Category: psychology

lost move syndrome, balking and more …

CSci., BASES Sport & Exercise Scientist, Coach Education Development Manager British Gymnastics; Women’s Gymnastics Coach, Heathrow, Katie has a super strong background.

This is a difficult topic.

Each situation, each athlete is different.

The research is not much advanced yet.

Still, every coach will learn something from her advice. Nick and Katie discuss an example – a gymnast who is unable to do her backward handspring on High Beam.

Click through to listen to the interview.

Amelia Hundley & Lexie Priessman

One of the great gymnastics friendship stories.

I’ve been following them since watching in person their 1st international assignment, Japan Junior.

That day Lexie might have been the best Junior in the world.

Click through to listen to this interview.

lets talk about mental health

#BellLetsTalk #BellCause

Bell Let’s Talk (French: Bell Cause pour la cause) is an initiative created by the Canadian telecommunications company Bell Canada to raise awareness and combat stigma surrounding mental health in Canada. …

emotional abuse in Gymnastics

In this post a former British national squad gymnast reflects on her former coach.

The under-reported risk for competitive gymnasts is psychological abuse.

Anonymous:

Looking back over my time with Coach is something I find difficult. I know not all my memories are bad but those are the ones that most easily come to mind. …

But, at this point the good days for me far outweighed the not so good days and I enjoyed being there, I enjoyed working with Coach, in fact I would go as far as to say I loved her. …

… after a while no matter what I did it just wasn’t good enough, my name was now added to the blacklist. It became a matter of survival, be the one who least upset Coach during a session, praying Coach would take her wrath out on anyone but me. …

It was only Coach’s talent that would get me to the Olympics, not my own and if I moved to another coach my Olympic dream would be over. In retrospect, I can see how naïve I was to believe this, yet this haunted me throughout my career and I gave up on myself once I left coach, believing my dreams and goals were shattered.

Warriors in Leotards

Click through to read the whole story.

MOTIVATION in the Gym

D0 you listen to the Region 5 Insider podcast?

As a sample, check out episode #6.

Jason MacDonald:

In this episode we look at one of the most important aspects of sport performance and participation…. Motivation.

We talk about strategies to help set up a culture in your gym to drive and sustain motivation through the training year. There are many different motivational strategies and each athlete is motivated differently. We discuss many different ways to enhance motivation and make the daily grind of training and competition fun. Creating a culture of excellence in your gym and develop a plan for keeping the energy and excitement toward your goals both individual and team helps to keep motivation high.

Whitney Snowden former Head Optional Coach at Cincinnati Gymnastics joins us to give her perspective on motivation and what has worked well for her in the past.

Listen online. Or subscribe via iTunes.

keeping kids in Sport longer

Sports Girls Play has some advice.