Category: spotting

SPOTTING – education and respect

Alina Williams:

I call gymnastics a contact sport because we cannot teach our athletes without touching them. We spot, poke, shape, and catch our athletes every day, but if we don’t teach them early that they have a say in how and when they are touched we are failing in our duty as educators. …

But here’s the kicker and the hardest part of all of this to implement in the gym: if a child refuses your touch, you must respect that refusal. Sometimes that means watching a kid go around the bar in an ugly shape you really want to fix …

Contact Sports: Teaching Touch and Consent to Young Athletes

At a coaching course last week we had a number of demonstrators from the host club. Of course we explained what spotting was included and encouraged the kids to opt out of anything that made them feel uncomfortable in any way.

spotting double-mini tramp

It looks like she would have been OK landing hands and knees on that excellent mat, but coach does react well.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

apparatus to simulate diving on dry land

How does it work?

  • Athlete wears a body harness that attaches to the middle of the mechanism
  • The athlete is secured tightly around the waist and close to the bar
  • The athlete completes the number of flips required for the dive
  • The athlete then holds at the vertical position and the spotter stops the wheel

Divers’ secret weapon

Click the image to see it at work with coach Joel Rodriguez at the New South Wales Institute of Sport in Australia.

Thanks Tom.

spotting Free Hip

Watch coach Franki when a gymnasts slips on the ascending swing.

#WomenCanSpotBars 🙂

Click PLAY or watch it on Facebook.

 

spotting Men on Horizontal Bar

Extremely difficult. A bad idea in most cases, I’d say. You are just as likely to cause an injury as prevent one.

Almost all male gymnasts try to land flat when they miss, absorbing the impact over as much surface area as possible

Click PLAY or watch our World AA Champ on Tumblr.

https://www.tumblr.com/16-233/166240174119/actualasiantrash-back-when-ruoteng-fell-on-his

safe, ethical spotting

In Canada we’ve long told coaches when spotting not to touch any part of the body covered by a bikini bathing suit. (Hips are an occasional exception.)

One gymnast messaged me to speak of her personal experience.

The Gym was her second home. As a little girl it was common for the coach to spot touching the buttocks of kids in her group.

By age 16 she became very uncomfortable with her coach spotting this way. She told him repeatedly to cut it out. He seemed unable to spot using any other technique.

Finally a less experience female coach was able to spot without grabbing the buttocks.

Here’s her message:

“… It is difficult to write about things that have become so normal and were never perceived as “wrong” by me. Coaches spot small girls on their bottoms from the very beginning, and this goes on as they get older. Almost maybe unaware of their own physical change and the innocence that goes paired with a coach following the way he spotted you from the very beginning. But the coach is the adult and especially at a higher level strong power relations can be involved.

Then suddenly you move to a new gym with new coaches and your eyes are opened. opening change… Something you thought to be impossible is suddenly is so easy. … the realization of the past kicks in. …

This is one of the many unintended consequences of spotting. The less spotting the better.

spotting double double off Bars

Heart this on Tumblr.

https://www.tumblr.com/irishdaniel/164934222148/aly126-larisas-dismount-in-warm-ups-today

spotting boxes for Bars

Al Fong perfected the science of using spotting boxes for teaching Bars. It’s a portable channel pit that can be changed around depending on the level of gymnasts and target skill.

Click PLAY or watch one example on YouTube.

Tumbl Trak is now selling Al’s system. Cost for the package is $2275.

Carolann Heduit – Bars

Great potential for the Junior from France.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

It’s my feeling coaches should either spot or get away from the apparatus. One or the other.

(via WOGymnastikA)