Coaches Set Up / Take Down Rec Gymnastics- how many rotations?

[coachkazoo]

Does anyone here run gymnastics out of a school gym where you have to set up and take down each time?

I'm used to a gym where we warm up for 15 min and then go to each event for 15 min. But at the school, I feel like I should just do 2 (bars and floor, next week vault and beam, etc etc). It is so much work to set up. The uneven bars take us 15-20 to set up. I feel like we need 1.5 hours to properly set up.

So, my question is....how do other coaches run classes like this?

 

[Sari]

Story of my life.
I do three events per week and generally show up half an hour early (unpaid for, obviously) to start setting up. That way I can start warming up the kids 5-10 minutes into the class.

 

[bogwoppit]

That was my life for five years. On the weekends when we set up Friday and took down Saturday night, we did all four apparatus.. One the other nights we set up and took down, we usually did beam and floor or beam and bars. Always a roll out mat down for conditioning though.

We had parent volunteers involved in set up and take down too.

 

[Sari]

Alluding to bog's reply: back home where I first started coaching they have parent volunteers to set up and take down the spring floor (not a full floor, that would take way too long even with volunteers, but one roll out mat worth of spring floor).

 

[Redford]

Same here, whenever possible I'm arriving a little early to start setting up. Unfortunatly the gym is mostly occupied until our lesson starts. The kids are taught how to set up safely from the very beginning and are expected to help.
At the beginning of the school year, we try to schedule as many classes as possible for one day.
My competitives who are comming in twice a week are doing 30-45 min warm up and conditioning, then we do floor and beam acro and bars or straps on monday and floor and beam dance, vault and bars on friday. Trying to pack in as many bars and conditioning as possible.
With the kids who are only coming in once a week it's a a little more tricky to get everything in. 30 min warm up, then the kids are divided into three groups, one is doing either beam or bars with one coach, the second is doing vault or floor with the other coach and the third is doing a conditioning sheet. We never set up beam and bars at the same time as it takes to long and kills a lot of the limited space.

 

[coachkazoo]

Thanks so much everyone. I'm starting to think that is what I will do. Floor PLUS 2 events only. Floor each class and then rotate 2 out of the 4 (beam, vault, bars and tramp). They want the tramp every class of course! But it is a folding one which takes 20 minutes alone to set up. Thanks again for the ideas.

 

[marie83]

we set up our rec satellite club 3 times a week.
coaches and volunteers arrive 30 mins early and we've got setting up sorted in 25 mins normally and gymnasts start to arrive 5 mins before the session. We only have basic equipment though - a jigsaw style floor (not sprung), a vaulting box, a set of fold away A bars and a fold away beam, a few springboards, benches and safety mats.

we do all 4 apparatus each week.

15 mins for registration and warm up
4 x 10 minute rotations
5 mins for cool down and dismiss

When we had less space, we did only do 3 rotations. We ran on a week A and Week B system whereby one week we would do floor, vault and bars and the next, floor, vault and beam.

The older gymnasts do help us to tidy up.

 

[gymisforeveryone]

We practice in a school gym once a week with my preteam girls. The practice is 2 hours long and we can't get there early because there's a group of basketball players playing before our turn. So when we get in we let the girls play games for 15 minutes or so and set up the metal bar poles, mats under them, the floor mat, benches and a floor beam and some big soft mats, spring boards and a mini tramp. The girls help us if we can't set up everything by ourselves. After that we do 15 minutes of basic floor and dance work and then we introduce the different stations and drills we are going to use. We don't do rotations because we have so little equipment. We set up stations for every event and the girls rotate them for an hour. There's usually a high strap bar for kips, swings and baby giants, a low strap bar for low bar kips and back hip circles, a bench for beam routine, a little beam for handstands and cartwheels, a vault, a mini tramp for BHS, RO or FHS, floor mat for leaps and jumps sometimes walkovers or floor routines, and some side stations for strength.

Aften 55 minutes of rotating all the stations we usually pick one station where they show their skill or drill for everyone and they get some feedback. Sometimes we don't do that and have a quick stick it game on beam or on vault. During competition season they usually show us routines on one event.

After that we have 25 or 30 minutes left and we tidy up quickly. It usually doesn't take as long as the setting up. Then we do conditioning (usually holds on stall bars, climbing the rope and press holds on floor so we don't need any equipment). After that very little time is usually left so only quick splits and we are done.

It's not ideal because they basically have to warm up on their own... And sometimes it gets boring to always use the same skills and drills because there isn't that much that you can do with the equipment we have. But for us it works well that we don't concentrate in different events but do everything at the same time. They get more turns this way and don't spend their short practice time waiting in line.