every sport’s training schedule. With that being said, it would behoove both athletes and parents to reduce the conditioning curve as much as possible. The goal is to expedite and reduce the time that needs to be allocated for general conditioning. 

~The Top Athletes Are Training~

The second item I bought to her attention is that the top athletes are still training. There is one thing that is always universal when situations like this occur. The beasts will always train. Winners figure out how to get training regardless of the conditions, remember Rocky, the Russian, and running in the snow? Let’s not act like I am the only one that watched Rocky movies back in the day. Old heads, this is the point in the blog you start humming the words “there’s no easy way out, there’s no short cut home…” from the Rocky soundtrack. Since this pandemic, there have been hundreds of youtube videos posting with people creating homemade strength equipment. Depending on your craftsman skills, I am not necessarily advocating building your own vault or bars. What I am saying is that “winners figure it out.” If you have read my blog, Talented vs. Hardworking, then you know I believe hard work will always outweigh talent in the long run. This pandemic has created an environment that is ideal for any athlete who values working hard. This pandemic will give hard-working athletes a chance to separate themselves from the pack. The more innovative and creative you can be to overcome training challenges, the further ahead you will be of your competition.

 Lastly, this is a tough time for everyone, but as the old adage goes….. This Too Shall Pass. Until this passes, set up a routine with your athlete and stick to it. Challenge your athlete to keep that mental and physical edge by focusing on the basics. Remember, hard work doesn’t require equipment, effort doesn’t require a building and dedication doesn’t require a coach.  

 In closing, once this pandemic is over, gymnasts will want to show up to practice like it is the first day of school. Might as well let them show up in style! Check out our new Beauty and the Beast collection at our GDN Apparel Swag Shop. 

The post Stay Ready So You Don’t Have To Get Ready. appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

What Do Parents Value More

Welcome back to another installment of the Gymnastics Dad blog. Since I last blogged, my daughter has now completed four competitions at Level 8 and let me say, “gymnastics is hard as a mofo.” The judges in Level 8 are heartless. When I say the judges are heartless, I mean like Ice King, White Walker cruel. I saw them give someone a score of 4.6, now that is just cold-blooded. Here is a photo I took of our last competition judges walking into the meet.

So far, this season has been tough, and there are several factors that go into that, but the biggest factor is probably as the old saying goes “you can’t ride the wave all the time, periodically the waves break and you have to tread water until another wave comes.”  

Anywho, on to the blog. In this blog, I am going to try to answer a burning question that is always in the back of a coach’s mind, and that question is, “How much do parents value development?” In order to answer that question, we actually have to answer a couple of sub-questions. The first question we have to answer is, which is more important to a parent, is it development, the score, or their image? The second question we have to answer is, “Does a score illustrate competency.”  

How Much Do Parents Really Value Development

From a coach’s standpoint, development is always the number one priority. Good coaches will always be end game driven, which, by default, favors development. The real question is, does focusing on growth mesh with a parent’s expectations. Now, as you are reading this, you are probably thinking, “duh, of course, I want my athlete to develop,” so let me ask the question differently. What are you willing to give up for your athlete to develop? What happens if the development requires your athlete to take a step back in performance, are you game? What happens if that development requires your athlete to repeat a level? Are you still game, kinda, sorta, not really. The truth is development is ugly and a rough road for parents. It consists of crashes, falls, terrible scores, WTFs, bumps, bruises and ice packs, lots and lots of ice packs. Development is painful for parents because it consists of parents having to lower and manage their expectations. Growth requires that sometimes parents will have to concede that what is best for their athlete may not necessarily coincide with keeping pace with the other team parents(damn, I really went there). I know this is going to sound crazy, but it is much easier to win than to develop, and that is why winning doesn’t necessarily equate to being good. Winning and losing can be manipulated by several factors. Coaches who want to get better scores will often seek out less competitive meets or meets where the judges tend to evaluate easier. They will water down routines. In general, growth should always be the priority, but the truth of the matter is growth requires patience and trust in your coach. Growth also requires parents to stay in their lanes, which is quite often the most challenging issue.  

 The second part of this first question is can both those qualities co-exist. Meaning, can an athlete win and show a high level of development at the same time. The answer to that question is that it depends. In the early stages of growth, being able to win and develop can be difficult because their training maturity is already very low. As an athlete’s training maturity improves, then the chances of progressing and winning at the same time are much more likely. The reason is as an athlete matures training-wise, their body and their mind can process information much quicker, which means learning something new is not as severe. 

Does A Score Illustrate Competency

Of all the sports I have been apart of. There are specific terms that seem only to pertain to the sport of gymnastics. Since becoming a part of the gymnastics world, I have heard words like “a true level xx” or “that gymnast is doing all level xx skills,” which kinda means the same thing. I always thought that you are an X Level gymnast, or you are not, but apparently, I was wrong. So the question is if a person scores high but isn’t doing true level skills, then does the score illustrate their real competency for that level? You might be asking what does this question have to do with answering the overarching question? Simple, if a parent embraces the fact that their athlete can be considered a Level XX without having to acquire the skills for that level, then can a parent say they honestly embrace development. We all know parents who are more concerned with their athletes being at a certain level than actually being competent at that level. Every athlete can’t be good at everything. I get that. What I am referring to is when an athlete isn’t essentially prepared to be competitive at a level based on their fundamentals, but the parent pushes anyway for image reasons. At the end of the day, if competency isn’t high on a parent’s priority list, then neither is development because the two go hand and hand.  

In the end, whether a parent values development or not is not a matter of right or wrong, but knowing what you value helps to level-set expectations with the coach and the athlete. Most coaches already know what you prioritize by your actions. It is effortless to see a parent’s true intentions by the way they react to non-positive news about their athlete.

In closing, I know this may piss some parents off, but it was not meant to be. My goal was to address one of the many “elephants in the room” when it comes to gymnastics. I also want to allow parents to dive into the mind of a coach when it comes to specific issues. Although I am not a gymnastics coach, the principles of coaching are all the same regardless of the sport.  

 The next blog is already written, so stay tune. No title yet, but in it, I talk about the negative impact on a team when the water cooler talk always revolves around an injury. Here is a quick snippet.  

I have a saying on my track team it goes “suffer in silence.” What that means is that if you are hurting or sore, the world doesn’t need to know you are hurting or sore.” An athlete that is always hurt is deemed unreliable by a coach. A parent who is always looking for special treatment for a sore athlete is considered high maintenance. Both can be very draining or an organization.

Lastly, are you tired of the same old bland gymnastics swag and are looking for something unique that will have you looking flawless at competitions, welp check us out at https://gdswagshop.com/ and follow us on IG at https://www.instagram.com/gdnapparel for discounts, coupons, and contest.  The spring line-up is coming out soon.    

If you like reading ya boy’s stuff then show me some love and sign-up for my newsletter so these blogs can come right to your inbox.

Until next time, peace and soul….

The post Growth vs. Image appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

Hey people, welcome back from the holidays, and I hope everyone enjoyed their time with friends and family. For me, food is always the best part of the season. Below is actual footage someone caught of me eating at Thanksgiving dinner. 

A couple of quick hits before we get started with the blog. First, if you submitted an Ambassador application for GDN Apparel, we have begun the review process of those applications, so please have patience we will follow-up accordingly. Second, we are releasing our gymnast profiles platform (gymnastsprofiles.com) pretty soon, and we are looking for beta testers. If you are interested in setting up a free profile page for your gymnast and be a beta-tester, please submit your information here. If you are selected to be an Ambassador, there is no need to apply for a profile because ambassadors will automatically receive a profile account. Any-who on to the blog. The topic of this blog was sent in by a reader. Her question was, “how can she identify if her daughter is at a good gym?”

Welp, that is a great question, and the answer largely depends on what is the ultimate goal for your athlete. If you are doing gymnastics primarily for recreation, then honestly, most any gym will do.  If you are looking for something more, then choosing the right gym is critical to your gymnast’s development and overall success. Although picking the right gym is a personal decision, I believe there are certain qualities all good programs should have regardless of the sport.   

Communication, Communication, Communication

Good programs communicate. This includes ownership, coaches and all the way down to the booster club. When dealing with youth sports, you are dealing with the three things that will get “yo ass whooped” by parents. Their time, their money, and last but not least, their children. The best way to avoid getting cussed out by parents is by over-communicating with them. Having open lines of communication also allows for an easier time when having to have an awkward conversation. Below an example of an uncomfortable conversation, I had with a parent on my track team. This conversation could have gone in the wrong direction. Fortunately, I already had an open line of communication with the mother from previous discussions so we ended up in a good place. 

It’s not about the money

Good programs don’t coach to the financial bottom line. This is one of the hardest things for organizations to avoid, especially if there is a lot of overhead involved with your team. The truth is there is an obscene amount of money in youth sports, and cash is a very potent drug. One of the reasons there is so much money in youth sports is that parents will pay almost any amount for their child to “look” successful. Once a gym starts catering to the highest bidder, it becomes challenging to run a program with integrity. Parents will begin to question a coach’s motives and decision making, and at that point, the gym is pretty much a sinking ship. Queue that band from the Titanic. 

Expectations define Culture and Culture defines identity

All programs want to establish an identity, but good programs understand that they first must establish a culture that fosters that identity. It isn’t very easy to establish a solid identity since before you build your identity, you have to create a culture. To create a winning culture, you have to be willing to lose people. Parents or athletes who can’t fit into the culture have to bounce. At our old gym, Coach Irina would tell lazy athletes, “train or go home.” Parents on the cutting end of that statement would get mad. Some will say that the coach was being too harsh, and make statements like ”I paid my money…”. Parents, you paid your money for the coach to develop your child not to babysit. What the coach was actually doing was trying to establish a certain level of expectation amongst her team. The expectation was simple “you either worked your tail off or go kick rocks.” Over time we began to have a lot of parents leave for other gyms. Watching profit walk out the door is always tough, believe you me, but “not all money is good money,” and sometimes there is an addition by subtraction. They needed 100% buy-in for this transformation to take place. If the athlete went too many days not focusing, then Coach Irina called that parent into the principle’s office.   Make too many mistakes in practice if you want too, coaches handed out rope climbs like Skittles on Halloween. There would be days where it seemed like the whole entire optional team would leave the gym crying. Lord forbid, we collectively had a bad meet, mandatory Saturday practice, “bruh, seriously.” At face value, our environment looked harsh until we started winning. Once athletes started showing progress, the buy-in happened naturally, and that is when the culture started changing. 

Once the culture was in place, winning became the expectation. The athletes started holding each other accountable in practice. Pre-meet, my daughter’s level would hold a “get ya mind right” gymnasts only meeting where no parents or coaches were allowed. In a nutshell, winning became our level’s identity. 

Reward those who work hard and perform well

Fair does not always mean equal. Good programs understand how to incentivize their athletes to compete better. When the higher-performing athletes are treated the same as the lower performing athletes, what is the motivation for lower-performing athletes to work harder? At the end of the day, if you play in a competitive sport, winning is the ultimate goal. Victory or succeeding validates hard work, effort, focus and practice. It proves the coach’s instructions and training. It confirms for parents that their time and money are smartly invested. Good programs understand the value of winning. Consequently, a good program also values those who can help them accomplish the goal of winning. 

Coaches own the lost

In good programs, the coach will typically own bad performances.  There are times where “s#$t happens”, like an inadvertent fall on a basic skill or a skill that a gymnast has performed a million times with no problem.  In those situations, it is no one’s fault just bad luck. I am referring to the stuff that should have been developed and wasn’t. I hate losing. Actually, I despise losing, but for most good coaches losing is not solely an athlete thing. It is an “us or we” thing. I hate to see coaches pass the buck of a lost or lousy performance to an athlete. “Bruh, real talk, you coached that crappy performance, now own that shit.” Whether it was lack of oversight or just all around neglect, coaches are equally as responsible for the lousy performance than the athletes and parents are. If an athlete isn’t ready to compete, then don’t put them out there. Once an athlete starts to compete, the spectators have no clue that that athlete wasn’t focused in practice. They have no idea how many hours of practice the athlete missed.  They also don’t know that you went against your own best judgment and put an athlete out there that wasn’t ready to perform because you were trying to appease the parents(ahem). The only thing they know is that that athlete performed bad and was trained by <insert name here>. The good programs value their reputation, and to preserve their rep, they will not put a poor representation of their work in the spotlight. 

Lastly, good programs have a great culture among parents.  As the owner of a team, I tell my parents at the start of a season that I expect everyone to get along and find something they have in common. It is not an option on my team it is a requirement.   We spend too many hours together to not be able to fellowship and break bread together. Our old gym had a great culture for the most part. It was sort of a watering hole for the community. You see it in the way parents would come to the gym one-two hours early just to hang out and fellowship.  I talked to people from all socioeconomic backgrounds and all walks of life. If you were in the gym then we had something in common. Our kids were either a gymnast or aspiring gymnasts and that was enough to converse about. 

Lastly lastly, are you tired of the same old bland gymnastics swag and are looking for something unique that will have you looking flawless at competitions, welp check us out at https://gdswagshop.com/ and follow us on IG at https://www.instagram.com/gdnapparel for discounts, coupons, and contest.     

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Until next time, peace and soul….

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Fellow readers, I am happy to announce that after months of hard work, we are ready to release our new clothing brand GDN Apparel(Link). GDN stands for Gymnastics Dad Nation.  Our goal at GDN Apparel is to offer new and unique gymnastics swag to parents and gymnasts. Dads, we made sure not to forget you in our designs. I grew tired of the dad shirts that show the old cliches like “she flips I pay” and “my gymnast’s ATM.” I wanted something different that didn’t revolve around me sacrificing an arm and a leg for gymnastics. Moms and Dads, I guarantee you that we have something that will have you saying “yep, I can rock that.” Make sure to sign up for the newsletter and follow us on Instagram @gdnapparel and @gymnastic_dad to stay in the loop with new releases, discounts, coupons, and contests. Now onto our regularly scheduled programming. 

Dealing with coaches when an issue arises can be some of the most challenging terrains to navigate in youth sports. I decided to write this blog based on a conversation I had with another parent whose child does gymnastics. Their issue was with the development of their gymnasts or the perceived lack thereof.   She wanted to talk to the coaches but was struggling with finding a way to broach the conversation. She also struggled with if it was appropriate to discuss her concerns with the coaches because she wasn’t sure how they would receive it and if there would be blowback for her gymnast.      

Parents, I am a coach, and as much as it pains me to say it, coaches do get stuff wrong. We are humans, and therefore we are flawed. We get lazy, careless, and complacent. We have favorites and also have athletes that we don’t care for, which impacts how dedicated we are to those athletes. The difference between good coaches and bad coaches is that a good coach understands the nature of being human and consistently works against the natural negative tendencies that come with that. Therefore, it is not unrealistic for a coach to “drop the ball” periodically, and it is also not unrealistic for a parent to catch it and question it. A parent has every right to seek knowledge from a coach. Notice I alluded to seeking understanding and not doubting the coaching which is two completely different things. I have a saying as a coach “if you could coach ’em you would coach ’em, but you can’t coach ’em so don’t try to coach ’em on my watch.” What I am saying is although parents shouldn’t question training techniques, parents have a right to seek understanding in regards to the development of their athletes in general.  

I know coaches who tend to want parents to have a hands-off approach when it comes to training, development and any other oversight when the athlete is under their direction. Limiting parents is smart but coaches, be careful what you ask for. If you request that parent to be hands-off then also be prepared to handle the blowback if that athlete isn’t as successful as the parents expect them to be. In my opinion, parents serve as another set of eyes for me at practice. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard a parent scream out “why are you walking <insert name here>.” Instantly, I turn around and look at the athlete like “you know you messed upright.” (menace to society fans). I know track and field and gymnastics are entirely different sports, but the same logic applies. How many gymnastic parents have had the proverbial “Come to Jesus” conversation when their child is caught goofing off at practice.  I don’t need parents to help me coach their athletes but I do value them letting me know when kids are not on task. 

If you read my blog(Bucket of issues) you know that as an owner of a team I have learned that parent issues tend to fall into four buckets. Those buckets are education, communication, expectation, and personality. Whenever and issue arises, I try to assign the matter to a particular bucket which drives the way I address the issue. In most cases, issues revolving around training usually fall into the education and expectation buckets. The education buckets and expectation buckets are the reason why I believe every parent has every right to request a certain level of “understanding” regarding training and development from a coach.  Some problems are easy to resolve with a simple clarification of the development process. Sometimes I have to tell parents something as simple as “look dawg, they are only ten years old” and that backs parents off of the edge. Often, I have to tell parents that they are not seeing their child through a realistic view at this stage in their development.  

Triple Constraints

I stole this term Triple Constraints(TC) from the field of project management. In project management, TC refers to the conditions required for a project to be successful. The TC of project management is time, resources and scope. As one aspect changes the other two much adjust accordingly.  In youth coaching, the triple constraints refer to the three pieces that need to be in place for an athlete to be successful. Those pieces are parents, coaches, and athletes. My theory is, that for an athlete to indeed be successful, the coach, parent, and athlete all need to be on the same page and have the same set of expectations. In a perfect world, all three should march to the same drummer, but at a minimum, the coach and parents need to be on the same sheet of music because typically as long as those two are on the same page, the athlete will follow suit. Having an open line of communication with the coach is imperative for TC to work. Asking questions and seeking understanding aids in building that relationship because it also helps to level-set expectations.  

Knowing what you don’t know

Growing up I ran track for my high school and honestly I was pretty good. This is usually around the time when a parent would start exaggerating about their former glory as a high school athlete, but truthfully I was a pretty good runner, seriously! When I started coaching, I realized very quickly I didn’t understand anything about track and field. As a coach, I had to learn terms like dorsiflexion, zero-step, penultimate step, power output and soon I realized how un-informed about the sport I was. Being a “former” superstar has nothing to do with being a good coach, becoming a good coach forces you to take your level of understanding regarding the sport to a new level.  For parents, it is always good to have a basic knowledge of the sport your child is in but in all honestly for an in-depth understanding of the sport, that is what your coach is for. Knowing what you don’t know is the first step to building a line of open communication with a coach because it helps you to understand what questions to ask.

Approaching The Issue With The Coach

Approaching a coach many times feels like a dangerous proposition. One of the best terms a coach could hear from a parent is “help me understand” or “am I looking at this correctly.” These terms lead the coach to the opportunity to educate a parent. Good coaches are inherently teachers at heart so having the opportunity to inform parents is often relished by good coaches.   The more educated a parent becomes, the easier it is for a coach to develop their athlete because what is being taught at practices will also be reinforced at home. 

Accepting the Answer

Lastly, parents need to be okay with the answer to their question. When a parent asks a question, they often have a preconceived notion of what the answer should be. As a parent many times we fail to understand that a solution to an issue may be specific to our athlete but may not be scalable to the whole team. Coaches do look at athletes as individuals, but in a team environment coaches must implement process changes that are scalable to the entire team.  Being cool with the answer doesn’t mean you like the answer, it doesn’t even mean you agree with the answer but it means you respect the answer and can move forward. 

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Until next time, peace and soul…. 

The post Addressing Issues With The Coach appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

Before I get started with this blog, let me say what I am about to write about is not related to specific skills college coaches look for in an athlete.  I am not going to talk about scores or anything else that pertains directly to the technical aspects of the sport of gymnastics. For all that info my hope is your club coach has insight on that, plus you probably would not want my advice anyway.  What I am going to dive into is the part of the recruiting process that parents often overlook but is often critically important to the overall success of an athlete earning a college scholarship. The part that is most overlooked is the recommendation from their current coach.    

Let’s be real, most gymnasts are not the “who’s that chick” type of gymnasts.  You know, that gymnast that after every event parents are like “who the heck is she and where did she come from?  The gymnast that after the awards are given out, you promptly look her up on mymeetscores talking about “did she compete last year?” When you look at the rotation sheet, and you see her team listed your first instinct is to say, “here we go.” As with most sports, there are typically a few of those types of athletes out there, and then there’s everyone else. If your daughter is “that chick” then much of what I am going to write about won’t directly pertain to you because although your gymnast may have a bad attitude, there is most likely going to be some college coach who figures the reward of having your athlete on the team outweighs the risk. For the rest of the regular folks, having a good recommendation from your club coach is super important. The one thing college coaches want to avoid at all costs is a potential “basket case” for an athlete or difficult parents. Coaches only have a certain number of scholarships available, and they want to avoid giving it to someone who may be un-coachable. 

Parents often by default assume that their current coach would give their child a good recommendation, which is not always the case.  Ask yourself this, if your gymnast’s coach had to give an honest assessment regarding your athlete today what would he/she say. Would your coach answer the question right away, or would there be an awkward silence?  

Keep in mind that a coach’s recommendation doesn’t only affect your child but affects the athletes who come after your child that also want to attend that same program.  If a college gets too many subpar athletes from a particular gym, then that coach will most likely start looking at that program with skepticism when it comes to recruiting.  The truth is a coach and a program lives and dies by the number of people they get into college. Why do you think when you go to a competition, recruitment banners showing what gymnasts went to what college is always hanging from the rafters.  You can forever see a parent look up and say, “See, that is what I am talking about.” 

As the reputation of the gym grows, so does the status of the coaches.  Good coaches understand that an excellent reputation is like gold in the coaching world, and they should try to protect it at all costs.  For a coach to protect their reputation, they develop specific mechanisms that would behoove parents to be aware of even if they don’t agree with them. 

Coaches do have favorites

Part of getting a good recommendation is being able to earn a spot on the coach’s infamous “favorite” list.  My guess is right about now parents are gasping thinking “a coach shouldn’t have favorites.” Coaches just like parents have favorites, and if they tell you they don’t then your child might not be one of them. (shots fired) The good news is that for good coaches getting on the “favorite” list is pretty straightforward (in theory).  The answer is, wait for it, wait for it, wait for it, have your gymnast do what the heck they are supposed to do. I have a saying, “coaches see everything but comment on very little.” That means when your coach told your gymnast to do ten full turns, and she only did 8, the coach saw that. When your daughter looked at you and asked you what’s for dinner during practice instead of focusing, yep, coach saw that too.  Or when the coach is giving your daughter instructions, and she is missing half of it because you are trying to coach from the sidelines, the coach saw that too. Let us pause for a moment of silence for the passing of the parent’s pride who are guilty of this. The truth of the matter is coaches want athletes who can follow the simple instructions. No coach can guarantee the “W,” but any coach worth their salt can ensure progress.  Unfortunately, an athlete’s inability to listen and process information is an unnecessary obstacle to that goal.  

A great example of coaches wanting athletes and parents who can follow instructions. My daughter’s coaches have been on a vacation that last two weeks(must be nice).  Embedded in their two-week vacations was a one week vacation for the gymnasts. Before the coaches left they gave some simple instructions for what the athletes needed to do during their week off. Those instructions were for the athletes to record themselves for 30 minutes conditioning using time-lapse on the iPhone and email it to the coaches daily.  Outside of the fact that I am still rocking an iPhone 6+, so you are asking a bit much on the memory tip the request wasn’t too difficult but being a coach, my guess is many athletes did not do it. From a coaching standpoint, my question is simple. If you are not willing to dedicate 30 minutes a day to ensure your athlete fulfills a coaches small request, is it reasonable to ask them to go above and beyond the call of duty for your gymnasts?

Coach Push Other Athletes More Than Others

Here is another truth that may be hard for parents to accept. When it comes to college recruiting coaches will push other athletes more than others.  Everything goes back to reputation. If a coach believes one athlete is more coachable than the other and everything else is even, then it makes sense that a coach would push the athlete that has the highest potential to put them in the best possible light.  For example, as a coach, I have a recruiting relationship with a couple of colleges. Periodically I will get an FB message from a coach asking what I have in the pipe as far as talent. At that point, I have a decision to make. Do I push the athlete that may be marginally more talented, or do I err on the side of the athlete that is more coachable and has a better attitude?  In order not to put myself in that situation I tell parents not to be naive to believe that just because a coach trains their child and they pay their fees that somehow a coach is obligated to give their child a good recommendation. If you think I am exaggerating, below is an actual message I received from a coach.   

In closing the good news is that it doesn’t take much to get and stay on a coach’s good side.  Most coaches want their athletes to be successful, and many cases will go against their better judgment to increase the odds of that happening.  All parents have to do is “help them help you.” If you want to be able to use that money that you were saving for college on something else because your baby earned a college scholarship then in most cases, do what the coaches ask you to do. 

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Until next time, peace and soul…. 

The post Coach’s Opinion And Recruiting appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

It is me “ya boy” Gymnastics Dad back again for another round of blogging. Before I get started, I want to apologize currently and in advance for the delay in my blogs. As a track coach for a summer track team the summer is my busiest part of the year, so my blogging will slow down over the summer as I gather more material from dealing with parents and athletes on the track circuit. Over the years, I have realized that parents and athletes regardless of the sport, are similar, so a lot of the things I experience as a coach in track is also applicable in gymnastics. Before we get started with this blog, I want to send a big shout out to all my readers. I have reached over four hundred “organic” subscribers to my blog as well as people who follow me on FB, Twitter, and IG. For those who may not understand, getting over 400 organic followers is a big deal! First having organic traffic means that people see your site or FB page and like you because they like your content not because they are your friends, cousins, aunties, uncles or that crazy woman down the street that keeps taking photos of me getting into my car(I see you). Organic followers are the best type of followers to have, so I thank you. For those who have not signed up for my newsletter, all I can say is that Whateverrrr Man! Seriously, I have some big things planned for the GD nation, and I want to make sure you all are kept in the loop. If you are interested in signing up for my newsletter, hit the refresh button but this time don’t just close the newsletter popup please FILL IT OUT.  On to the blog. In this blog, I am going to talk about the offseason and why the offseason is one of the most critical times of the year. One of the biggest mistakes I see parents make is not understanding the value of the offseason. Most people don’t understand the importance of the offseason because they don’t know how athletic training and development work.

Let me guess, school is out and you are using the last remaining PTO days you have to take the family on a well-deserved vacation. First of all, I don’t know how you do it. This gymnastics season had my wallet like, “GOD if you are listening, helppppp!!!” but for those folks amongst us taking a sabbatical from life then enjoy yourself, and I am so jealous right now. Any-who, on with the blog. While you take this vacation, you promise your coach, yourself, and your gymnast that you are going to make sure your athlete does some exercise while on vacation. Literally, this is a text message I received today (06/21/2019) from a parent.  Notice my response of “Okay.”  For parents who don’t know “Okay” from a coach with no follow-up is equivalent to saying “child please, I am not about to waste my time.”  My parents always try to sell me on this same tired song and dance. “Coach Mike, I am going to have <insert name here> running while we are on vacation. We have a track right down the street”…they are going on a cruise. Most people look at the offseason as a time to chill and relax from stressful season and to some extent it is, but the offseason is also a time a lot of good work is taking place in regards to training.

-The closet is full-

Ever been trying to solve a problem, concentrating, focusing only on not to come close to solving the problem. Finally, you give up, throw your hands and say, “fudge it, I’m out.” Only to wake up and solve the problem in a few minutes. Well, that is what I call the “closet is full” effect. Imagine the mind as a closet, as long as you keep stuffing clothes(knowledge) in the closet eventually the closet will get cluttered and you won’t be able to find(process) anything. For you to find something efficiently, you have to organize, which requires time. Athletic training works that same way. When athletes are taught new skills, the mind and body must take time to process that new information. I believe, the more stuff an athlete has on their mind at any given time, the longer it takes to process new incoming data. Ever heard or used the phrase “oh, I forgot because I have so much on my mind,” exactly, now you are starting to get my point(aha moment). When a gymnast spends all day at school, only to go to practice for 4 hours the mind hasn’t finished processing all the drama their teachers just dropped on them (BTW, we have a quiz on this tomorrow even though I just introduced it today, WTH..teach!) much less practice. While on summer break, a gymnast mind frees up about 2GB of RAM that was used in school can now be used to process new skills. You all like how I incorporated some geek talk didn’t you, it’s sexy! A Gymnast can work skills during the offseason without the pressure of competition, school, homework, etc. The offseason allows their mind and body the time to process the information being fed to them without much interruption.

-Work weakness during the offseason and strengths in competition season-

As a coach, I have a simple philosophy, during the offseason work on the athlete’s weaknesses. During the season, especially the latter part, I focus on an athlete’s strength and hope their strengths can compensate enough for the weaknesses. Currently, it is June, and my track team is knee deep in qualifiers. Next week we have the national qualifier, and the top 6 advance to the big dance, the Junior Olympics. At this point in the season, my view for an athlete is “hell if you haven’t gotten it by now you are not gonna get it in two weeks.” Using that philosophy, we begin to work on the areas of strength, hoping that those areas will compensate for weak areas. In regards to gymnastics, I can’t tell you how many times my daughter’s coach changed her leap series as we inched closer to the state qualifier. Coaches hate to gamble, so once competition season starts they will go with what the athlete can do best. The offseason is the perfect time to drill down and focus on weaknesses, and too many extended breaks prevent that from happening.

-The body can repair itself-

Believe it or not, most athletes end the season weaker than they were at the beginning of the season. Science tells us that people don’t get stronger during work they get stronger during rest(after strenuous work). A high-level explanation is that the body gets stressed out and over time, evolves to handle the stress better by getting stronger. If the body never gets rest, it technically never gets a chance to repair itself. What this means is that during competition season the body is continuously being broken down but never really getting a chance to rebuild itself therefore never getting stronger. Also, given the fact that most athletes have pretty crappy diets, which just compounds the problem. Man cannot live on fast food alone! At the peak of my daughter’s competition, she practices five days a week and then competes on the weekend. She gets Sunday off to rest, but that isn’t nearly enough time for the body to repair itself. On the offseason, my daughter also grinds just about every day, but the difference is she practices in the morning and when she comes home, outside of doing a little homework and bothering me her lazy tail is slumming watching some chick repair squishies on Youtube. When she is laying around doing nothing, the body is repairing itself, which although immensely frustrating for parents to have to look at couch potatoes all day, it is good for the athlete’s body.

Moral of the story, enjoy vacations and time off but don’t go overboard. When you do go on vacation get ya boy a souvenir, I wear an XL.

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Until next time, peace and soul…. 

The post The Offseason appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

I decided to blog about this topic because it is something that as a coach is particularly near and dear to my heart, winning. As a coach, I love to win as any coach does but if winning is not an option than showing real progress towards winning is a close second.  Interestingly enough, I was talking to my daughter’s coach yesterday, and she said something that made my heart flutter.  She said “this is regions we need to win,” I was like the woman on Jerry Maguire saying “stop, stop you had me at hello, you had me…at hel-lo.”  

Getting the “W” is the foundation of all sports; therefore, winning itself is fundamental.  Winning in many ways defines the quality of a team and the quality of a coach although it is not the entire picture.  Every gymnast joins the competition team to win, and for the most part, every parent does too. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying winning is everything but it sure in the hell beats what’s second(get it,  WHAT’S SECCONNDDD).

Why is winning important

~“If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”― Ellen Johnson Sirleaf~

Winning is important because besides making the other parents green with envy as your baby collects medals(shade), winning embodies the end result of hard work, dedication, and effort.  Winning also serves as a great confidence builder.  I have a saying as a coach “winning builds confidence, but you have to be confident to win.”  Winning is also important because it helps to keep athletes motivated to stay in the sport.  Ask yourself this, how many athletes quit gymnastics when they were winning, my guess is not many.  Very few people want to stop at the top because winning is addictive.  It is easy to quit when the chips are down or after taking a butt whooping at the hands of your competition.   The more you win, the more you learn what it takes to win consistently which brings me to my next point that winning is a skill.

Winning is a skill

The longer I coach, the more I realize winning is a skill.  My definition of winning has evolved over the years from “getter done” to “executing a series of little things correctly to produce the desired outcome.”   I have also realized being successful is not necessarily a complicated process but rather a tedious one.  For an athlete to be successful, they must develop the following skills: discipline, ability to listen, ability to process information, ability to execute instructions and attention to detail.  Notice I didn’t mention talent or ability because most success in youth sports has more to do with an athlete’s ability to focus and follow instructions than it is about natural skill or talent.

Practice is EVERYTHING

Growing up I had two things drilled into my head when it came to sports.  The first was this quote “nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream” and the second quote was “to beat the competition you have to do what they are not willing to do.”  On weekends when I wanted to sleep in, my parents would come into my room, wake me up and tell me to do my chores and then go practice.  When I would throw the covers back over my head and say “today is a chill day” I would hear “okay, but nothing comes to a sleeper but a dream” along with “boy that grass best be cut before I get home.”  Growing up I was always taught there was no substitute for hard work.  If you wanted to be successful, you had to be willing “to go through it.”    When I was young, I had no idea what “it” was but as a coach, I understand “it” is the “grind.”  The grind is the work that takes place away from the lights and the cheering fans. 

Gymnastics like track and field at its core is a very methodical sport.  In methodical sports, repetition is king.  When watching my daughter’s practice, it becomes mundane watching her do what seems like endless full-turns and back walkover to back handsprings on the beam.  Although sometimes it gets boring as hell watching the same drills repeatedly I know it is essential for developing “muscle memory” which is a fancy phrase for a habit.  The problem with methodical sports is that like all habits, an athlete can develop both good and bad habits.  A gymnast should treat practice like a competition because as the old cliche goes “the way you practice is the way you compete.”  Although I have never competed in gymnastics, my guess is the same rules apply as with most sports.  As soon as the judge raises their hand, a gymnast’s mind shuts off, and the body reacts with what it has been trained to do through repetition.  What that means is if the athlete has been practicing with bent legs then guess what, you are about to see bent legs in the competition. 

Never apologize for winning.

The first step to winning outside of developing the skills mentioned above is to never apologize for wanting to win. For whatever reason, in youth sports, we have managed to do two things.   First, we have somehow made wanting to win and winning a bad thing especially if it infringes on another gymnast’s lack of winning or lack of desire to win.  For example, have you experienced the situation of being at the after competition dinner and not wanting to talk about how well your gymnast did because you don’t want to make the other gymnast feel bad? If you don’t believe me that we have made winning or wanting to win a bad thing.  You should try this experiment.  At your gymnast’s next competition look over at another parent and say “you know what, I hope my child gets first place today.  She has worked hard and deserves first place.”  Prepare yourself for the side eye.  For the second experiment, at the post-competition meal if your daughter did well and everyone else didn’t say this “soooo let’s talk about the competition” see if you don’t get the side eye. 

Not being able to celebrate a win for fear of hurting someone’s feelings is bullcrap, do you know how much I paid for this win?  You know how many lies I had to tell my manager to get out of work early so that you could make practice on time.  You know how many times I had to practice the sick cough for when I call off on a Friday because your session was scheduled for 5pm Friday and to beat Atlanta traffic I have to leave three hours early, but I am out of vacation days.  “Imma enjoy this win and talk about it now pass the cheese bread please.”   The below video is actual footage of me calling off.

The second issue is that society has made it that in youth sports everyone has to win.  Not sure when it became popular that the 50th athlete deserved a medal.  Listen, parents, if your gymnast is anything below 5th place, then you and I know they don’t deserve a medal. I am definitely not saying your gymnast isn’t a good gymnast, but the truth is five other gymnasts bested her that day.  Heck, I am not even sure what metal on the periodic table a medal for anything below fifth place should be made of. The truth is if we treat gymnast who perform very well that same as those who don’t then we never incentivize low achievers to work harder.

 There is no substitute for winning

The most dangerous that has happened in youth sports is that we have managed to redefine the definition of winning.  Winning is now defined by things that are utterly unrelated to the end result of competition. Victory is concrete, black and white and for my fellow computer geeks out there, winning is binary.  Either you won, or you didn’t.  Society has decided that to spare young children the pain of experiencing failure let’s just redefine what winning is. We have now defined winning within the confines of a social media post, which team has the best uniforms, or which athlete owns the most practice leotards or something else unrelated to achieving the best performance or the highest score.  Gymnasts are becoming Instagram and YouTube sensations because we have trained ourselves to look at small snapshots in time instead of entire pictures.

Also, because of our now distorted view of winning athletes and parents are far more worried about getting the perfect shot, grabbing the ideal video and picking the perfect practice leotard when we should be focusing on what we need to do to win.  Again, winning is essential, and if an athlete isn’t winning, they should be progressing towards winning. It might sound harsh, but the truth is everybody wants to win. The video below describes what winning used to be like

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Until next time, peace and soul…. 

The post Winning appeared first on Gymnastics Dad.

As this gymnastics season draws to a close I would like to say good luck to those going to state and region.  For anyone in Level 7 and dealing with vault all I can say is “the struggle is real” and misery loves company so welcome.  Anywho, around this time is when parents start looking for new teams and new gyms for their daughters to join.  Many of the reasons why parents decide to move on are legitimate like cost and location, but many of the reasons deserve the proverbial “side eye.” After my daughter’s gym closed down we were forced to find another gym and fortunately for us, we were able to land on solid ground at another gym with coaches very similar to her old coaches.  I realize our situation was more about luck than strategy.  Typically when making a decision to move gyms, there should actually be a lot of thought that goes into it.  I decided to write this blog with the hopes of helping parents understand what to look for when choosing a new gym.

Recruiter VS. Coach

One of the main reasons why parents decide to move to other teams is the belief that another program will dramatically improve their athletes’ performance.  The standard of measurement that drew them to this conclusion is typically seeing another team at a competition, and the bulk of their gymnasts are pretty solid.  Before getting involved with coaching, I would have considered solely looking at athletic performance as a good indicator of the quality of a coach.  Since I have been in coaching for over a decade, I realize that evaluating a coach solely based off of performance could turn out to be a bad move because several factors go into an athlete’s overall performance.   This leads me to my first point of knowing the difference between a recruiter and a coach. 

Before we get started with this topic, let me make a point of clarification.  If you have read my previous blog Talent vs Training, you know I do not like the words “talented and gifted” in regards to athletes.    Actually, over the years I have grown to despise the phrase.  I have seen too many instances where the word talented has been used to replace hard work and dedication.  You often hear parents use terms like “your daughter is so talented” when referring to an athlete that is outperforming their child.    The way the words “talented and gifted” is often thrown around, in my opinion, regulates hard work and dedication as qualities that have a minimum impact on an athlete ’s performance and that is not the case.  I believe parents throw around the words “talented and gifted” because those are not action driven words like hard work, effort, and dedication.  Basically, it is much easier for a parent to accept their child not being talented or gifted enough than to accept their child doesn’t work hard enough.  Lack of effort, lack of dedication, and lack of focus in a child is also a reflection on the parents(sorry if I just stepped on some toes).    

Every coach wants a gymnast with ability.  After all the more ability a gymnast’s has, the more creative the coach can be with routines and the more opportunity for success. The difference is real coaches understand that an athlete’s natural ability is just one ingredient in the overall recipe to an athlete’s success.  On the other hand, recruiters who pose as coaches believe an athlete’s talent will be the driving factor behind an athletes success. Notice, I used the word ability when referring to real coaches and talent when referring to recruiters.  To learn more about the difference read this blog but at a high-level a real coach treat athletic ability as something the requires nurturing and development, but recruiters view talent as either you have it or you don’t.

When evaluating if the potential coach is a real coach or a recruiter in disguise all you have to do is look at their history of work with other gymnasts with the same quality of work as your gymnast.  What that means is don’t evaluate the coach by an athlete who is the second coming of Dominique Dawes especially if your daughter isn’t that caliber of a gymnast.  If your daughter typically scores 34.00 then research if that coach has a history of turning 34.00 gymnasts into 36.00.  

Everything that glitters ain’t gold.

Let me guess, you went to a competition and seen a team with a zillion gymnasts that got first place, and you thought to yourself, “you know what me, this team must be pretty good because why else would everyone want to go there?”  Before you jump ship ask yourself this question, how would you feel if you walk into your child’s school and seen fifty kids in her class, you would blow a gasket, correct?  Yet, parents are okay with sending your child’s to a classroom(gym) with a zillion gymnast and expect her to get better…and I will just leave it right there.  

What large teams tend to do is that they hide individual failure in the overall success of the team.  Now, the example I am about to give will cut deep for a lot of parents.  Have you ever heard this before (or something similar) “My baby didn’t do so well today….but the team took first.”  What this really means is “yea my athlete performed poorly today, but the team did well overall so we are good.”  Parents stop fooling yourself, gymnastics is an individual sport, so if your gymnast didn’t do well, then the meet didn’t go well, period…end of discussion.  When you see a large team standing in first place ask yourself how many of those girls actually contributed to the overall team win.       

Accepting the truth

For parents, seeing and accepting the reality of their child’s current skill level is one of the hardest to do.  Most parents look at their children through rose-colored glasses.  Coaches are conditioned to see reality, but parents view what their athlete could be instead of their current state.   When my daughter did Level 2, I thought she was the second coming of Gabby Douglas.  I would sit in practice looking around like “what’s up playas, we up in here trying to get a @#$@#$@# scholarship,” yea not so much.   

(explicate video but it is the best vid to demonstrate the point,  plus I love this part of the movie)

Although my daughter is a pretty solid gymnast,  as the levels get harder, she will need to work harder to stay competitive.  If a parent can allow themselves to look at their child through an unfiltered lens, then the parent has a better chance of being able to accept the results of an athletes potential.  

Staying the course

Lastly, for any athlete to experience long term success having trust in the coach is critical.  Every athlete will go through highs and lows when it comes to development.  For example, my daughter is currently and Level 7, and if your daughter is in Level 7 and I mention the “V” word, then you will shutter in fear.  For those who don’t know what I am talking about the “V” represents the vau…. Sorry, but I can’t bring myself to say it.   Okay, that was a little dramatic but my point is my daughter has a history of doing very well in the vault and the changes this year has created less than desirable outcomes in that area. It sucks, but if you look at gymnastics as a whole, just about every level 7 gymnast is experiencing the same thing.  This is where trust in the coach comes in.  If their history says they have figured out previous changes in requirements, then you have to trust that they will figure this out also.   That does not mean having blind faith in a coach who hasn’t earned it, but if a coach has a history of success, knowledgeable and cares about your gymnast then you need to be like

We ride together, We die together, Bad Boys for life.

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Until next time, peace and soul…. 

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