WAG gym recs around San Jose/San Fran

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momof2gymmies

Proud Parent
Looking for some gym recs. DH is in CA interviewing and it looks like he will be offered the job. Girls are not great, but enjoy gym a lot. 10 year old is an xcel silver (but could be L 5 at another gym?) , and 12 year old is xcel gold (but could be a 7?) . But our gym is funny with skills, so it might just be easier to list routines/what they have.

12 year old has robhsfull on floor. does half on and front handspring vault no problem. Bars has kips, clear hip, uprise, flyaway, giants. Beam has bhs, bwobwo, tictoc, front walkover, full turn, various leaps and jumps.

10 year old has robhsbt on floor, aerial, fhsft. Has a kip on both bars as well as a fly away. Can do giants on strap bar. Has bwo cartwheel and handstand on beam, and can do bhs with a light spot. She does the stupid silver vault, so no clue how she does on FHS.

I don't know where we would be living, but would guess somewhere between San Fran and San Jose.
 
San Fran and San Jose are pretty far apart (it's at least an hour, more with traffic) so you may want to take that into consideration depending on where exactly you plan on moving. I have a friend who trained at west valley and she ended up with a scholarship. Amy Chow trained there as well. It's in Campbell which is adjacent to San Jose
 
San Fran and San Jose are pretty far apart (it's at least an hour, more with traffic) so you may want to take that into consideration depending on where exactly you plan on moving. I have a friend who trained at west valley and she ended up with a scholarship. Amy Chow trained there as well. It's in Campbell which is adjacent to San Jose

This is so true. It really depends on where you live as traffic is incredible. It can take 20 minutes to go 3 miles.

Also the 4 gyms listed above are high hours, high pressure. There are a lot of other options. I would make recommendations but it would help knowing a better idea where you might end up. Where is the job located?
 
Job is in San Fran. He is willing to drive 90 minutes each way, so where ever that puts us. :) I have no clue looking at the map. The girls currently go 12 hours a week for YDD and 14 for ODD for xcel. YDD does not want more. ODD would be fine with more, but at this point may be too old for high pressure gyms.
 
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Job is in San Fran. He is willing to drive 90 minutes each way, so where ever that puts us. :) I have no clue looking at the map. The girls currently go 12 hours a week for YDD and 14 for ODD for xcel. YDD does not want more. ODD would be fine with more, but at this point may be too old for high pressure gyms.
Twisters Sports in Mountain View isn't as high pressure/high hours, and that's smack dab in the middle of Frisco and San Jose (I took rec there as a young lass :))
 
Twisters Sports in Mountain View isn't as high pressure/high hours, and that's smack dab in the middle of Frisco and San Jose (I took rec there as a young lass :))
Twisters moved to south Sunnyvale (basically San Jose), they also still do not have a pit.

Let's see, in San Fran: American
South San Fran: Gymtowne, Accel
North Peninsula: San Mateo, Peninsula
Mid: Bayshore elite, Menlo Park (no xcel though)
Further south: Twisters, Airborne
West Valley is south west
San Jose: Cal Sports (multiple locations)

There are more, these are off the top of my head.

There is also the East Bay, could make recommendations there too. Also 90 minutes each way is a long commute.
 
Job is in San Fran. He is willing to drive 90 minutes each way, so where ever that puts us. :) I have no clue looking at the map. The girls currently go 12 hours a week for YDD and 14 for ODD for xcel. YDD does not want more. ODD would be fine with more, but at this point may be too old for high pressure gyms.
90 min each way doesn't put you far when you consider commute traffic at times. Traffic is pretty awful there...because 90 min could become much longer, I would say limit it to an hour commute for him...because many days it will be way more than an hour!
 
I'm not gonna recommend gyms- you've gotten a lot of names already- but I am going to caution about commute. When we moved up here two years ago, we'd heard about "the traffic". Figuring we were coming from LA, and had dealt with east coast traffic before that, we didn't give the traffic the respect it needs. It isn't bad, it is truly awful.

We chose to live in the east bay- hubby works by the airport in south San Fran, and on paper it looked great. It's only 25 miles- 40 minutes by car and an hour on the BART. Nope, never. It takes my hubby over 2 hous, and sometimes upwards of 3 hours on BART, and we would never ever want to drive it. My girls have had gym commutes ranging from 20 mins (currently, and that's about 4 miles no freeway) to 3 hours in traffic (that one was 50 miles). The gyms are either VERY demanding (JO) or very low hour/low key (Xcel) and there really isn't a middle ground. My heartfelt suggestion would be to move as close as you can afford (and care to live) to your husband's work, and then look at the closest 2-4 gyms from home and pick one of those. There are a ton of gyms here, so no worries about that.
 
Top gyms in the Bay Area:

San Mateo
Airborne
Edge (if your kids rock bars, their girls are soooo good at bars)
 
MILgymFAM is spot on. You don't want to commute to gymnastics outside of where you decide to live. Schools in SF are difficult to navigate but if you live in SF, American gymnastics is the choice. Our DD started there and it is solid.

If you live South of SF, lots of other option listed for you by others and lots of choices. East Bay, your DH can take the local train system (BART), and it is cheaper than living South. There you have Head over Heels, Golden Bear, Edge, and a few others further East.

North Bay, Marin, is beautiful and commutable to SF. Also less expensive than South. Though I don't know about gyms there, I know they exist.
 
Like everyone said, commuting out here can be brutal. I think you want to decide where to live based on his job and the family budget (and the sort of home/lifestyle you want, schools, ext.), then look at the 2 or 3 closest gyms. There are a ton of gyms out here: many are excellent, nearly all are decent.

Norcal Gymnastics has a list of all member clubs: http://www.norcalgym.org/roster.htm
 
Used to coach at a gym in the East Bay. With traffic and commutes being what they are, almost all of our team and rec kids lived in the East Bay - so I doubt if it's practical to look that far afield but there are plenty of places in the South Bay. Also, once they get to age 15/16 many of our team kids just take public transit from school and get picked up at the end of practice. Not sure how public transit is south of SF, though, and OP's kids are a bit young for that, but something to think about for the future.

(unrelated tip - to really sound like a native, refer to the city as "the city" or "SF", but never "San Fran" and definitely never "Fr*sco").
 
Used to coach at a gym in the East Bay. With traffic and commutes being what they are, almost all of our team and rec kids lived in the East Bay - so I doubt if it's practical to look that far afield but there are plenty of places in the South Bay. Also, once they get to age 15/16 many of our team kids just take public transit from school and get picked up at the end of practice. Not sure how public transit is south of SF, though, and OP's kids are a bit young for that, but something to think about for the future.

(unrelated tip - to really sound like a native, refer to the city as "the city" or "SF", but never "San Fran" and definitely never "Fr*sco").

Ha. Love this tip. :) So true.
 
Used to coach at a gym in the East Bay. With traffic and commutes being what they are, almost all of our team and rec kids lived in the East Bay - so I doubt if it's practical to look that far afield but there are plenty of places in the South Bay. Also, once they get to age 15/16 many of our team kids just take public transit from school and get picked up at the end of practice. Not sure how public transit is south of SF, though, and OP's kids are a bit young for that, but something to think about for the future.

(unrelated tip - to really sound like a native, refer to the city as "the city" or "SF", but never "San Fran" and definitely never "Fr*sco").
lol I was born and raised in the Bay Area and I sometimes say Frisco....mostly just "The City" though. I hope I can be forgiven for breaking the ultimate rule :)
 
Lol. I live both in Houston and in a suburb about an hour away ( my strange life). I always talk about "the city".
 

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