Mas Watanabe

I have noticed that when a gymnast no longer has excitement for learning a gymnast’s learning stops or slows down. When they are learning, they are full of energy and their effort on each turn is greater. As a result, they will be more productive and the workout becomes exciting.

This is why goal setting is so important. If they have a clear goal to accomplish for each workout it is easier for them to focus on the goal. Also, improvement toward their goal should be checked periodically so they know how much progress towards the goal they are making. During the summer program, it is easy for the gymnasts to lose focus and their interest may drift away from gymnastics training. They may have other activities planned for the week and their mind could be occupied on those.

The summer time is the best time to have some other activities other than gymnastics. They need to be refreshed physically as well as mentally by participating in other activities and it should be allowed to some degree.

When you notice the gymnasts are having some personal (none related gymnastics) conversation during the workout and not taking many turns, we need to remind the gymnasts to focus only on gymnastics during the workout.

We need to be particularly careful when they start losing focus and not paying attention to the details during the basic drills or not putting a great effort into the strength training.

The basic drills on any event are generally repetitions of simple skills. The summer time is a great time to improve and refine the technique so that the harder skills become easier to execute with greater amplitude later on.

However, motivating the gymnasts to put some effort into basics is not easy job for us. Perhaps, we may need to be more creative when we work on basics. We could possibly attempt to use more variety of technique or progressions or do the simple skills in different combinations. Avoid doing the same type of repetition
as much as you can and make it more interesting or fun to do.

We also need to be very sensitive to their effort or to the small improvement. Sometimes, we need to appraise them for their effort even though they are not quite making actual progress yet. The positive re-enforcement needs to be done before you criticize them with their mistake and try to recognize the positive aspect even if it is a very small change.

The strength exercise is a tough one to deal with. The biggest problem is that they are going through the motions of the exercise, but they may not be making any progress. They can put their half effort doing the exercises and not gain any strength for a long time.

When we do core exercises or plyometric exercises we do it as a whole group. It is easier to manage large numbers of gymnasts at a time. However, when we do more skill oriented exercises or gymnastics specific exercises, we pair them up and the partner spots or counts the numbers for each other. This way, we can somewhat make them responsible for each other and they need to rely on the partner as well.

Some days, we pick the exercises that can be stationed close so that we can make a contest or a coach to oversee them closely.

No matter what we do, the real key is how much effort they are putting in each exercise. If they are not motivated to do them, it is very difficult to make them get stronger. So the best we can do is to talk to them often and make them realize that the strength is one of the key factors to better gymnastics.

I hope that your gymnasts are listening to you and they are getting stronger.

Have fun coaching!

Edited by Dan Connelly

We started our summer program on June 7 but some gymnasts were still in school and were not able to switch the program for another week or two. But now we are in a full swing of summer training mode.

In every summer program, we usually try to accomplish several important goals.
The main goals are refinement of basics, learning new skills, gaining physical strength, retaining learned skills and development of the artistry of gymnastics (dance & flexibility).

We have one other area that we always try to emphasize during the summer program and that is air sense development. The equipment we use is trampoline, tumble track and mini-tramp. Mainly we try to develop the gymnast’s flipping as well as twisting ability.

We are using the tumble track throughout the year, but we rarely use the trampoline or mini-tramp to work on skills other than during summer time. This is mostly because of the efficiency of time during training. Working on these drills will take lots of time and it is inefficient when you are working with a large group.

We do have one in-ground trampoline, but when I use it I always try to use the trampoline with the tumble track. This way, they are not standing and waiting when one gymnast is bouncing on the trampoline.

Working on good body position when twisting or working on the timing of the twist will be easier to fix if you have more air time. The trampoline will give them enough air time to fix their problem area in the flipping or twisting.

The biggest problem of trampoline work is most of the gymnasts are afraid of the height and the out of control landing. It will take a while to get used to it before they feel comfortable enough to try any flipping or twisting.

If you have an in-ground trampoline connected to loose foam pit you can eliminate some of the fear they will have for the landing.

We don’t have a loose foam pit connected to the trampoline so we use a small mat or an 8” pad to slide onto the trampoline when they finish the skill. The timing of the mat sliding onto the trampoline will take some practice, but you will get used to it quickly.

We normally slide the 8” pad from the end of the trampoline and the small mat we slide from the side. The gymnasts can learn the timing of the slide after awhile and they can spot each other eventually.

We usually put the mini-tramp right next to the loose foam pit and flip it into the pit.
When they are working on backward flipping and twisting we place a tall block in front of the mini-tramp. The gymnast needs to bounce up to the handstand position and snap down onto the mini-tramp then flip into the pit.

When they do this work you should stand by the side of the mini-tramp and make sure that the gymnast will safely flip into the pit. Sometimes the gymnast may land too close to the edge of the pit or on the mini-tramp by mistake.

When we work on forward flipping and twisting skills we simply place the mini-tramp on the edge of the pit and use run and jump onto and off of the mini-tramp.

I feel that air awareness exercises are very important work and it will help develop not only tumbling skills, but also dismounts on the other events as well as vaulting.

Hopefully the time they put into air awareness work during the summer is enough to help them during the year when they work on new skills that require flipping and twisting.

Have fun coaching!

Edited by Dan Connelly

Now we are done with the competition season evaluation so that the next step is to think about setting new goals for next year.

Immediately after the competition season some of gymnasts are very motivated to learn new skills, because their training was very restricted for a long time due to the competition season. Their training goal during the season was to focus on routines and there was no time for the new skills.

This transitional period between the end of the season and the start of the summer program could be a good time for trying some new skills as well as starting the progression of the next level skills.

All the girls should be in a very good physical shape and it is a fun time to do something new and excited.

Sometimes, they pick up a new skill quickly, but they realize that most of the new skills will take some proper progressive steps to learn well.

So, the main goal for this period is to refine the basics and prepare physically for the next level skills.

The refinement of basics will give the gymnast an opportunity to improve their learned skills as well as prepare them for new skills. Also, a certain type of strength might be essential for a new skill and this is an opportunity to develop that strength. So the strengthening of a specific area of the body is just as important as the proper progression for a skill.

For example, refinement of the flyaway tap swing might be a very crucial area for her to learn a full twisting double back (instead of a pike double) on the bars. Similarly, plyometric power development of the legs is necessary in order for her to pick up the front layout to tuck double front (instead of full twisting front) sequence in tumbling.

Here is the main emphasis for setting a goals for the off-season.
1. Area of basic refinement for all the events
2. Retaining learned skills:
* Maintaining good rhythm and timing
*. Further refining of technique & improving amplitude
3. Selecting new skills to learn:
*. Determining the proper progressions
*. Determining the area of specific strength necessary
4. General & specific areas of strength development
5. Artistry of gymnastics development:
*. Flexibility improvement
*. Improvement of dance and artistic expression

Obviously you may not be coaching all the areas mentioned above, but someone needs to have the overall plan in mind and make sure that all the areas are covered according to the needs for your program.

One other aspect that we cannot forget during this period is maintaining a healthy body. During the course of the season, some nagging injury might have prevented your gymnast from being 100% and sometimes stopped her from reaching a peak performance.

Most of the injuries she managed to handle during the competition season should be healed up during this period. She should train with a healthy body in the summer period and be very productive. This is the best time to take some time off for rehabilitation if she needs to.

Hopefully we can come up with a good plan for the summer soon and the summer program will be very productive for all of us.

Have fun coaching!

We have just finished the JO competition season and are now in the transitional period. So, this is a good time to evaluate the season as well as the rest of the year.

How have they finished the competition season? Have they met your expectations?

I know that you cannot always make the right judgment based on the outcome of the meets. However, the JO Nationals and the Eastern/Western Nationals are the National level competitions where you can compare your gymnasts to the national standard.

Our goal is to qualify as many gymnasts as we can to these National level competitions and compete them well at these championship meets.

During the evaluation, we need to remember how they competed in the meet. When a gymnast doesn’t score high you need to know why she did not score high
and what the problem was.

Obviously you can evaluate the routine from two aspects:
1. Start value of the routine
2. Execution errors

If the difficulty of the skills were not enough to get the maximum start value for the routine the solution is rather simple. You need to add more difficulty to the routine.

On the other hand if the execution was a bigger problem you need to determine where all the deductions were coming from.

The execution deductions could be coming from different areas and these are namely:
1. Form breaks – bad toe points, leg separations, arm bends and etc. – (can be fixed by small effort)
2. Poor technique – this can lead to a number of problems such as;
• Form breaks
• Short of body angle, short landing and etc.
• Lack of amplitude

Most of the time, all these problems are inter-related to each other, meaning that poor technical execution of a skill can cause all the problems that occur in the execution area.

Also, the problems of some complex movements could be coming from poor basics. For example, poor amplitude and slow rotation on a full-in on the floor could be caused by poor technique on the preceding skills, such as the round off or the flip flop.

Similarly, the lack of height on the double back dismount on bars could be caused by a poor tapping action in the simple flyaway.

Therefore, we need to think about which areas of basics need to be refined during the off-season, as well as what new skills need to be added to next year’s routine.

The refinements of basic skills are one of the most important areas of work during the off-season. However, it is very hard to motivate the gymnasts to put the effort into the simple grinding work of basics.

The important thing is to communicate with the gymnasts and make them understand why they need to work on the basics when you are evaluating their season performances.

Once they understand, at least they will agree that they need to work on these basics whether they like it or not. Hopefully, they will realize that it is the best and the fastest way to make improvement to the next level.

Have fun coaching!

In our club program we try to minimize spotting as much as we can. Ultimately, we want to develop the gymnast’s independence and their total command of the skills when they perform.

However, we also realize that there are many occasions that spotting is necessary in the daily practice for safety reasons, as well as for skill development.
During the course of teaching, hand spotting is essential on many occasions for different reasons.

The first and most important reason for spotting is safety. We must keep our gymnasts safe when they are out of control or not able to complete a skill. Sometimes, the margin of error is so small in some skills that the spotter must be ready to spot under the gymnast even if it looks good.

The second reason for spotting is as a teaching or coaching aid. Hand spotting can be used in many different ways. Here are a few:
1. Creating the necessary body shape and positions
2. Assisting to complete a skill safely
3. Teaching the gymnast a rhythm or timing of the body movement
4. Adding more power (body rotation, swing speed, air time, and etc.)
5. Psychological support

There are many good reasons that we should use spotting, but when you hand spot the gymnast you also need to know when to step away from her.

If you are giving a hand spot to assist in making a skill you must know how much spot she needs. The assistance from you should be for the safety of the gymnast. Also, you need to adjust the amount of spotting you give the gymnast to prepare her in order for her to soon be doing the skill by herself safely.

Some coaches use hand spotting a lot, but some don’t use it much. I trust that it is an individual preference, but we need to be aware of the benefits as well as the drawbacks.

Many of the elite coaches tend to use more hand spotting because most of the elite gymnasts are doing many difficult skills in their routines and the precision of every skill is so critical.

Executing many high risk skills in a routine is very delicate and no matter how good the gymnasts are mistakes happen. Quite often mistakes happen when fatigue sets in and concentration is more difficult. An experienced coach will anticipate when a spot is needed and be ready to spot the gymnast at the precise moment.

We must also make sure to teach the gymnasts how to fall safely from the apparatus. If the gymnast is in the wrong body position when she falls it can increase the possibility of injury. The proper body positions need to be taught as you teach each skill.

The biggest draw back on hand spotting is developing the gymnast’s dependency on you being there. Sometimes it takes a long time to step away from the gymnast. Even though you do not physically assist her in any way to complete the skill she may feel she needs you there. She could develop such a psychological fear that being spotted is the only condition under which she goes for the skill.

When you have this type of gymnast in your group she could slow the whole group’s progress down. She can take up so much of your time that it can become a frustrating experience for you and the entire group.

This is one of the reasons that you try to develop the gymnast’s independence as soon as you can.

Have fun coaching

Edited by Dan Connelly

When you are coaching day in day out, you will experience many different ups and downs. Some experiences are wonderful and very enjoyable, but some are very frustrating experiences. Sometimes, I feel like I am getting stuck and going nowhere with the gymnasts and feel hopeless to help them. But I am sure that the gymnasts are feeling the same way.

When you are engaged in any kind of hobby or activities other than gymnastics, it will release your tension and the stress built up during work. I realize that you are spending a great deal of time in the gym and you don’t have much time to do anything else, but if you do, it helps.

I have been playing golf on and off for a long time, but never seriously. I just enjoy playing with my friends and I forget everything else while I am playing golf. I also take lessons from the lesson pro to put myself in the student’s shoes.

Surprisingly, I find some similarities between gymnastics and the game of golf. For example, the sequence of body movements for the tap swing on bars is using a similar principal to the movement in the golf swing. An acceleration of the club head is similar to the acceleration of the body swing in the flyaway.

I tell my gymnasts every day how to accelerate their body and ask them to tap their swing on bars, but I am struggling to do that with the golf club. It is a frustrating experience for me, but when I am in the gym telling my gymnasts the correction on their swing, I can at least understand how they are feeling.

Would it help to teach them faster? I don’t know, but at least it will make me be more patient and perhaps more calm. I feel I understand better what is going on in their mind and the process of learning the skill physically.

When I am learning the golf swing sometimes I video tape myself and look at my swing. This helps me understand what I am doing and what is wrong with my swing. I believe that most of the gymnasts are very visual and if they see what they are doing it will be easier to make them realize their faults.

We have been using a video camera from time to time to show them their skills, but not as much as we should. The reason we couldn’t use it more often was the time factor. It takes time to do it. While you are video taping and then showing it to one gymnast you are leaving the other gymnasts without anyone watching their work.

Recently, we have been using a video camera set up with a small monitor and a recorder unit that will automatically play back (time delayed) so that the gymnast can watch her performance by herself. Unfortunately we have only one unit of this kind in the whole gym. Ideally we would like to have 2 or 3 more units to cover all the events, but even with only one, everyone is benefiting from using this unit.

We created this unit with inexpensive used equipments (video camera, monitor & recorder) so it did not cost us much at all. We can move this unit all over the gym, because this unit is mounted on a small cart.

We still use a regular video camera to view skills when it is appropriate. However, this self playback unit is like having another set of eyes or coach in the gym. We use it every day. I would highly recommend everyone to make a similar unit for your gym if you don’t have one yet.

How often do you use this type of visual aid in your gym?

Have fun coaching!

Edited by Dan Connelly

Currently I am working with a group of girls ranging from Level 8 to Level 10. Their common rebound tumbling pass for the FX routine is the backward to direct forward somersault or series of forward somersaults.

The most common combination used is a round off to back layout one & half twist to front pike or layout somersault. All the girls are making this pass most of the times, but some are better than others.

I would imagine that this trend is similar to most of your teams as well. I found that our girls tend to make a few common technical errors. One of the errors is too much whipping action on the back 11/2 twisting somersault. When they have too much whip on the somersault, the last half of the flip develops too much rotation. That will cause the landing and take off angle for the forward somersault to be very inconsistent.

Some times it will be just right and the forward somersault will fly up in the air, but many times, the gymnast will lean forward so much that she misses the punch and the front goes very low.

If she anticipates fast body rotation and punches early, sometimes she may punch the floor too soon and the front will get stuck and not go up high at all.

The main cause of this whipping action on the back 11/2 comes from two sources: the arms and the head movement. The arms should lift up for the take off at first and from there they go to the twisting position. However, if one or both arms go into the twisting position too early, the head will go back with them. This action causes a whipping action.

Yes, sometimes you will find a gymnast who can isolate the arms and keep the head still resulting in control of the amount of body rotation, but this is very rare.

Instead, a better way to execute the back 11/2 is with the arms lifted upward, then
brought back down toward the body (preferably lower than the chest), but in the direction of the twist. The radius of the body rotation will be shortened when this happens and it helps to lift the lower body (legs) up quickly as in the back layout.

She should not thrust the head backward, but just turn the head in the direction of the twist over the shoulder. Also, twisting the body one and a half should not be completed in the mid-air. Rather, the last half turn needs to be done in the last quarter of the somersault where you can visually see the ground.

During the last half turn she needs to be staring at the ground as long as possible so that she will know the exact timing of the punch before it happens.

I normally tell the gymnasts to open their arms to the side after the full twist and ask the last half turn be done in that arm position. The arms should be lifted upward as she punches the floor, but not before the punch. When arms go up above the head too early for the punch, the front somersault will likely go forward.

Perhaps the most critical part of the technique is first, not whipping the back 11/2, then looking at the ground before the punch.

We have been working on this technique for a long time but we still do not have many girls able to do it consistently.

Edited by Dan Connelly

The other day when I was looking around the gym, there was one group of young kids working on the bars. One of the girls was doing a cast handstand on the low bar and she caught my eye. The thick resi pit was under the low bar so it was a very safe setting to attempt the cast handstand and go over the bar.

The cast handstand was not done with perfect form, but it had ample speed and she was making it very easily. So I walked over to the coach and found that the group was level 4 and the girl was only 7 years old. I was more surprised to find that the group has a total of 12 kids in it and most of the kids can cast over on a handstand.

All the kids are between 7 and 8 years old (except two 6 years olds), but some of them are making a good glide kip and looked like they can almost do the level 5 routine. It was cute to see that some of them are having a hard time jumping up to the high bar because they are so small.

I was very impressed with what they already can do and their capabilities of doing the other skills. The group consisted of 12 kids and they had a main coach and one apprentice coach assisting her. About 4 to 5 stations were set up so that they rotated in small numbers and coaches assisted at 2 of the stations.

I was surprised to find the coaches at the basic level doing such a good job developing the young kids and it made me realize that we need to pay closer attention to what is happening in the gym.

Since that time, I have been paying attention to the young group activities and noticed a few more things.

Generally the groups are large and have more than 10 girls in them so they need to set up many stations to keep them busy. However, when you create many stations and make the girls do the exercise or skill by themselves it is very difficult to control the quality of their exercise.

So you need to keep your eyes on the other stations all the time even while you are spotting the kids on one station. Many times, you need to walk over to the other station and assist a child if you see a special need. Also, you must take time to slow down and explain exactly how you want them to execute the skill very clearly to the kids.

When coaches are setting up stations they need to always include some simple conditioning or strength-oriented stations. That way, the quality control might not to be as critical for these stations compared to some others.

We have our in-house evaluation systems for the developmental levels. We use mostly the USAG criterion (plus a few of our own) for level 1 through 6 and we are conducting testing periodically. This is how the kids move though the levels and skill criterion is emphasized in the class teaching.

I have noticed that the young inexperienced coaches tend to spend a fair amount of time teaching the compulsory elements or criterion skills once the kids reach that level, but sometimes they don’t spend enough time on the other basic moves.

The inexperienced coach needs to have some help here from the experienced coach for setting up a good curriculum.

In the compulsory meet, I have noticed some teams could be very impressive, but some times you need to look at their optional team as well to see the true picture. If their optional team does not impress you it could mean that they are spending lots of time teaching the compulsory routines and may not be spending enough time on the developmental skills.

The compulsory routines are composed with some basic skills, but the routines are too short to have all the important basic skills. So we must make sure to teach a variety of skills to broaden their foundation.

My observations of our developmental groups lead me to believe that we need to create a “MASTER PLAN” for the developmental programs so that you can always compare your plan with it and find out any uncovered area.

Have fun coaching!!

Edited by Dan Connelly

We all know the basics for all events are very important and refinement level of basics determines the level of difficulty that they can achieve later on.

Do you work on the basics during the competition season? If you do, how much do you spend the time on?

I know the importance of the basics but I also know that we don’t spend enough time on it right now. Because many times, they don’t have enough time to complete their assignments in the time allotted for the event.

For example, a typical floor exercise assignment for the routine day for us is to do 2 routines and complete 5 of each tumbling passes in an hour rotation. We can use 2 floor areas to do the routines most of the time and they usually complete their assignments with 9 gymnasts in a group.

However when they have a weak skill or sequence that needs work in the routine, sometime they get stuck working on the correction and an hour rotation is not long enough. Even when they become more efficient with their routine and the assignments, they still need to work on the upgrading skills so literally we don’t seem to have much time for the basics.

Fortunately, this particular group has a 30min. work allotted on tumble track for 4 days a week (Mon, Tues, Thurs & Fri) so most of the times, I will review the basic tumbling there.

On the beam event, I know they are working on their basics most of the time because we allocated more time for this event (an hour and a half). However even with this extended time, occasionally some individuals are putting the extra time for the corrections of the skills and sequences.

In Uneven Bar event, we built in the work for the basics in their warm up turns because we also allocated the extra time (one hour and a half) on this event. Their warm ups are consist with the cast handstands, inbar skills and giants for various numbers for different levels. All those basic skills are used in the part of their bar routines so the efficient basic skills will make their routine easier and more consistent. Therefore, the work on the basics is essential here in this event and they will work on some portion on the basics in the daily training.

Fortunately, we have 2 settings for the vault event so that we can always use one set for a drill or basic vaults and the other one for the competition vault. Here, the problem is more on the gymnast’s effort level particularly, the work on the drill or the basics while they are working on the real vaults. The gymnasts have a tendency to put more effort on one area rather than both. But this problem is more on the managing the training rather than the lack of time for the basic work.

Realistically, emphasizing the work on basics during the competition season is very difficult. A lack of time is one big factor but I also see the level of the gymnast’s effort for improving basic is not so good.

The work for the basics is a lot of repetitions of simple movement and it is nothing like getting though the routine or learning a new skill.

In order to make them motivate to work on the basics around this time, we may need to give them the work related on their immediate needs. This way, we can keep their motivation up even they are working on the basic skill.

I am sure that some you are already doing it in your training and I feel that I need to do a better job on motivating them on working the basics.

Have fun coaching!!

The JO competition season has started and most of us have already had a few competition experiences under our belt.

How is your team performing in the meet? Are they all hitting their routines 4 for 4 yet? Our team is not quite ready to hit all 4 routines yet.

After the third meet, we had a long break, about for 3 weeks, so this was the time to evaluate our routines once more. We had to determine whether or not we needed to work on perfecting some parts or consider another skill for a certain routine.

We also evaluated which routine was ready to be upgraded with more difficulty and start working with the new skill in the routine.

Our goals for routine endurance and repetition are a minimum of 5 competition vaults, 3 to 5 bar routines, and 2 to 3 floor routines. The beam routines and consistency are built very differently from any other event and they have a variety of approaches they use according to their needs. Since the male staff are not directly involved in the planning part of the beam event I may need to avoid describing the details of our approach at this point.

By the next competition we need to be ready to perform our routines with better quality and with more consistency.

Realistically, we have time to improve our routines by April which is when the important meets take place. The regional meet will be the final meet for the Level 8’s and the important qualifying meets for the level 9’s and the level 10’s which qualify to the nationals.

Peaking the entire team at the right time is very difficult. Several years ago, the team worked very hard at the beginning of the season and they had their peak performances around the end of March. They had peaked about one month too early. By the time the Regional and the Nationals came around their performances were good, but lacking the sharpness present in March.

It surprised us, but as we evaluated the season afterward, we also realized that the staff had lost some intensity and relaxed too much after the team had the best performances in the mid-season. Ever since that time, we always thought we could do it again when we needed to because we had done it once so early in the season.

We have learned a hard lesson and we will never forget that experience. Since that time, we have individualized their goals and always keep them on the task that requires their excitement and challenging spirit.

As I stated in the previous issue our goals for the competition performance is to hit all 4 routines, but also to perform the routines with 80% of their best. We should not expect their best performances in the competition.

Undoubtedly, the best performances will happen some times, but we should never push for it or count on it. The gymnast’s goal is to repeat what they can do daily at the competition not more and not less.

This is why they need to finish their routines in the practice even if they fall off in the middle of their routine. Because sometimes, they will make the same mistake in the meet and still they need to finish the routine with the minimum deductions for the rest of the routine. That could be the determining factor as to whether a gymnast qualifies to the nationals or not in one year.

The routines need to be practiced in a variety of conditions. Limiting the number of turns for the warm up might be a good one to practice. Another time, unexpectedly changing the competing apparatus (especially on beam) might rattle the gymnast’s mind.

When they have more variety of experiences in their memory bank the better they will perform under adverse conditions and/or under pressure.

But nothing will guarantee their performances in the meet. Only thing we can do is to prepare our gymnasts as well as we can and accept the outcome.

Best of luck for the rest of the season.

Have fun coaching!

Edited by Dan Connelly