The Natural Process of a Gymnastics Coach

If you are searching for the best tools out there to become a gymnastics coach, you may find some useful resources online or in a book and through attending various courses and workshops. Sorry to say, that neither of them make one an extraordinary teacher. What separates the best from the rest is a coach that is also a teacher who is a brilliant facilitator that carries their learners to succeed.

When we look at the phases a coach goes through in our line of business, there are four distinctive phases, in each one a coach may have that key moment when arriving at the other advancement in their career. This natural process of a gymnastics coach will not be found in yours or mine resume or CV but rather it is in our intrinsic development.

Newcomers to the coaching world think in terms of the entirety of a skill; they teach gymnastics skills. They really only think in terms of teaching the skill at that point in time and that’s really all that they want to achieve. In spite of this, there are frequent setbacks when these newcomers teach the skill. (Ever try to teach a new kid a cartwheel with absolutely no preparation? Yes, me too…when I was starting my coaching career.)

At that time, coach becomes more conscious about the skills problems and aims to resolve the problem areas in the skill. Still, when making the effort to fix the skill there comes numerous problem areas in technique, lack of strength or flexibility or power. The majority of the time, these are not solitary problems but go hand in hand with one another.

Then, the gymnastics coach will think of the primary root of the skills and the components of each factor. They decipher each gymnastics skill, think of the essentials and set in motion their transition into the last stage of the natural process.

At last, they look at the entity. They look at each individual gymnast and realize they are teaching them how to do gymnastics. Each and every one of their gymnasts has special qualities accompanied by their personal flaws. In parallel, these coaches giving these gymnasts triumph from the very beginning in segments so that these gymnasts will be proven proficient each step of the way until they accomplish the skill.

This natural process, is something one would say, “You have to go through it yourself.” I can’t tell you to stat thinking in terms of the individual and their needs compared to another student in your class. Nor can I give you all the answers. In spite of everything, there are tools for you to speed up this process.

Next week I’ll post about skill decomposition and you can take a bite off that learning curve. Follow this journey, you never know what you’ll learn through the process.