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Reflections from a Gymnastics assistant coaching course
1st June 2023
A guest post from Kath Maguire. Kath is the parent of one of our club’s gymnasts. She asked about doing some volunteering a couple of months ago and whether there was a course she could do. Here are her reflections from the day. “I’ve been thinking about volunteering for a while now but as it’s […]
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Strength training for young people

“You never see an oak tree with huge branches and a tiny trunk”

strength training for young people

Strong trunk

Kathryn “Wiggs” Catto on a last week’s level 1 coaching strength and conditioning for sport course.

This was her way of describing to young teenage boys the necessity of developing strength in a safe and progressive manner.

Unfortunately in the rush to “look good nekked” a lot of bad advice is heeded by these boys.

huge arms tiny body

Top heavy

In the desperate attempt to develop limb size (rather than strength) the training programme negelects the fundamental needs of the developing body.

“No one ever died of weak biceps”

Roy Parsloe: lecturer on my A level p.e. course in 1991.

Why on earth would we put a preacher curl into a school gym? The kids spend all day sat down in classrooms as it is.

If you train sat down or lying down, then your entire trunk area is made redundant. We then have a situation where people need to work on their “core stability“.

preacher curl

Pull ups are better

This lady may be trying to “tone” her arms, compared to the boys who would be trying to “get hench“, but they are all sat down.

Every dumbbell exercise and 90% of the bodyweight exercises I demonstrated on the course were done standing up or in prone support. This limits the overall weight you can lift, but it is our ability to apply strength on the field that is important.

The young person has to learn how to control their own body weight in different planes of movement and at varying speeds before picking up a weight. The quick fix is to sit or lie down (and have a mate pick up the weight and pass it to them) but there are no benches or chairs on the rugby pitch.

Thanks to all the candidates who threw themselves with abandon into the practical sessions and the classroom discussions.

I hope I managed to stimulate some thoughts into how they go back and work with all their players: solid foundations and sound programming beat fads and short cuts every time.

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Weston AGC
I first met James at a South West Gymnastic conference and thought he was superb then, and still do! James' ability to adapt to different sports and levels is excellent, and he is superb at getting his message across to different ages of gymnasts. He did a workshop at our club for our competitive gymnasts and it was superb, His work was of great value to a wide range of ages and levels, with a tremendous emphasis on posture and injury prevention. We have been able to put his training methods into practice and are seeing an improvement in the all round strength and fitness of our gymnasts.
 
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