Started this little diddy a couple of years ago while at a program I am no longer a part of. Fact being that I am horrible at the daily commitment to blogging, I only had a few posts. Those have been deleted. The "old" program was not a good fit for me. It drained me of my passion. It was full of drama. It was full of negativity and flat out a toxic environment and sucked all the life out of me. Not surprising I got fired! lol
BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO ME...other than finding out I was pregnant and now have the most amazing little baby girl ever. Getting fired (while pregnant), led to the most oddly and perfectly timed opportunity to truly start my very own gymnastics program. 4 kids came with me from the old program. 12 weeks pregnant, 4 team kids, old boss calling new boss to tell her how awful I was and that I was pregnant (which is 100% illegal btw). Here we are 10 months later. I competed 19 kids and had 1 more training. We're now up to 30 team kids and about 40 class kids. Considering I was preggers and had the baby mid season, I'm pretty impressed with myself and my coaching staff. It was all kinda thrown together and we just dove in and went with it. Turned out to be the best possible combination and timing. Then one of my old team kids wanted to coach. That just added to and rounded our our coaching team so perfectly. The coaching staff has grown in knowledge, how we communicate, how we play off of each other and so much more this year. Myself included. The kids: that's a tough one. We wound up with 1/3 from the old program, 1/3 from a program that closed and 1/3 from a different program. Trying to mesh all of these new team members and making them one unit was HARD. The parents were even harder. But now that season is over, I think we did it. Lots of bumps along the way, but we have pretty strong little team unit now! Very proud of that.
Summer training started last week. New promotions, new opportunities and new kids that have come on board from yet another program. Coaches just got back from Region III Congress. We got some really good information. The sports science lecture totally blew my mind. Then of all things: Lesson Planning for Recreation was my absolute favorite. My mind is spinning with way to revamp how we plan...or so called plan...our workouts. It will take me this week to get through some of the info and a sort of plan into place, but I'm sooooo excited about it. It was Hunter and Hannah's first educational experience and I think they really enjoyed it. They both are so eager to learn and really are strong coaches already. They both had a ton of knowledge locked in their brains from when they were gymnasts. It's fun to see the light bulbs going off and them getting pumped about getting in the gym to try new things with the kids.
Workout today was 100% shooting from the hip...contrary to my new found love of lesson planning! We were so exhausted from the weekend I didn't do anything related to gymnastics when I got home. I missed my baby girl and hugged and loved on her!!! But today wound up being a really motivating and impressive day with the girls. We made skill charts for Strength and one for Flex. I challenged them that the 1st girl to get all stickers for each chart (by the end of the summer) I'd buy them a leo. We made the entire day a "Test" day. I need to come up with a great name for it. We want to start creating some Liberty traditions and this could be a really fun one. Needs a fun name to go with it! The girls impressed us. Saw some really good effort and amazing form in the conditioning skills we were testing. All of them were pushing hard. Some surprised us. All in all I feel it was a successful day.
Got home and was able to update some things on FB for the parents regarding the sports science stuff: FMS and pelvic floor dysfunction. Had to explain what we tried to explain to the girls about the pelvic floor stuff. I think it went over pretty good! I've got a lot of studying to do in both of those areas. Really would like to get certified in FMS if I could. Cooper Institute offers a course. The founder of FMS is offering a course at the end of the summer but it's pretty pricey, so we'll see.
Tomorrow goals:
strong cardio warm up with Insanity type drills instead of running. Really want to get away from just running
Have Lynn learn to take over that responsibilty
Test the Bronze team for skill chart
Ballet style conditioning
Events: Bars/Beam to work on new drills/complex ideas we learned this weekend.
Planning time: put together stronger lesson plans for Thurs/Fri and next week.
Create Rec level 1 skill list
email to owners recapping Congress
update summer checklist for kiddos
