Would you report this sports club?

[thesnowmen]

My DS had a trial session at a gym club, mixed bag sort of club recently.
It's in a council run, leisure centre.
It's also registered with BG. The hall is split into two with a curtain, suspended from the ceiling, partioning off half of the hall, the other half is used for tennis and/or badminton.
The gym part has three or so activities going on, including three or four trampolines. The parents and theirs and the children's belongings, sit scattered around the edge of the hall, a metre or two away from the children participating, as there are only two narrow wooden benches for seating.
Also, the people from the tennis courts, I don't know if they have their own exit, but more frequently they just walk around the curtain and through the gym whilst training is going on. One boisterous group of older men walked through with their raquets and one of them walked the length of the low beam, unchallenged by coaches.
Also, there was no warming up. Just straight into forward rolls, jumping and vaulting. And one particular group their was no age division, just 3-10 year old children together.

It seems to be run by one man, who I think is struggling, judging by complaints about lack of communication on the Facebook page. I did contact about some of the above but received no reply.


I'm just wondering if I'm being harsh, or if any of the above is cause for concern? Or if I need to report this, and who would be the best person to contact?

[thesnowmen]

there was no age division

[nonicknameseemsavailable]

so how many children roughly in total and just the one adult?

were the children on equipment effectively unsupervised?

[taxi4ballet]

Perhaps having random adults walking through the training area where children are practising isn't the best arrangement...

[ShimmeringBeauty]

Clearly you aren't going to sign your child up.

It sounds like you are concerned about the other children.
It's not British Gymnastics standard, from what you say. Safety (you are concerned about risk of injury), safeguarding (random adults walking through, although leisure centres are challenging in that respect), and learning (apparently no warm-up being taught).

I would make a phone call to British Gymnastics, phone number on
www.british-gymnastics.org/contact-us

[flicktuck]

As a level 3 gymnastics coach I can make the following points
First in their defence ,coaching in a leisure centre can be a real headache, because it's not purpose designed and there needs to be correct spacing between apparatus etc , it isn't an enclosed space and their are other people about.
However this set up does not sound safe at all.
I would say 2 meters separation between parents and gymnasts is probably ok depending on what they are doing, but there needs to be a clearly defined parents area, preferably behind a plastic link chain fencing
The people walking through is not acceptable.Apart from the safeguarding issue , it is a distraction to both coaches and gymnasts

I am guessing from your description it is a 60 minute recreational class, I would expect a pulse raising warm up, stretching and conditioning session to last as an absolute minimum of 20 minutes.As they get more experienced/ doing longer sessions so the need for physical preparation increases.The only thing I can think of is they might have been doing a 'pulse raising warm up circuit round the gym, a bit like an obstacle course?

The children might be grouped by ability in which case you might expect a range of ages maybe in teh top group.However pre-school children need to be taught differently to older children, and they need coaches with pre-school qualification.So a group containing 3 yos with 10 yr olds sounds wrong to me.