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My gyms are in California, but currently living in Tennessee

I built mine. I set mine up a bit differently than most in that it has the ability to adjust the tension based on the height and weight of the individual. Spotting belt with leg straps, some rock climbing gear and 1/2” and 5/8” bungee chord. Supplies probably cost around $300+ per each one. The harness is the most expensive part.

If you have any ideas or suggestions for future topics feel free to send your ideas my way.

I wanted to throw some hope your way. The “is this for me” feeling is very real and normal. There are two things you need to separate, the tasks and duties of teaching gymnastics and the environment in which you are teaching. My experience is the environment often lacks support and resources to elevate the instructor and make their job easier. For me, I placed 7 years of my energy is developing a curriculum that made coaching more streamlined and results driven so that my employees didn’t have to “think” so much and could enjoy being part of the process. There is this double edge sword in coaching, one aspect is how do I stay present in real time and enjoy the process, the other side is how do I prioritize what problems to solve and find solutions that work right now. It’s like splitting your brain in half and it can often feel lose lose in the moment. One thing I say to all my coaches is you are always in a lose lose situation. There is never a “best” or “right” answer because every solution has a compromise. If you teach to the highest athlete the lowest performers lose out on what they need. If you teach to the lowest performers the top performers are not pushed forwards but held back. If you coach with high energy the timid and shy will struggle to connect. If you coach with low energy the obnoxious kids will run all over you. There is always always a problems. The key measurement I chase and have my employees chase is: “can the result or outcome you created be reinvested back into the process?” If you get kids to listen does listening reinvest back into the process of getting skills? Yes. If you are silly and play games, does silliness and games reinvest back into the process of getting skills? Maybe, not necessarily. So now this becomes more grey area. If I ask kids “what do you want to do” and I only do what they want to do, will that reinvest back into the process of getting skills? No. The will plateau. If you ever want to brainstorm, or talk more about it let me know. My mission is to help others overcome those obstacles in front of them. Feel free to reach out anytime.

@thegymnasticsexperience1131 thank you for your reply , I am currently changing my environment.... Turned down 2 contracts, hoping the next place I visit aligns 🙏🏻 great advice, I appreciate it !

I appreciate your recognition of the truth. There are so many athletes and coaches trapped in a feedback loop of negativity that my hope is if they can understand how real gymnastics is trained they would realize “I am good enough” and then run with their potential instead of having to be dragged into the unknown.

I appreciate it, thanks.

Haha… best comment ever 😂 I guess we’re gonna find out if America still has freedom of speech 😂

This is not a safe sport issue. This is what parents like to think, they have destroyed Safe Sports purpose. They use it as a form of “retaliation” when they can’t have their way at a gym or with coaches. Thank goodness Safe Sports is aware of it.

@@Chancexoxo its clearly a joke..i dont care about your two cents

@@lejo89-v9jdon’t care about yours!!!!

Thanks for watching my video and sharing your perspective. Did you actually watch the whole video though, and tell me what you really think 😊

not necessarily 😂

When a gymnast plateaus it’s for several reasons. Number one is a “Parent!” Parents make excuses and blame everyone for their child’s ability to not excel. Every child gets to that skill or level where they say,” This shit just got real”. Coaches cannot force your child to work. Some kids only have talent up to a certain level and then they are done. Some kids only do gymnastics because their parents force them to. I cannot tell you how many kids have told me that. Some kids have poor work ethics, some kids get older and realize I could use all this time to hang out with my friends. Lot’s of reasons!!! If you have your child at a gym where they aren’t learning anything then remove them. Simple as that. These nasty comments about this guy is the reason why in sports and the school system kids are failing. They get it from home. So if you are bashing this dude and making rude comments … most likely that’s why no one wants to help your child and your child is at a plateaus. They are probably just like you.

​@@thegymnasticsexperience1131 yeah, I watched the whole dreadful thing, ... your a nutter and need to seek help, you are a danger to the gymnast and sport! 😱😁😝🤪🤣👍👍🇺🇸

​@@ChancexoxoNope, it is always the coaches fault because they should see it coming and correct it, they are the coach! Helluuuuuuuu! 😱😁😝🤪🤣👍👍🇺🇸

I am quite taller than “real coaches” for sure. Most people have to stand where I can kneel 😂🤣😂

I glad you found it helpful. Thanks for watching my videos.

I appreciate the love

Everything else is what you put into the process of fulfilling that promise.

I appreciate the support and feedback, thanks for watching. There are three ways of spotting a back handspring. 1: over the shoulder spot. This would be when the spotter is not strong enough to hold the athlete in their arms. Spotter kneels behind athlete and slightly to one side. If I am spotting with my left shoulder I would be on the right side of the athlete. Then I would use my left shoulder and left upper arm to support the athlete. This spot is kinda awkward because your back foot can get in the way of hands. However it’s a good method for spotting larger athletes. 2: the spot where the athlete pikes and is in the fall position. The spotter braces the lower back as upper legs. Think if you were going to pick someone up and hold them in your arms as they were laying horizontal to the ground. This spot can be done very easily and is my favorite way to spot athletes I don’t want to lift because the spotter is mostly bracing the positions and requires very little work. 3: traditional lower back up leg spot where the athlete either jumps to back handspring or tumbles into the back handspring. This spot places the hands or arms on the lower back and upper leg. It’s a decent spot but lacks control with larger athletes. You also have to commit to doing the skill I personally teach back handsprings using 4 drills on a trampoline and it requires zero spot. I hate spotting back handsprings and will avoid spotting at all cost. I am very proficient in spotting but I see it as a poor use of time if it can be avoided.

Absolutely 👍 anything specific you want me to cover in the video?

@@thegymnasticsexperience1131 Dear Raleigh ! Thank you very much for your swift reply. I am trying to learn the giant swing. Anything that helps a learner is appreciated. Maybe similar to your back handspring video. Similar in scope an presentation. That would be great. At the moment I am stuck. Not making any headway. Swings not getting higher. As I stated in the comments section: Your back handspring video is excellent work. Well thought-out, very methodical. Looking forward to your video.

Still waiting for the video.

@@thegymnasticsexperience1131 Still waiting for your giant swing video. I am especially interested in drills that help me to learn it.

Can you give me a specific skill you are finding challenging to teach to a JV student? I am curious what progressions or steps you are using to teach?

@@thegymnasticsexperience1131 cartwheels and handstands have been a challenge... It's as if these kids just learned how to walk yesterday. We are doing a lot of basic blocking drills and doing the steps that you are teaching here however the kids are adult size vs. peewee size.

Ueah, those are all valid points. And the struggle to filter this higher level of training down to recreational can sometimes feel impossible. I think the next subject I will have to tackle is how to scale training methods between athletes who come 20 hours a week to students that come 1 hour a week. The principals don’t change, however the implementation does change due to time constraints. There is another topic that also plays with these concepts and that is understanding how progressions work within a specific skill line. There are a handful of skills I refer to as “sticky” skills where people tend to get stuck due to various reasons. Kips, back handsprings, cast handstands, twisting etc.. I think what I need to do is explain how to build from high effort low intentionality and low effort high intentionality into high effort high intentionality. And then how time affects speed of learning. Thank you for the ideas and the support.

@@thegymnasticsexperience1131 All of these ideas sound great! Yeah, I'm constantly trying to translate training methods into something bite sized for my rec staff. There just isn't a lot out there that isn't based on how rec gymnastics used to be (a fun thing to put your kids in to get some energy out). I've found that most of the families in our program are trying to get a "real" gymnastics experience and could care less about the floofy stuff. So figuring out a modern rec program which is focused more on actually getting kids skills that look halfway decent and help them progress forward, rather than the floof is tricky.

For curriculum to be done right it has to match the facilities equipment. I am working on a solution that gyms could take my database of material and build their own curriculum following specific principles. You can go to www.gymnasticsframework.com to buy access to my diagrams and progressions. I have customized curriculum for several gyms but it’s a costly process and not at a price point most gyms are willing to pay. To build my gyms curriculum it took close to 500 hours over 9 months. As whatever is built has to get adjusted and calibrated over time. I did 3 reiterations before it was dialed in. And this was for two of my facilities which are designed to optimize my curriculum. Imagine trying to build a curriculum for facilities that are not optimized and have random equipment. There are some serious hurdles to overcome and I haven’t figured out a clear viable way to bring this to market. It would cost a minimum of $5k for me to custom build a curriculum for a gym. Which is insane in my opinion, but necessary. So my next step is how do I make it so gyms can follow a course and build their own versions without needing me. That’s like phase 2 though. Right now I’m focused on growing my TH-cam channel and increasing awareness of these ideas.

I am glad the video helped. If you have any topic recommendations for a future video I’m open to suggestions. Thanks for sharing this, means a lot.

I will make a video on aerials next week, and break down everything you need to know step by step👍

You're sooo right. I'm only at 10 mins in, and you saying it's harder to do it wrong (mental block) is helping my confidence. I've done a lot of skills right and they were so much easier. It all seems to be a self belief/confidence thing and I knew that, but most coaches and people don't understand

I really appreciate you taking the time to write a comment. I went to this camp for high level gymnasts and one of the clinicians was a lady who worked with Olympians on beam. She says “there is no such thing as a difficult skill.” And everything inside me is saying she is wrong. So I go and ask her what she means by that. And she basically says something like, when you learned to ride a bike was is difficult? And I said yes. And she goes, but once you learned to ride the bike it was easy right? My head exploded. The process is the problem not the actual product. Here in gymnastics we treat skills as if they are scary, or challenging. The skill is easy once it is learned and done efficiently. Most people get lost in trying to “learn” instead of actually doing this skill knowing that once you do the skill it gets easier not harder. The only time someone gets stuck learning a skill is because they are not adequately prepared to “do” the skill. We get greedy and try to learn things outside our limitations. I’m hyped by your feedback. I appreciate you watching 10 minutes of my video. Keep at it.

Just go! Sacred space. That's exactly what I need to remember. Today I threw the front tuck 30-40 times on a mat and landed maybe 5. Took the mat away and did a perfect front tuck step out the first time on the floor and everyone cheered for me. There's something to not training backwards once you know you can already do something. Also you taught me about spotting my feet for a ground level reference. I never knew. Great video and thank you again very much

Hi @mytraveljournal23 to be honest the price of matting is expensive. One semi solution to matting is using a kids mattress. Sometimes at home I grab my boys mattresses and we stack them and arrange them so we can get numbers in. Their mattresses are solid foam, I wouldn’t recommend using a mattress with springs. Some time martial art schools or gymnastics facilities will sell their old mats that are still useable for home. Foam is foam, and from my understanding all foam comes from pretty much the same major companies. Free couches have foam, and you could sew covers over the foam and bam you have an inexpensive solution. I have seen foam blocks wrapped in ductape as the cover and it worked well enough. Honestly this is what makes a gymnastics facility unique in that the business buys the foam most consumers cannot afford. Thanks for watching my videos and if you have more questions feel free to keep the conversation going.

Thank you for your appreciation of my channel. It means a lot. I was doing a training with managers and helping them understand how to discern what “good enough” looks like to pass an assignment. I absolutely understand your point, and I will make a video on “would I pass that?” And just use clips of what’s already on the internet to explain the process. There are other layers to this conversation. If you ever want to join me on my channel and talk shop you are welcome to do so. Until then keep an eye out for my video on your requested topic.

@@thegymnasticsexperience1131 Awesome, thanks so much! Honestly, I'm still learning so much myself, but one of the main things I noticed with our program when I took over was that parents were just not satisfied with it being "just fun" anymore. Because our program has been around for a long time, the programming hadn't evolved from being a place just for kids to get energy out to actually get kids skills. So one of the things I've been working on is the quality of our gymnastics and increasing the expectations on the kids. With the small changes we've done so far (some inspired by your rec videos too), the program is already up by 13% compared to last year. I'll definitely keep making my way through your videos, I've shared a couple of them with my owner as well.

I’m just seeing this comment. Im am thrilled to hear your program has grown and you are seeing real lasting results. I’m still in the process of making that video on what to look for in quality and expectations. Hopefully will have it finished up in the next couple weeks.

Thanks for that!

I’m glad you found the video helpful

You're welcome!

Glad you found it helpful!

I appreciate the recognition. Thanks for watching

You're so welcome!

Thanks for watching, and glad you found it helpful.

That really means a lot, thank you for the encouragement. It’s a slow process trying to consolidate all this information but I’m going to keep at it. If you have any feedback or input feel free to let me know. I’m working on trying to build the entire gymnastics coaching story as best as possible.

Right on, I’m glad you have the excitement and passion towards your goals. I started out as a coach and pitched an employee training system to my old boss back in 2013. We ended up forming a partnership which took me to the next level. Keep staying motivated, and just know it’s all about making continuous improvements over time. Eventually all those little improvements turn into a massive outcome. Keep me updated on your wins 🔥🔥👏👏

Thank you for the kind words. Sounds like you are starting a new and exciting adventure. Be sure to check out my other videos as I dive deeper on these issues in other videos. I wish you the best and reach out any time.

Everyone starts somewhere. There are a lot of coaches who have not learned the basics.

You're welcome

You're welcome