Empower.
Our number one goal as a coach or trainer should be to empower. To build confident, independent, accountable, and strong women. Do they know who they are, what they want, what they are capable without you?
In the sport of gymnastics these athletes get competitive at a very young age. They train a lot of hours before puberty, before they even have a clue of who they are. This is the time where they need their coach to support them, to guide them, to build them up. Often times however, this is the time coaches tell them who they are. We “mold’ them into the athlete that we think they should be that we think they would want. When we do this they get lost in who they are versus who they think they should be. We condition them to become an athlete that is coachable for us.
I am going to be real candid here. I hate what the sport of gymnastics can do to girls. Don’t get me wrong it can be amazing and I truly believe that there is no sport like it but I have also seen the realities of it. It takes an unbelievable amount of time to become good at this spot. It does not just occupy them in the gym. It is everywhere. They are thinking about how many series they have to hit at practice tonight when they are suppose to be focused in math class. They are crying themselves to sleep because they can’t figure out why they wont release on the their dismount. This is the reality of the sport. It occupies their brain all of the time, especially when things aren’t going well.
Now as a coach it is challenging to develop a high level gymnast without training an obscene amount of hours and living in their heads all the time but this is when I ask you, why are you coaching. Again, if you are doing it solely to develop a high level athlete then you are doing it for the wrong reasons. The sport is very short lived in the scheme of life. (I will write another blog about the unrealistic expectations that coaches and parents have) Lets say these athletes make it to collage and that is a big if unfortunately. So they are done at 21? If you develop an athlete purely for the sport then they come into life waiting for someone to tell them what to do, for constant reassurance, thinking perfection is the only option. Fearing any sort mistake, thinking winning is the only option. They think being a gymnast is everything. They still define themselves as a gymnast. Now, I am not talking about them being proud of their accomplishments, they very much should be. I know I am proud of mine! I am talking about them still seeing themselves as the athlete as the gymnast because they never really learned who they were outside of that.
This is something that I could talk a long time about but to save you, I will keep it at this. We should not want our athletes to need us in their lives. We should not coach for medals. We should not control our athletes. We need to let them discover who they are. We should coach to empower. Coach so they don’t need us. Coach so they can step into a life outside of the sport and find their way.
I tell my athletes all the time, gymnastics is something you do, not who you are.
