Gymnastics Coaching Tips

http://ClubhouseGAS.com interviews former Olympic athlete Elena Piskun at the NorthWind Gymnastics training facility.

Female Speaker: its Olympic time, and little girls everywhere wanting to become the next Olympic gymnast. But just how do you do that? We're going to find out how, today at ClubHouseGAS. [Music Playing] I am here at the NorthWind Gymnastics, and I am taking with Olympic gymnast Elena Piskun who competed for Belarus in the 1996 Olympics. So a little girl, when do you get her start? What age and what are the first steps of getting into gymnastics? Elena Piskun: I probably recommend start at age 5 or 6, not younger than that. Parent should go ahead and pick the gym they think their child will succeed, and of course, before that they should record of the gym, the credential of the coaches and start from them. Female Speaker: How many years are we talking here? Elena Piskun: Over ten. For sure, over ten years old we are talking, as of just gymnastics. I personally did 14 years, and I started actually for this country, kind of will be old, I guess, six-and-a-half years old. So that's why I would recommend, don't start like up heel at 2 years old, which is great. For recreation, it's good. But if you are thinking potentially go up to 18, 19 years old competing internationally, that's really young. Female Speaker: So talk to me about the commitment. How many hours are the girls here? Elena Piskun: Over 40 hours. They have to be between 35 and over. But 35, 45 hours a week. We are talking -- I think Sunday should be day off, or one of the days of the week should be off, and then most juniors I think practicing twice a day. Which is about three-and-a-half, four hours each practice, with the break between for school and stuff like that. Female Speaker: Are there any physical characteristics that makes a girl well suited for gymnastics? Elena Piskun: Well, I think first will be how tall she is. Which is actually for gymnastics, how short you will be. It kind of will be good point, because for short people it is easy to flip, then have a long beautiful body, and try to flip over your head, it will be very difficult for a gymnast. But sometime if you go and fly up there and do beautiful split executions, you look very pretty, instead of the short person kind of try to get over. But I think mostly we will go toward like a little bit shorter, a really powerful gymnast. Female Speaker: Well, let's get into the actual routines. How do you decide on your routine, and who has the input? Is it the coach, the gymnast, the parent? Elena Piskun: We'll kind of come up as girls progress at the level, and usually at each level there is some vaults you're allowed to do, and mostly everybody try to get as difficult as possible to that level, so as of course, score will come up, because you have to be clean and stuff like that. With the bars, just a little bit different option. It depends, if you are good swinger we call, good swing bar, then you can come up a little bit more difficulty, but doesn't matter what you do, you still have to be clean in gymnastics to get less executions, which is that will be a good award. For the beam skills, as a skills acrobatic skills, it's same thing for what we're going to talk about dance movement, that's going to be between beam coach specifically, and the gymnast. So usually coach by then know what gymnast is capable of, what style she come up with, and usually we bring gymnast one-on-one for about 30, 45 minutes for the beam, and make up some dance movements, and put it together with the skills. Floor, a little bit harder. First you have to pick up with the music and it's also between the floor coach and the gymnast, and when you are ready for the optional routines, which is you have your own music, not as everybody else in the team, and at same time, coach also know their potentials, flawless, or sharp, or some dancing movements, and that's where they come up with the ideas of the music. Usually girls pick from lots of music, business music, whatever they sell, the demo CD, and you pick up that. Lot of girls using sound tracks from the movies, which is, I'll recommend the best, because she can make up your part of music that nobody will have, maybe similar music. They are not exactly parts. Female Speaker: We appreciate all the advice you have given us, and we wish you and your girls the best of luck. Thank you. and thank you for watching ClubHouseGAS. We will see you next time.