I see coaches spot gymnasts way to often and for the most part when it is not needed. I have even seen 3 coaches at the club I teach, spot gymnasts that are working on  a “Salto – Front Handspring – Barani”. The first coach spotted the “Salto”, the second coach spotted the “Front Handspring” and the last coached spotted the “Barani”. This is a very good example were spotting has no effect. Ask yourself; “Who is really doing the gymnastic pass here? The coaches or the gymnast?” If the gymnast needs spotting on every skill in the pass, then the coaches should break the pass into smaller parts and work on each skill independently.

These coaches are very young and inexperienced at teaching gymnastics. Some of them have a good background doing gymnastics themselves, but being good at gymnastics is not the same as being good at teaching gymnastics. I have over 20 years experience teaching gymnastics and for the most part, I find that talented gymnasts are actually very bad at teaching other gymnasts. I see these very talented gymnasts teaching other gymnasts at the wrong level, wrong setup, wrong progression, too much spotting and so on. I call this kind of teaching for “Fast Food Gymnastics”. I have noticed that coaches that are 35+ years seem to be better at teaching, it seems that coaching experience one of the important key attributes for being a good coach.

For many coaches spotting to a show, event or competition is more about showing off then spotting for safety. Below I have included some video of unnecessary spotting with comments why it is unnecessary: 

H.C. Andercup 2012 – Competition 

Example 1:  0:00-0:11  Daniel standing at the side (Daniel is a helper coach for the National Team).

Attempt: You might be asking; What is the gymnast attempting? A full in? or A full out? Well,.. What he did was neither, more a mix of the two which we can call for a ½ in ½ out which is a perfectly valid skill. This skill requires a lot of height. 

Reason: The main reason for the gymnast crashing (on his legs!) is poor technique. The gymnast throws himself violently back at the take off trying to increase as much rotation as possible, but not gaining any height. Notice how his hips just hang at take off (even his legs just hangs at take off). The gymnast pulls his head violently back which is not what he should be doing when trying to execute this skill.

Spotting: So, should the coach stand their or even help the gymnast? The correct answer is the 3rd choice (hidden choice),.. the gymnast is not ready for this skill and should not be attempting this to a competition. The coach standing there is not for safety, and definitely not for helping the gymnast. The coach could not be more passive in this situation.

Conclusion: Their is only one conclusion for this type of spotting and that is the coach wants to “Show Off” that he is the coach that he taught the gymnast.

This video includes a lot of unnecessary spotting. To any competition it should be the gymnast showing what they can do and not the coaches showing off their spotting skills.

Ollerup OD-Dag 2012 – Show (National Team) 

Example 2: I would like to have pulled a single example of of this video, but the entire video shows unnecessary spotting and coaches standing their only to show off.

Attempt: Tumbling National Team doing a performance show at Ollerup OD Dag 2012.

Reason: In this show their are not too many crashes. The couple of “crashes” or close calls that I could see, are just gymnasts executing skills at their limit or little over. The crashes are all safe as expected from a National Team. 

Spotting: The minimum spotting in the video has only prevented a couple of gymnast from falling on their butts. 

Conclusion: Again only one conclusion for this type of spotting and that is the coaches want to “Show Off” that they can spot. Spotting the National Team is a disgrace, is the National Team really at that level that they need spotting?

TeamGym –  Men’s Tumbling at EM 2010

Example 3: You will notice that the coach is just standing in the background next to landing area. If a gymnast should need spotting then their isn’t much he can do. Remember this is the National Team for TeamGym, so their should not be any spotting.

Attempt: This is a competition, a EM competition and the gymnasts should only be doing skills they can. So I expect no spotting for this type of competition.

Spotting: The spotting in this video is useless. Their is no reason for that coach to stand their.

Conclusion: Same as always; this type of spotting and that is the coaches want to “Show Off” that they can spot.

Why should spotting be kept to a minimum?

When a coach “over spots” they are building a psychology problem for the gymnast. A good example of this can be seen when a gymnast is going to do a round-off back-backhandspring and asks the coach to stand on the other side when spotting. This is very common in Denmark and this psychology problem is actually built up by inexperienced or very bad coaches. Most coaches (it’s probably more like “all coaches”) I have meet move to the side the gymnast wants them to be on. Coaches should not move to the other side!!! If for any reason the gymnasts round-off is not straight then the gymnast should not be working on this combination skill and work on the round-off by itself and the back-handspring by itself. Coaches that move to the other side as the gymnast requests only help to build up and worsen the psychology problem.

At competitions we only spot for safety!

Too many coaches spot a gymnast at competition, so they can do skills they are not ready for. The video on the right here is a good example what can happen when coaches spot a gymnast on skills they are not ready for.

So many coaches spot their gymnasts to TeamGym, Power Tumbling and Shows. I wish we had a law were we could revoke a teaching license from all these coaches (problem of course there is no such license in Denmark, everybody can teach).

Why do coaches spot when it is not needed?

The simple answer to this is, because they want to “Show Off”. 

Personally my view on the National Team doing gymnastic shows is not positive. OD Dagen was created by Ollerup Gymnastikhøjskole for students that went to that school and now teach gymnastics at a local club. As we all know that National Team is a set of gymnasts from many different clubs and does not fall into this category.

I would also like to add a personal comment about unnecessary spotting which these video’s demonstrate very effectively. The gymnasts in these video’s are from our National Team and the coaches are spotting them? You can ask a question like,.. “if they need spotting, why are they on the National Team”. A gymnast that tries to do a skill that needs spotting to a competition, show or any other event then training, should NOT be doing that skill. One exception might be if the skill is new,… but as we can see in the video there is spotting on everything. I personally think it’s more of a way the coaches can show themselves off.

I have been writing an article about unnecessary spotting for 2 weeks now and I hope to have it completed soon, so you all can get a better insight about unnecessary spotting.

but enjoy the video’s their are some good skill executions.

not that sure about their choice of color

Elbæk Efterskole

“I was in a fight and I broke the other guys hand!“…

but without the full context it sounded like it went very well for me and not so good for the other guy…

but what really happened is:

“I was in a fight and I broke the other guys hand… when he hit me in my face“

This of course is just an example to clarify what a false impression is. Now you might asking what does this have to do with tumbling? False impressions is everywhere TV, ads, news and even on gymnastic clubs websites.

Here is a screenshot from Odense Gymnastikforenings website:

The results can be seen at DGF’s website here.

The statement is a true false impression. Specially the statement “most winning club”,… their is only 1 winner for each entry level and that is the tumbler with a gold medal, lets look at who won gold medals and count them:

Gold Medals

  Let’s sum all medals for each club: 

• Odense Gymnastik Forening: 6
• Vestjysk GF (VGF 89): 5
• Bellinge Gymnasterne: 4
• Silkeborg P/D: 2
• Outrup GUB: 1
• Vejby IK (VIK): 1
• Oure-Gudme Idrætsforening: 1
• Svendborg GF: 1

Looks very good… Odense Gymnastik Forening is the “most winning club”… but we need to analyze what did they win and we do this by seeing who they competed against. There are two factors that can change this:

• 1 competitor: if there is only 1 gymnast in an entry level… then they are 100% sure to get a gold medal
• same club: if all gymnasts come from the same club in an entry level… then they are 100% sure to get a gold medal.

We need to adjust the value of the gold medals to a fair assessment based on entry level competitors:

• B-række-junior piger: same club
• B-række-senior drenge: 1 competitor
• C-række-junior drenge: same club
• C-række-junior piger: 1 competitor
• Eliterække-senior piger: 1 competitor 

Now we adjust the table from above, by removing them:

 and the final result looks like this:

• Vestjysk GF (VGF 89): 5
• Bellinge Gymnasterne: 4
• Odense Gymnastik Forening: 4
• Outrup GUB: 1
• Silkeborg P/D: 1
• Oure-Gudme Idrætsforening: 1

This clearly shows how easy it is to create false impressions. The true “Most Winning Club” is Vestjysk (VGF 89)

This is an independent website for Power Tumbling, which means I’m not bound by any restrictions from my own club, DGF, sponsors and such. This gives me the freedom to debunk misleading information. Last year I had the statistics on my website and I still do,.. but I’m in a phase were I’m converting it all to a server side processing instead of client side… and I just don’t have enough time to get it done right now… but it will come back.

Congratulations Vestjysk (VGF 89) for being the “most winning club” at H.C. Andersen Cup!!!  

Peter Wraae Marino

• 0.00-0.11 Odense Gymnastikforening
• 0.12-0.15 VGF89
• 0.16-0.19 VGF89
• 0.20-0.25 Outrup GUB
• 0.26-0.29 VGF89
• 0.30-0.33 VGF89
• 0.34-0.39 Outrup GUB
• 0.40-0.44 VGF89
• 0.45-0.49 Odense Gymnastikforening
• 0.50-0.54 VGF89
• 0.55-0.58 VGF89
• 0.59-1.03 Outrup GUB
• 1.03-1.06 VGF89
• 1.06-1.08 VGF89
• 1.09-1.14 Svendborg GF
• 1.15-1.21 VGF89
• 1.22-1.26 ????
• 1.27-1.33 Svendborg GF
• 1.34-1.40 VFG89
• 1.41-1.47 Outrup GUB
• 1.48-1.54 Outrup GUB
• 1.55-1.57 Odense Gymnastikforening
• 1.58-2.03 Vejstrup Ungdomsskole
• 2.04-2.07 ????
• 2.08-2.13 Odense Gymnastikforening
• 2.14-2.20 Odense Gymnastikforening
• 2.21-2.33 Outrup GUB

Their will be 4 groups for level 1 girls, which means that the 43 girls will be divided into each group. Each group is usually judged by a unique set of judges. This means that judges in group 1 don’t judge other groups. The main reason for having groups is usually because their will be two tracks that the participants can use and the competition is finished a lot quicker. Well all this is fine,… except their are no FINALS for beginner levels! Which means that a certain group can have a different base judging value then the other groups. The reason FINALS are a part of a competition is to resolve this problem! so why do we not have finals?… well you have to ask the committee for tumbling about that.

It gets even more strange.. all the over levels have finals even if they are judged by the same judges and only have like 10 tumblers in a level! This makes no sense!?!?!? except for a waste of time!

Tumbling could be one of the best gymnast sports in Denmark, but with the tumbling committee, kraftcenter, DGF  and the national team only focused on the end result it never will be! It is NOT the end result that is impressive, it is the path to the end result…. a concept they will never understand.

Peter

29/1-2012 Follow Up

I’m home from the H.C. Andersen Cup competition. Any I have to say that they did not divide the groups into different judge grouping… (me very happy)… was a little worried about that. They decided to mix level entries instead were each judging group judged only a specified level. This is better than what I wrote above… but it does create a mix of gymnastic levels when they compete which is not very friendly for the audience. This problem is of course a hard one to solve, but with the limited amount of judges available the solution they used was probably the best one.

The competition was good,… OGF (Odense Gymnastikforening) that held the competition did a good job and Thomas Juul Hansen (OGF’s formand) handled everything very professionally. There were some problem with the participant lists but as I understand it this was a problem that came from DGF and not OGF. At one point the results were shown with a  projector on a big screen and this resulted in some confusion , because the results were from Holstebro Cup and not the current H.C. Andersen Cup ) … they decided to turn off the projector. Turning it off is a good solution if the results are not from H.C. Andersen Cup, but it would have been nice if the audience could have seen the results from the current event.

A little negative episode for the beginner levels was that, gymnasts from OGF were cutting in line and taking multiple turns in front of all the younger gymnasts. I told the gymnasts that were doing this, to stop it immediately and they just ignored my request, so I asked them in a raised voice who their coach was and was told that it was Daniel. Daniel said he has not seen anything and just ignored the situation completely and turned the event around and started telling me not to raise my voice at his gymnasts that were cutting the line (which is also called cheating). This was so unprofessional of Daniel, but I actually did expect him to react that way. The lack of discipline with his team is not new to me.  Thomas Juul Hansen came over and asked what the problem was and I told him that their gymnasts were cutting the line… again Thomas handled this very professional and asked which gymnasts and talked to them and problem was resolved.

All in all a very good day,

Peter

Tumbling kraftcenter has again taken our training time in the Odense Idrætspark, Gymnastic Center. This is not the first time, but more like the 20th time.

I have had a meeting with DGF (Jan Donde and Henrik Bertelsen) about the kraftcenter using our gym times to train. They said they would look into it and agreed that we need to find a solution that works for both sides. Well,… apparently DGF only see’s one side and that is the kraftcenter!

What a disappointment! 

Fyn

 Jylland

Sjælland

1. Don’t compare your gymnast’s progress with that of other gymnasts.
2. Don’t become overly ego-involved with your gymnast’s success or lack of it.
3. Don’t take judge’s scores too seriously, especially at the lower levels.
4. Don’t forget the need for fun in gymnastics. (MODIFIED: the flip side is true, Don’t forget the hard work needed to become a perficient gymnast.)
5. Don’t stand for unacceptable behavior from your gymnast during practice or competitions.
6. Don’t participate in gossip about anyone in the gymnastics community.
7. Don’t interfere with coaches and their coaching duties during practice or competitions.
8. Don’t pressure your gymnast regarding skills or competition.
9. Don’t set unrealistic goals for your gymnast. (MODIFIED: goals should be set by the coach)
10. Don’t predicate your love or attention on your gymnast’s competitive success.
11. Don’t base your own ego or self-esteem on the success of your gymnast’s progress or competitive success.
12. Don’t undercut your gymnast’s confidence in their coaches or coaching.
13. Don’t show any negative emotions while watching your gymnast practice or compete.
14. Don’t do or say anything to make your child feel guilty for the time and money you are spending on their gymnastics or any sacrifices you feel you are making for them to particpate in the sport.
15. Don’t badmouth your gymnast’s coaches, your gym or other gymnasts in front of your gymnast.
16. Don’t attempt to coach your gymnast yourself.
17. Don’t alienate your gymnast’s coaches.
18. Don’t do anything to make anemies with other gymnast’s parents.
19. Don’t expect anything more from your gymnast except their best effort.