Parents I'm just really curious-preteam

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Dad1234

Proud Parent
My daughter, who is on preteam, did gymnastics camp at another gym for a week. Camp was geared towards rec kids and I signed her up to just have fun and to and take a break from preteam training. We came across a coach who saw potential in my daughter and who was extremely kid friendly and encouraging to my daughter....what almost seemed like a perfect coach for my daughter. She coaches their developmental classes so we tried out a developmental class at that gym. The class was mostly four year olds. It was a three tiered program to get to team. My daughter tried out the class right before their preteam program. For the whole class (an hour and half long), the kids did conditioning and strength building exercises. The coach explained that at her level they work on mostly just basics. My daughter didn't care for the class and I can see why. There was nothing fun for the kids and I almost felt sorry for these four year old little girls who have to endure this kind of training. It seemed very serious for these little girls. It turns out the coach who my daughter really liked was an assistant to the main coach and even though she tried to bring an element of fun to the class, she wasn't the one who was leading the class. We decided this gym wasn't for us as I think my daughter would grow to hate gymnastics with this type of training. My daughter definitely does conditioning at her current gym but it is probably 1/3-1/2 of her class time, depending on the day. I'm just really curious if most preteam programs consist of mostly strengthening/conditioning or is it typically a mix of skills and conditioning? Her current gym is small and this was a much bigger gym with a focus of creating college bound athletes.
 
Pre-team programs run the gamut from all conditioning, strength, and basics to all drills and skills (and even learning actual routines).

The gyms that have the conditioning, strength, skills, and routines are also the ones that tend to want the gymnasts to have ALL skills before moving up to team.
 
My dd trains at a large high-performing gym and preteam is mostly conditioning, basics, and "shapes." It does seem boring at first - especially since the little girls are usually so excited about being on preteam and think they will start learning "big girl skills" asap. The process seems to work well for them though since dd's gym produces many high level gymnasts that perform well regionally and nationally.
 
DD's old high-performance gym was nothing but shapes and conditioning and drills for 3 years. It was a unique 4-5-6 year old who could not only handle, but enjoy that kind of thing, but those were the athletes the gym wanted anyway, so it worked for them.

We switched gyms, but it was negative coaching techniques that drove us away. The actual gymnastics was phenomenal and I can see why they did it how they did it.
 
IN my opinion not the best way to run a pre team. Young kids are fickle as it is, and will easily and quickly lose interest in an activity. If the goal is to produce successful high level athletes, the intelligent way doesn’t seem to be by driving the talented young ones away before they even get the chance to learn any “real” gymnastics.

At this age their needs to be a lot of work on physical prep and basics but is should be fun and exciting, built into games, drills and circuits, using different fun pieces of equipment and so on.

If their goal is to weed out the ones who don’t “love” conditioning at a young age, I feel it is very misguided, we have had plenty of kids, who at 4 or 5 hate pd conditioning and stretching and would have quit if they had to do it all lesson but by 7 or 8 when they are old enough to become goal orientated they love it and come in for extra optional conditioning.
 
My daughters two years in developmental was mostly conditioning and shapes and very basic drills to skills. She had coaches that made it a little more fun, sure, but it was crazy boring stuff. Lol. I feel like we watched hurdle, then hurdle-RO, then hurdle-RO-rebound for two years getting perfected, that was how slowly the skills moved.
 
What Aussie-coach said.

JMO It takes a degree of maturity to understand conditioning is necessary. And to see how much it helps.

My kid would of been one to quit if that was the choice when she was that little.

There were drills, shapes and conditioning but it was also fun and game like at that young age.

These things are not mutually exclusive. If a gym didn’t get that it would not of been the gym for us at that age.
 

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