WAG Practicing routines vs. practicing skills, which is better?

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munchkin3

Proud Parent
Just trying to get a feel for what y'all are used to.
Old gym, girls pretty much worked on routines. Up training in between, but the focus was clearly routines. Once the compulsory season finished, then they would immediately begin the next set of routines, with some up training.

New gym, no apparent routines. Just different skills. All kinds. some make a lot of sense, some make no sense (to me....obviously). They clearly are working 1-2 levels above. Some days there will be a skill or two involved in the compulsory routines....Moms have said their biggest complaint was learning the compulsory routines 1 month before a meet, but did just fine....
How does/did your gym do it in the compulsory levels?
 
Routines just prior to and during season. Skills in the off. Currently, our compulsory season ended in November, and the girls have been doing skills based training since, with an obvious focus towards what's in the L4/L5 routines - beam cartwheels, front handspring vault, kip, cast to handstand, etc... I don't expect to see true routines until spring.
 
Our gym is more like your old gym, although this is DDs first year on team. During competition season, the focus is primarily on learning and practicing routines (L3 floor music is constanty stuck in my head :( ) Summer was when new skills were worked on primarily. DD also does TOPs so has opportunities to work on higher level skills then.
 
For compulsories, skills all summer and into early fall with minimal routine teaching, then during the meet season, much more emphasis on routines. For optionals, almost all skills all summer but runthroughs on floor and beam routines once a week. For both, uptraining skills during the meet season is mostly concentrated in any break in the schedule where they are more than two weeks from a meet. However, the optionals have two tumbling/tramp rotations per week that are strictly focused on uptraining.

For the boys this year, the routines/uptraining breakdown depends on how close they are to having full value routines that they are executing well. On a couple of events, DS warms up, shows a good routine (i.e., less than one point in deductions and no major errors), and then spends the rest of the rotation uptraining, either to add bonuses or to work on skills for optionals or Future Stars. Same deal with some of his teammates who have full bonus routines or who have good base routines and are just looking to add bonuses or upgrade. On weaker events, more time is spent on routines and problem parts.
 
When DD was a compulsory, her yearly schedule was like profmom describes: skills all summer, learn routines in fall, emphasis on routines until State, then uptraining in the spring.
 
I must say that I do like the up training, and skills focus. It seems like they are really trying to move the girls into an optional setting. DD will hopefully score out of 5 as soon as she can and then go from there.( Either 6 or 7 for the next optional season.)

I am NOT used to all this random skills, and drill stations, but my DD loves it! Never really the same every day. As long as she likes it, thats all that matters.!
 
Our girls are gearing up for season, so the emphasis is on routines. Our HC doesn't like them tumbling full out everyday, so there are a lot of "dance thru" routines going on floor, but beam & bars are full routines! If they get a 2 week or more break between meets, then it's more skill focused!
 
DDs old gym focused on routines during meet season.

New gym "counts" routines (they have to have 10 "no fall beam routines, for example prior to being able to compete beam in meets at the beginning of the season) - but once they have "counted" routines, it's just skills, and drills. They may run through routines once a week.

DD really seems to like the new gym's way of training - she comes home and tells me what she's working on all the time.
 
Skills with up-training. Routines during the 2 weeks prior to a meet. Anytime there is a break more then 2 weeks between a meet, it Is back to skills/drills. Seems to work well.
 
*old gym- routines...to the point of girls being bored & wanting to quit. we called it "teaching to the test" just like we complain about schools doing.

*new gym- skills! to the point i was getting antsy to see new routines. but they finally starting working them in late october and meet season starts, well, THIS WEEKEND!
 
Skills and heavy conditioning, strengthening during the summer. Fall is generally the cut off around October, I think, if they're not getting it, they move back a level. They start learning routines late October to early November & we generally have an in house meet late November/early December. I think they learn the actual routine so late because the girls get completely sick of them by the time the season is done in April/May.
 
When DD was a compulsory, her yearly schedule was like profmom describes: skills all summer, learn routines in fall, emphasis on routines until State, then uptraining in the spring.

I think that's pretty much how our gym works, although I'm not sure what they do is really uptraining during the winter/spring. She's a level 2 right now. They moved from preteam to team in May and trained level 2 skills until August. Started learning the routine at the beginning of August, competed and only worked on routines from September-December. Now that the competition season is over, they are working on learning level 3 skills. For the first time ever. They will do this until May, when they will either officially become level 3 or ?? (not sure if anyone would stay at level 2 or leave team or what would happen if they weren't ready since we are new and I have no idea how it all really works!) From May until late July-August, I think they will continue to work on all the level 3 skills and then work only on routines from then until the end of competition season in December. I don't believe that she will be exposed to any level 4 skills until after the end of the level 3 competition season, although maybe (hopefully?) I'm wrong about that.
 
What additional things do your kids do in a typical week? Beyond events and strength/flexibility in warmups, my L8 daughter has a strength rotation, a dance rotation, a trampoline rotation, and a twisting/flipping rotation using the pit.

DS could use a dance rotation, LOL! They often combine trampoline with vault.
 
What I like about the skills, drills, skills aspect is that it seems more natural for the higher optional skills. The time spent learning tougher things like piourettes or layouts or doubles etc, seem so much more involved. The dills or strange excercises which leave me completely lost, are obviously for parts of other skills and exercises for muscle memory.
DD has done round off on the table to a hollow stand on a high resi....then back tuck off another table into pit. obviously getting them used to the motions of tsuks.
Front tucks off beam, back straight jumps off beam. all kinds of wierd jumping on beam....( for switch leaps etc. i guess). holding splits handstands...running up and down it...
All kinds of different back handsprings...high, low, flat....
Lots of drop kips and cast HS.....here my DD is struggling because she learned how to do very ARCHY CHS.....she is re-learning to stay hollow and straddled...she does it beautifully with light spot for reminder. lots of strap bar for everything....free hips, giants, baby giants...
A LOT of tumbling INTO the pit, which my DD finds terrifying! She would prefer to do a layout on floor any day. But I know she must learn to tumble into the pit for doubles, and twists etc.
L5 meet is in 2 months.....i assume that by then she will be ready to compete and the L5 routines really arent that different than L4 so she should be fine.
 
Mostly skills and uptraining, though routines happen shortly before and during season, though never is there more time spent on routines than on skills and uptraining.
 
Yes prof mom.....beam jump rope......one legged too....I told my friend from old gym and they laughed that all the parents would complain. She's right.....that's the sad thing about old gym, great coaches, but the program is not PRIVATE, and the parents are constantly stepping in. Whenever little Susi complains of a tough conditioning day, Susie's mom goes in to complain the next day....
This would never happen at private gym.
 
I prefer to emphasize skills (or short sequences of skills) over routines most of the time. During the off season, it's just skills and sequences. During competition season, a typical rotation will consist of maybe one or two routines, but otherwise just skills (except the day before a meet or the week before states, when it's almost nothing but routines)
 
Jumprope on beam- DDs new gym does this ... Makes me laugh! But I think it's great. She has gone from beam being her worst event to beam being her best event.
 

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