Category: spotting

BEFORE you teach flyaway

Visiting 40-50 gyms a year I see a common dynamic. Young girls doing tucked flyaway with spot off the low rail of Bars.

Fun. Easy. Seems, at the time, to work.

But that’s not the best way to teach flyaway. Instead use a wide range of drills that don’t require spotting. Here’s one set-up I like, appropriate for kids as young as age-5.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

If you don’t have Rings, I’d highly recommend you buy a set. Fitness Rings are very inexpensive. Hang those on a rail at just the right height for your kids.

 

policeman catches falling child

Yeesh.

Click PLAY or watch it on Twitter.

in the Gym with Al Fong

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

GAGE is the most unique training Gym I’ve visited.

Very clean. Very organized.

BEST are all the home made mats and training apparatus.

Tumbl Trak is selling Al Fong’s version of Bars spotting blocks.

#SheCanCoach #SheCanCoachBARS

#SheCanCoach campaign aims to fight idea that women can’t coach

Only 30% of all coaches in Ontario are women, according to the Coaches Association of Ontario

We need encourage women to spot Bars, in particular.

#SheCanCoachBARS

Thanks Kim.

 

spotting is not illegal … yet

Still, the less spotting the better in my opinion. Assign more physical and technical progressions. Wait longer before doing the full skill with spot.

😁

Sarah Finnegan – Bars

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

And WHY is coach standing in for that shoot?

One of BBS’s best routines of week 3.

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.