gymnastics GAMES

Rick McCharles

Gymnastics Coaches are the world experts in warm-up games and activities. Games should be the very best time spent in our gyms.

They are fantastic for all athletes.

I did a presentation on this topic at the 2007 BC Fall Congress:

goals: FUN, Fitness, Fundamentals

kids use their own body first … delay adding balls, ribbons, etc. for as long as possible

near continuous activity

success for all participants (no “losers”)

challenge / discovery

use a wide variety of games

repeat favourite games of the group

Of course, SAFETY (physical and emotional) is the over-riding principle. The inexperienced coach is prone to start a game appropriate to the majority of the kids, but too complicated for the youngest and least experienced.

age appropriate

ability appropriate

ethical

I led a sampling of games in these categories:

Organizing games and activities

Mimic activities (e.g. “fly like a jet plane”)

Co-operative games and activities

Tag games

Combative games and activities

Races

Relays

The easiest way to increase FUN, challenge and complexity is by putting kids together as partners, trios or into small groups.

I advised coaches to do more combative games with girls, fewer (or none) with boys.

Christchurch School of Gymnastics

Many clubs overuse tag games which are often dangerous. We should do more co-operative activities and races.

Unfortunately there are no GREAT books or videos available yet on this topic. The best is the out-of-print Gymnastic games and activities: A compendium, by Ken Daley (1981).

We’ve posted Games Guru David Adlard’s PowerPoint presentation previously. Dave is an elite Artistic coach who no longer uses a stretching warm-up. His girls do games only for warm-up.

But what every coach needs is a video database of recommended games. Leave a comment if you are interested in working on a project like that.