WAG What's your opinion - level progression question

[gymnast-mac]

I've seen a lot of different approaches to moving up, and I was just wondering what everyone thought/the policy/rules at your gym on things such as moving up, staying in a level for another year, and skipping levels.

 

[GymMomXcel]

As far as I know, in our gym, you move up at the end of the current competition season if you have the skills needed for the next level or have the potential to have them/get them between competition seasons.

 

[cbifoja]

I have little experience as my DD is only beginning her 3rd year of competition and we've only attended one gym.

Our gym competes girl who are proficient at their level. We go to meets and see some gymnasts throwing some crazy stuff....like BHS where their heads are hitting the floor. That wouldn't happen at our gym. You must have your basic skills consistently.

But we don't sandbag our teams with mandatory repeating for the sake of banners/titles. We have a few girls who will score 37s but most are in the 35 to 36 range consistently. In our state, that is enough to usually place top 3 at state.

We compete starting L2. Occasionally, a girl might skip L2. We had an older pre-teamer who could already kip so she moved to L3.

Our gym's basic philosophy is one level per year. We uptrain enough that most girls have their skills for the next level by the end of summer. Usually, we have maybe 10% of our girls repeat for some reason or another: too afraid of a new skill, illness/injury abbreviated their season, lacking a required element, something like that.

Our girls compete every level. We don't have a "test out level" or a level we tend to skip. Every now and then we have a girl skip a level if she has made a lot of progress quickly and has the necessary skills. This happens to about 2% of our gymnasts.

We also don't have mandatory skills/scores other than what is in the routines and required by USAG. So for example, we don't say you have to have your splits to be on the team, or you have to have a 37AA to be moved up to the next level. But you do have to have a BHS at the level where it is competed and you do have to have the minimum move up score (is it a 32???) as required by USAG.

I like our policy because it feels like it is designed to meet the needs of each gymnast rather than forcing gymnasts to be in levels that aren't appropriate in either direction. I feel like we do well enough at competitions and we always have several state title holders at every level we compete.

 

[stxrdusty]

If you have 60-70% of the skills for the next level my coaches will consider moving someone to the next level at the end of competition season. Level repeats are not mandatory, and if possible people are allowed to score out and skip levels given they have all the necessary skills for the level they are slipping into.
We're also not allowed to compete an event at a meet if we don't finish our assignments the week before a meet.

 

[Gymnastics_Freak3]

My coach will only let you move up if you have most of the skills for that level. I asked my coach if I could move up to L7 (I have most of the skills) but she says no and I don't know why. I've been in L6 for almost a year and personally I think I'm ready to move but it's mainly up to the coaches.

 

[gymgymgymnast08]

If the coach liked you you could move up if you were ready or not. If they didn't like you, you could be a level 8 for 5 years.
Great system...NOT.

Fortunately this was my second gym and I had won states the year before so when I came they had to let me be a level 9.

 

[Rosemary Chavez]

The first gym I went to every 6 weeks we would get a progress report and if we did really good we would move up. If we didn't then we would stay until we got the skills to move up. The second gym I went to their would be an in-house meet about once a month and of you got 34 or better in AA then you would move up to the next level or if the coach thought you were ready to move you up then they would.

 

[Bajanswife]

DD's gym is small and they train in groups that make sense. They concentrate on what they are training more than what they are competing. If you are trying to compete level 4, for example, but a meet is coming up and the coach has to decide what level to enter you in, she will check your progress and decide if you are ready. If you aren't, she may enter you in level 3 one more time (if it makes sense, and if you are willing) and you'll spend the few weeks leading up to the meet working on your level 3 routines again. There is no definite move up date - kids move up to a new competition level whenever they are ready (but may stay in their training group unless they have really jumped up and need to add a training day). We are not in the US and don't have any kind of state meet to worry about.

She also never takes the whole team to a meet - mainly because not everyone can afford to travel to every meet (they are all overseas except for our own) but also because for some gymnasts it doesn't make sense to drop them back a level if they aren't ready, so they just skip that meet. The coach has her own ways of assessing who's ready or not, but there are no "official rules" - it seems as though each gymnast is treated in a very individual way.

At our gym we compete from level 1 because that's what our nearest neighbouring gym does and when we started having our own invitational meet and they were who we were mainly trying to attract, they wanted level 1 on the program. Our level 1 team will probably be allowed to travel to neighbouring meets this year, but so far we haven't taken such a low level to US meets. I think the lowest we have taken to the US was old level 3, and this past November we took some new level 3s (but no level 2 or under). Now we also teach level 1 skills and routines to the rec kids and will allow any of them to compete just in our own meet if they are proficient at the routines.

 

[IreneKa]

The rule at our gym is you move up if you have all the skills. There is almost no up-training during the competition season. But as soon as the season ends, around April, the up-training starts and goes on until the end of August. At the end of August the decision is made who will be competing what level. If you have all the skills, you move up, if not you repeat the previous level. In rear cases, if a girl acquires the skills in the middle of the season, and it's early enough in the season for her to compete, she will be allowed to move up. That's what happened to my DD this year. She didn't have FHC at the end of August, so they kept her at level 2. She competed three meets as level 2, and now moved up to L3.
I wouldn't mind her staying at a lower level and have a successful season, if they allowed any up-training. What bothers me the most is that once they put you in a level, you are only allowed to practice that level's skills (except for an optional extra practice once a week). She would simply be bored practicing the skills that she's already getting 36-37's on for the next 4-5 months.

 

[LizzieLac]

For us it is skill-based, combined with form (i.e. sloppy form on a skill might hold you back until you improved the form), and not so much about scores. However, generally speaking, these things go hand-in-hand. We tend to uptrain all year, although during competitions it is weighted slightly more to routines. But given that there is uptraining, girls with high scores tend to have good form and are able to get new skills because they don't have to spend so much time on form.

 

[Gymishome]

For us, you can be moved up if you have all the skills for the next level and they HAVE to be consistent. We uptrain basically year round, so some girls move faster than others.

 

[thefellowsmom]

Always uptraining. No rules on move ups, to the point that it can be a little nerve racking. But, every girl is treated as an individual with her personal gymnastics, emotional and developmental needs being considered and every girl is allowed to move at her own pace. Repeat when necessary, move up when necessary, skip a level when necessary. Worth ever exasperated moment waiting to find out what is happening at a meet a few weeks from now. This doesn't always lead to meet wins and state championships although our girls do quite well overall, but they teach awesome gymnastics and the rest is just gravy.