The other day I was listening to some coaches brag about the difficulty and intensity of their workouts leading up to a competition. My question is:
“is that intensity and difficulty contributing to the gymnasts success or is it hard just for the sake of being hard?”
Cramming for an exam is a time-honored practice for most students. Gymnastics competitions like tests are stressful, sure, but you can not cram for a competition.
Excellence in gymnastics is rarely determined the week before the competition. It is determined through consistent training in the WEEKS and MONTHS prior to the competition. This is a lesson many gymnasts and coaches forget. There should be some intense and difficult parts of the training cycle but each training sessions should have attainable goals. Whether that is skill acquisition or a set amount of routines.
Coaches need to remember that there are only 2 guarantees for gymnasts.
You are going to get hurt.
You are going to be frustrated.
If a coach has a plan to deal with injuries they will be able to alleviate some of the frustration. Recently I was working with a gymnast who was coming off a lower body injury. Nothing serious but it reduced the amount of time that she could train and the events she could do. Essentially she was only allowed to do bars.
Realistically how much was she going to accomplish at bars? She could not do 4+ hours of bars every day without risking injury.
I needed to come up with a plan to continue the progress on bars with out burning her out.
It is very important to have the gymnast involved with the plan.
What are her goals?
Short and Long Term?
What is the work load she feels she can handle?
With this gymnast she has a very good clear hip and hecht action. The decision was made to work Tkatchev and Shopashnikova. 2 skills with the same action.
These are basic questions every coach should ask on an ongoing basis as a check to make sure training is on target.
What are you doing?
Who are you doing it with?
Is what you are doing appropriate for who you are doing it with?
Why are you doing it? Is it NEED to do or NICE to do?
How are you doing it? Is there a better way or a better mode?
When are you doing it? Is it appropriate for the time of the training years and even the stage of the athlete’s career?
And always use the KISS strategy. Keep It Simple, Stupid.
