This Way Up

A Christmas Coaching Epiphany

We are encouraged to take a holistic view of each child we teach. This is a very admirable viewpoint but when you coach 200+ children per week it becomes tricky.

I do endeavour to do this with the gymnasts I work with the most, particularly the ones connected to my own club. This unfortunately means that the children who are part of a large recreational group where I am doing a few weeks sickness cover get little more than a passing thought on what makes them tick. Don’t get me wrong, I give them the best quality coaching that I can – but a one size fits all approach is necessary to ensure everyone gets something out of the lesson.

I have no real difficulty with children who are a bit naughty or cheeky. In fact once you have them fully engaged they are often the most fun to coach. What does make me grit my teeth is wet blankets, if you’ll excuse the term.

My favourite times as a gymnast were when my coach would let us off doing any more beam drills and let us try something way above our skill level like Yurchenko vaults. This wasn’t dangerous because the coach introduces the move using progressions and if they go well we might eventually attempt the complete move with heavy support and matting. I adored doing something new and out of my comfort zone and it gave me a real sense of achievement. Now that I’m the coach, I do the same and the vast majority of my gymnasts love it, or learn to love it when they feel proud of themselves.

Anyway, I have just finished one of these short term contracts yesterday. There was a child in the class who I seemed to not be able to get through to. Even the most basic moves like crawling on the beam or a gentle hang on the bars with me constantly holding her would send her into a panic. Using what I could honestly describe as being just short of forcing her I would eventually get her through the moves. I asked her if she felt proud with herself after she’d done it (yes) and praised her highly, but it didn’t stop the same thing happening when we did the move again.

I was baffled as to what to do for the best. A bit of fear is healthy – it stops a gymnast doing things they truly aren’t ready for – but this was irrational. Plus if you don’t like going upside down and have a problem with generally throwing and knocking yourself a bit then gymnastics is probably not the sport for you. I can understand parents wanting their kids to do it to build confidence, but this has got to be with the agreement of the child, and the child also having the desire to come out of their shell.

I pressed on with this child as best I could, not taking no for an answer but doing my best to reassure her. I don’t like it when children cry and would usually stop at that point but I had to push on or she would have sat out the whole lesson. We continued making painfully slow progress with lots of tears and I constantly questioned whether I was doing the right thing, although gradually a sense of trust began to build.

Yesterday was the last session of term. As a treat I decided to properly take them out of their comfort zone and try some Freestyle, including wall flips. This was just too much for her and despite me promising to keep her safe, the crying started to reach epic levels and I was worried. Just then her mum appeared and I thought I was really for it now. I handed my gymnasts over to the assistant coach to give them their badges for the term’s good work and went to speak to her.

I got the first word in. “I don’t like to give her the option to opt out, but you know your child better than I do – should we do it?”

Mum was actually very polite “I agree with your ideas but I think she has done enough today”.

“That’s fine by me, aside from that she has done brilliantly this term”

As her daughter collected her badge the mum suddenly burst into tears herself. Uh-oh, I thought, now this is really awkward. “I’m sorry” she said “but her Dad died five years ago tomorrow”.

I hadn’t seen that coming. Mum had a cry on my shoulder and said she knew that she was overprotective of her child but she couldn’t help it. Her daughter wouldn’t even go to the park as she was scared to go on anything and at that point Mum had decided that gymnastics might be the solution. “It’s been so hard for her, and so hard for me watching her, but I think now we’ve got to do this”

I can’t imagine what this family go through at this time of year. I find it fairly easy to let my daughter be daring, but for this mother it must be immeasurably hard. I hope the daughter learned something from me, but I learned from her that there can be much more than meets the eye when children are scared of moves, and all achievement is relative.

After a very challenging year coaching-wise this was just what I needed to restore my faith.

Happy Christmas everyone!

 

Free Running. In or out?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-14461719

I spotted this rather interesting article the other day about an indoor free running show. 

Free Running is having a bit of an upswing of late. First this performance at the Edinburgh Fringe by the 3run boys. I have met this group through various trips to Basingstoke  Gymnastics Club to get trained as a coach and joining in with their awesome Freestyle sleepovers. 

I am slightly surprised of the tone of the article however, as if going inside with it is something especially unusual - maybe it's because the only Free Running I have really dealt with has been indoors, and I don't know much different. The group I teach have already done two indoor displays. It doesn't matter whether we're in or out - a platform is a platform and therefore its fair game for somersaulting off!

In a similar vein, Concrete Circus on Channel 4 was a great showcase for the sport. The aim was to make the ultimate viral video and they made a good choice in using the stars of my favourite video, Professor Longhair, Big Chief. I loved the two videos involving the bikes. Unfortunately the Free Running video left me a bit cold - the premise was the runners had to pass an initiation test. The use of fire was inspired, but the actors describing said test just came over as a bit cheesy IMHO.

Still it's all good news for me and alt-path. 

TTFN.

 

alt-path: Gymnastics as you've never seen it before

I am writing today's blog in celebration of the website for the new arm of my business being launched. I'm just so excited that I have to tell you all about it.

The story of alt-path is this: last year I was approached by the local secondary school. They had a group of boys who enjoyed Free Running around the school campus, and the head of PE - who is very forward thinking - decided that rather than banning them, they should get someone in to help them do it safely. Especially as some of the lads were not going to win the Pupil of the Year prize any time soon, she realised that this would be a good incentive.

Of course the local authority initially said no to the idea, unless they could find a suitably qualified coach. While there have been several organisations and governing bodies set up in recent years to promote Free Running, the only one which was in a position to insure their staff was British Gymnastics. Even then it has to be taught under the name of "Freestyle Gymnastics" and only supervised by a coach in an approved setting.

I have always been very intrigued by Free Running. By the time I was about 15 I was done with traditional gymnastics and the intense training and strict competition rules. Like many teenagers I began to rebel against it. Things have improved greatly in recent years to keep teenagers in the sport but at the time I felt that myself and gymnastics had nothing left to offer each other. It was a great shame because I still enjoyed anything acrobatic and every bin or bollard of a suitable height would get leapfrogged over or somersaulted off. I find it amusing that Sebastian Foucan is credited as being the "world's first free runner" when I and many others were doing an early version of it in the mid-90's. An ongoing debate I used to have with Joel was "is gymnastics an extreme sport?". My opinion is that it is - but it has never been marketed that way.

Coaching Free Running is the perfect antidote to the hours spent coaching traditional gymnastics and its inherent discipline. One day I went on a course in Cheshire where I learned that the majority of moves could be taught using a £500 foam coaching block. On the plane home from Manchester (I just had to drop that in - the second time in my life I have flown somewhere for work, and the first time for my own business) my brain went into overdrive and on the back of a British Airways sick back I drafted out a basic business plan. The premise was this - if you can have a mobile pre-school club (which we do), then why couldn't you have a mobile Freestyle club?

From there I obtained funding for one of the trusty foam blocks and engaged a web developer to build the website. I am delighted with the finished product and I hope it will bring in plenty of business.

At the moment many gymnastics clubs have little to no interest in running Freestyle classes, or are scared of the safety implications. This is understandable as Freestyle is less likely to attract the well behaved girls and boys from good families. I am currently in training to deliver more coaching courses in the hope that anyone who wants to try it can do so at a club near them.

On the site I mention the positive impact the sport has on people's lives. Certainly my own life would be very dull without being able to somersault on a regular basis. It is so rewarding to see people throwing themselves into something they love doing when it may be the case that they care little about other things in life. One person I taught is now interested in coaching and is something of a role model to the younger gymnasts. 

So here it is: www.alt-path.co.uk. Hope you like it. 

Three of my boys show off the coaching block. It looks a lot less shiny these days

 

Baby Gymnastics, Russian style. Shocking but what does it teach us?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12276623

This interesting article caught my eye the other day about "dynamic baby gymnastics" which is widely practiced in Russia. In a nutshell it appears to be throwing your baby around in a theraputic fashion, and footage on Youtube has been deemed too horrific for the general viewing public and has been removed.

As a gymnastics coach I am keen to put as much distance as possible between this baby "gymnastics" and the type of "baby gymnastics" that Gym Joeys - and hundreds of other clubs in the UK - practice very successfully which does wonderful things for children. But with my parenting hat on, there are a couple of points in the article that I could only agree with.

"People in Europe are used to raising their children in over-sanitised conditions, they're scared of everything" said the practitioner in the article and she's absolutely right there. When my work takes me into primary schools, I meet many seven and eight year olds who go into meltdown when they are inverted (by attempting a handstand or swinging upside down from the bar) simply because they've never done it before. For a moment I wonder how they've got this far in life without being inverted, but then I realise that it isn't hard - a life where the television is constantly on and the parent's favourite catchphrase is "be careful!" isn't going to encourage anyone to push their physical limits. We have a photo of Natasha aged about five months being held upside down by her Daddy and she's having a ball. But then if Joel King is your daddy then you can expect to be thrown in the air, submerged under water and taken for a ride on a streetluge in your first few months.

A paediatrician goes on to say "The baby can slip, the baby can accidentally move when he's being twisted around and hit somebody's leg or furniture. That would be harmful in all cases." Of course it would. But I expect the practitioners use a space that is big enough to swing a cat in (or, I suppose, a baby). I doubt that they place a nice glass coffee table within striking distance. I can't comment on the first two possibilities she raises without seeing the video, but outlawing a practice because of something that might happen seems a bit tenuous. Any practitioner working with a wriggly baby has the potential to drop or injure the child, and these practitioners have been trained to minimise this risk.

At Gym Joeys our promotional copy says that we "encourage a positive attitude to physical activity and managing risk". The latter does not mean "let's avoid the risk" or even "hey, let's go nuts!". It's about the child learning what they can do, sometimes through trial and error, but with an adult to catch the error or to dry the tears after it. One day they will have to make these judgements for themselves, and not just in a sports based setting.

We remind parents that babies and toddlers do actually bounce - the process of ossification, which is hardening of the bones, is not complete until adulthood and at that age, their bones are very spongy and are far more difficult to break than in older children. Imagine if we fell over as often as a toddler does - we'd be constantly in A&E. But toddlers are made to have tumbles, it's all part of learning to move. If a parent gasps and shows their own anxiety at this then the child will become increasingly risk-averse and afraid to try new things. I wish that most children aren't raised in that mindset but too many are.

The one phrase I hate is "Be careful!". What does that mean if you're a year old? It seems to be used whether they are about to spill their drink, or run out towards a road. No wonder it loses its meaning and kids switch off. It is a frowned upon phrase in coaching - we are encouraged to be more specific and this can follow into everyday life; "mind your head on that" "be gentle with the cat" "go down the stairs slower".

The families I work with will be pleased to know that I'm not about to start chucking their babies around (any more than usual!). But our extreme reaction to the Russian way speaks volumes about how we wrap our kids in cotton wool.  

 

 

Welcome to This Way Up. That should be the other way up.

Hello everyone, and thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to look at my new blog.

My new web developers have advised me that I need a blog to "optimise" my websites. I should know all about this as I spent a number of years working in web marketing before my current occupation, but a couple of years of child rearing and alternative business development (more on that later) has meant that everything I know is just sooo 2007.

Anyway, I'm Anna and I live in Bognor Regis. It's not that bad, honestly. I've just turned 30. I'm married to Joel and we have a two year old daughter Natasha who you will almost certainly be hearing a lot about.

The story of how I got here is interesting (to me anyway). In 2005 I started helping out at my local gymnastics club at the weekends. I can't really remember a time in my life when gymnastics wasn't a part of it and I was keen to be more involved in a community where I had only planned on living for a year but liked it so much I stayed. Nine years later and I'm still loving Sussex.

My involvement in the club increased and 3 years down the line I was a highly-qualified coach and a paid up member of staff at the club while still holding down a full time job.

In early 2008 I became pregnant. I had always wanted my own business and realised that if I was ever going to go for it then now would be the best time. After Natasha was born in September I began contacting possible freelance clients and suddenly it all snowballed. As well as Gymnastics I teach Trampolining, Circus skills, Jump Rope (skipping if you're not American), Cheerleading and - my favourite to teach - Free Running (or Freestyle Gymnastics as I have to refer to it for insurance purposes). The horror stories of being self employed had put me off up to now but I was inundated with work and I love it.

Last year I heard about a local pre-school gymnastics club where the head coach was retiring and we took over. This would mean taking Joel along for the ride as I couldn't run it alone. I doubt that becoming a gymnastics coach was high on Joel's list of What I Want To Be When I Grow Up but he is fabulous at it, especially with the little ones and he reins me in a bit when I'm tempted to put a talented toddler onto an elite training programme.

The title of the blog comes from the front of my Freestyle Gymnastics hoody. Hopefully working in the job I do will give me lots of interesting stories to tell you, as well as comment on Gymnastics and Olympic events of the moment. Those who know me will be aware that I feel very strongly about the risk-averse, electronic-led society that our children are being raised into and no doubt you will hear my thoughts on this. After all, Gymnastics is all about measured risk. As a family we're just about to go fully self-employed - Joel has three days of his local goverment job left - so you'll also be hearing about that elusive thing called "work-life balance" and how it works (or not) for us.

Until next time...