Saturday, May 22, 2010

posted by The WordSmith from Nantucket at 5/22/2010 10:26:00 PM

1 Comments:

Blogger The WordSmith from Nantucket said...

A comment I left at the Chalk Bucket:

I've recently been influenced, within the last year, by a coach who believes in shaping-type spotting (mostly on bars). He'd spot every single skill even though the gymnast could do the skills on her own, pausing here and there and poking/checking for body shape, position, and form. For every 4 routines done by the gymnast, he'd hand-spot about 3 of these, with every 4th routine done solo by the gymnast. He said he did this because he's a firm believer in muscle-memory (let a kid do bad technique repeatedly, and it gets ingrained into the neuro-pathway of bad habit). I'm not completely sold on it, but I've adopted some of that approach into my own coaching. The reason I'm not completely sold on it is because I do see a certain trade-off. Not due to gymnasts being afraid of doing skills by themselves, in this case; but in gymnasts getting lazy and not firing off their muscle-fibers correctly enough to develop the proper strength to do all the skills and hit all the positions based on the merits of their own efforts. I suppose it's a matter of striking a balance (something I'm trying to find). I just think too much of it takes away from the gymnast self-educating the body by you doing too much of it for her.

I think so long as the gymnast understands what is required of her, and what the skill should feel like (by spotting and carrying through proper technique now and then as a constant reinforcement of how the skill should be executed), so long as she has her brain on and actively making those changes without developing undesirable habits, then allowing the gymnast to do skills, even sloppily (so long as they don't become habitually the same), as she gets stronger and logs in the flight time, the skill will work itself out, form and all. Repetition is the mother of all teachers, after all.

(Of course, how many gymnasts do we know who have been allowed to develop such bad habits that, at their age, it's probably too late to correct their round-offs? Their giants? Etc...? So it also depends on the quality of the repetition)

As far as BWO on beam, I'd say spot them on the floor for proper technical execution and form. Maybe also on the floor beam. But then beyond that, no more spotting, but maybe stand there for rescue spotting at first. At the first gym I worked at, the coaches didn't allow any spotting for the high beam. Ever. If the gymnast could not do it on the high beam, then she wasn't ready. And this approach seemed to work great. Gymnasts learn the skill properly on the low beam. When they've done a sufficient number of reps to gain the skill and the confidence to do it safely, then they took it up to the next level beam. They had to do a certain number to pass on to the next higher beam, and then the next, and so on (removing 8 inchers out from underneath). If you didn't have the confidence to do it by yourself on the next level, then you weren't ready for it and stayed where you're at.

I like this approach because I think it's not only safer (since nervous gymnasts can imperil both the gymnast and the spotter), but it makes the gymnast confront how to deal with fear and anxiety issues productively and overcome them when these instances arise. If proper progression steps are taken, then there shouldn't be any fear issues.


Of course, there are always exceptions to rules and I am not a believer in a "one size fits all" approach. Sometimes you have to do some tailor-fitting toward the needs of the individual and figure out what teaching method a gymnast responds best to, and which gets you the best results out of her.

Thursday, July 08, 2010 8:29:00 PM  

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