As mentioned in my previous post, I had my first training session of the 2009 – 2010 season. It was slow to get started as the children were so excited to see each other (as we had taken a five week break), wanted to tell me all about their holidays and everything new about school. After the excitement died down a bit, we began training.

I was happy to begin training on Floor as two new girls had joined my group. They had begun in the competitive class in January with another coach so I hadn’t really had a chance to look at them.  They’re not too far behind my other girls but it’s going a while for the gymnasts to get used to me and also for me to get used to their temperaments. Within five minutes I heard one of the girls say “I can’t” so I’ll have to encourage her to be more positive.  In regards to moves, the girls need some fine tuning, I think mostly I will have to remind them to tighten up and push through their shoulders for moves.

We then move to vault. Unfortunately the girls are still struggling to do handspring prep to land on their back at 90cm’s, whereas my existing group are working on full handspring. Vault has always been a poor piece for our club so I’m going to really try hard to get the girls doing excellent vaults from the beginning. Overall I think the whole group could really benefit from some running skills and also some plyometric work.

For our final piece, we moved to bars. I need to get the girls working on upstarts as soon as possible. They’re nowhere near ready but they will need the move and it will be easier for them now as they are very small and petite. We have seen our mistakes as coaches leaving it too late with our older gymnasts, so when they reach the competitive level where they must do upstart they find it impossible. We worked some swings on the loop bar, the girls really not understanding the shaping. It will really take some time for them to get used to it as we spent 5 months working on it with the existing group and they still find shaping difficult sometimes!

Overall I was pleased with how the session went. Yes, I did miss my other 3 gymnasts but I’ll just have to get on with it and bring up the new generation of star gymnasts from this group! I’m looking forward to our Saturday session where I’ll meet my new recreation groups and have a longer training session with the girls.

Right now, I’m off to plan for the competitive season ahead and hunt out some fantastic floor music!