US difference to Aus...

[Ozgymie]

Hi there,
Have been reading heaps of the US threads etc - Not sure if any of you agree - but does it seem like they coach their kids from a fairly young ages through the levels?

We coach the levels NDP system here - and everything seems to be SLOW - like they take a year to do each level. It just seems like there is a lot of 8 year olds training Level 5 and above in the States and elsewhere.

Just thought i would comment on it here? the systems just seem so different. would love to hear all your thoughts. I am also not judging any of the systems - they just seem so different.

 

[Iwannabemargo]

I think that here you get a skewed perspective. Parents who bother to join a forum tend to be more invested in their child, and tend to have more skilled / advanced children than average. Just my view.

 

[Ozgymie]

Oh fair enough - i guess thats true! - and they have a much larger population than us - and prob more interest in the sport

 

[COz]

But also from what I gather, the US system does allow people to progress quickly through levels and "score out" of a level which doesn't really happen here.

From what I understand, this is one of the things that next year's WAG restructure is trying to address, so it is possible for talented girls to progress more quickly through the levels rather than the one-a-year that we have at the moment so we do end up with more girls in the higher levels.

Just for comparison however, in the IDP (elite) stream, girls can be competing IDP3 at 7 turning 8. From the restructure documents that were posted in another thread, this appears to be roughly equivalent to NDP6.
So there are girls here with higher level skills at a young age, but not many. I think we have way fewer gyms that offer IDP compared with NDP gyms.

 

[OzZee]

the numbers thing really hit me when I was reading the 'change gyms at level 10' thread. Some of those gyms sound like they have more level 10's at one gym than we have for a whole state. And that would be throwing in the IDP 8's as well, lol.

Other than the super star kids that make it to level 10 by 10 in the US I do think that on the whole it seems to level out a bit as the levels go up. But our system of perfecting the basics does mean a much slower progression.

 

[Quadqueen]

But also from what I gather, the US system does allow people to progress quickly through levels and "score out" of a level which doesn't really happen here.

It doesn't happen here nearly as much as it appears from posts on CB. There's a lot of talk about scoring out on this board, but from what I see, not many gyms do this. Around here, most do one year/level.

 

[RAMS]

My daughter, who is 8, will be attempting to score out of level 4and 5 this fall and move to level 7 by January. Our old gym didn't do this and often had many girls repeat levels.

 

[Aussie_coach]

D take I to account the fact that the US has many times the population of Australia. You are going to see a lot more of everything in the US. A lot more talented young gymnasts, a lot more level 10's, a lot more gyms and a lot more coaches.

Up until now our NDP system has not really catered for young gymnasts, there were things in there which made it very difficult for young gymnasts. Like the minimum height requirements for vault, and the fact that our level 4's (equivalent to US level 3) must jump to high bar, hit 180 degree split leaps on floor and 135 degree split leaps on beam, little things like that.

The new system being introduced next year will be far more conductive to younger gymnasts reaching higher levels at earlier ages.

The other issue we have had in Australia is the bonus system. In many ways it has been a great thing that gymnasts can earn bonus points for a lower level doing harder skills. This encourages coaches to be constantly uptraining. But it has become a negative thing as coaches often hold the gymnasts back in the level longer to get all the bonus skills. Coaches don't see as much of an issue of kids repeating low levels because with the bonus skills they can compete completely different routines. But if you watch routines of kids from the US you see that many Australian kids would be two levels higher if they were in the US.

The new system is also designed to stop this, the coaches will be more likely to move the kids on when they are ready because there are no longer bonus skills before level 8-9. So the is no longer any advantage of sticking around in level 4 when you could be in level 6. It will be limiting and boring for the child if they are held back.