Shock at new gymnastics rules

[OneMoreStepAlongTheRoadIGo]

Gosh I'm really sad that this needed spelling out in this day and age 😬

About time but shouldn’t need rules - just common sense. Good to see the section about not missing school.

I knew they needed reform but genuinely surprised any of this needed saying.

Having read the media reports of how young gymnasts.have been treated I am not in the least surprised that this was needed.

Being sat on by coaches?!

The new rules were covered on Woman's Hour recently. Worth a listen.

I remember a coach pushing down heavily on my back/shoulders to get me folded in half in the splits. I still remember the pain in my hamstrings.

Should the general LAW be protecting girls and women (and male gymnasts) from being sat on?! That's physical abuse. And a lot of the other stuff seems like emotional abuse.

Reading that makes me want to keep my kids well away from gymnastics, what a toxic environment.

I heard the rules mentioned on 5live. The key thing they said was how shocked anyone not involved in children’s gymnastics would be by the need for these rules which is so true in

A few years ago it was almost Easter and my niece's gymnastics coach told all the age 5/6 girls to give their Easter eggs away, as she didn't want to see big tummy's after the break!

DN was immediately withdrawn.

I think it’s like ballet - they start training at a high level so young, and for such intense hours, and your body shape has got quite a lot to do with how you perform - it’s absolutely ripe for abuse

I got my kids put young as I didn't like the emphasis on high level training at a young age but am still shocked they have had to state these fairly basic safety rules.

And that they've made this public as if they're doing a great thing. They have no clue!

Agree it's a astonishing and very alarming that the rules were needed in the first place

And that is why DD will do gymnastics over my dead body. Fortunately it isn’t her bag so far. She prefers ponies.

It will take decades (if ever) to change the culture.

Not so much ballet, but extreme training is rife in freestyle dance & acro from an early age.

Very few youngsters are in ballet training that intense that early compared with gymnastics, although common in countries such as Russia and China. With ballet in the UK, the issues start at full-time vocational school from 11-19, as evidenced in the recent Panorama programme. There it tends to be psychological rather than physical.

There is a professionally trained ballet dancer in our wider family, so we have an ear to the ground on such matters.

Thank god. My Dd was a competitive gymnast and suffered all the things there are now rules about. 'I can see you have had a good Christmas' whilst looking at their 10 year old tummies etc. I didn't know half of what went on, she didn't tell me because she knew I would remove her. It all came out after she left. There were many nights of tears from us both. 6 years later and she is still needing therapy. Never believes anything positive anyone has to say. Her body is broken. She nearly lost her best gym friend to anorexia. She had a panic attack in the summer because she heard an ex coaches voice in a shop. Good coaches are amazing but the ones who have been trained like the coaches who need to be told this stuff should be struck off

I am so sorry to those of you who have been affected by this.