Any former gymnasts or parents of gymnasts our there?

[PurpleRiverIsland]

news.sky.com/story/british-gymnastics-claims-athletes-beaten-into-submission-amid-culture-of-fear-12022525

I witnessed and was victim of a lot of physical and emotional abuse when I was an elite gymnast at 3 different clubs and from 4 different coaches. I know some of the clubs these girls (speaking out in the media) went to and I’m not surprised at all about the allegations.

I’m wondering how prolific it was. What were your experiences of the sport?

YABU - I was/am involved in gymnastics and have never seen anything untoward

YANBU - I was/am involved in gymnastics and I witnessed physical or emotional abuse.

Please comment too if you would like to share your experiences.

I'm rather shocked and saddened reading all this. I went to gymnastics for a few years back in the 90's, but was never talented enough to attract any negative attention. My teachers were actually very encouraging and kind to me. Looking back I suppose the reason to be nice to the bottom rankers is so they keep coming and paying, but it does seem very backwards that the way to get the best experience is to be bad at it. I eventually quit because I could not and would not do the splits, but it was fun for a while.

I wonder if sports like this attract sadists who have an outlet for their warped outlooks? Honestly, some of these coaches sound like Nazis. It’s really shocking to read. 💐 to you all.

To be fair not allowing parents isn't unusual, and I don't necessarily disagree with that. I've coached before and if there are parents watching the child will act differently. They'll be constantly distracted by their mum, and sometimes you'll get parents interfering in the coaching and giving them corrections, which might not be the right ones. So I do get why they don't allow parents in. But obviously that policy has allowed abuse to go unchecked for a long time - it's unlikely that they'll be able to continue with it.

I (eventually) pulled my dd out of a ballet school as I thought it was damaging her mental health - nothing extreme but lots of pressure on her (not me, as the adult) to do ever more classes and hours and being shouted at when she got upset, plus stretching that (knowing what I know now) was not good practice and potentially unsafe.

It took over a year to persuade my dd to leave - she loves dance and wants to do it as a career - and it was only by finding a kinder and technically much better dance school that I got her to the point she was prepared to leave.

This makes me so sad. For the children who have suffered at the hands of abusive coaches. I feel sorry for the clubs that have kind and supportive coaches, it's the same in dance. I'm horrified when people come on MN posts and say that their child was told they were too fat by a ballet teacher or not good enough. All children deserve to enjoy their hobbies regardless of ability, shape or size, yes some will excel and thrive and want to train for more hours or compete but this should be because the child wants to, and it is the job of activity providers to ensure that they encourage both their recreational and elite members supportively and with kindness.

@andannabegins I'm sorry for what you and your daughter went through. If your daughter is only 15 now and you begged her for years to leave I think as the adult in that situation you needed to make the decision for her. Her saying she wanted to stay should not have outweighed the fact that you could see things were damaging. Our daughter did competitive dancing when she was young, we had to pull her out of one dance school as the environment wasn't a healthy one. She wasn't happy to leave but you have to do what's best for them long term.
The blame is definitely on the club and the coach for what happened to your daughter but as it went on for years I think you know that you should have acted sooner to remove her from this situation. It only went on for so long because you allowed her to stay there and as you'd been begging for years for her to leave you knew it wasn't right.

I did gymnastics in the early 80s. I was competent, but not brilliant - in the squad of a big club, but very much making up the numbers. It was still pretty brutal - being forced into splits etc. I gave up at 10 when they said I was going to have to train 6 times a week or not at all.

My own DC (boys) drifted into gymnastics through soft play classes - I was never particularly invested in them doing it, but I wasn't against it, as it was clear that their club was very, very different to what I remembered. One DS is now at elite level - regional squad and national finals. One is somewhere between competitive and recreational - occasional local competitions, but not particularly bothered either way. The youngest is only just starting proper classes.

We have now had experience of 3 clubs (a lot of gyms in this region have had to stop doing competitive boys' gym, due to lack of coaches or uptake) and, while I have never seen anything that concerns me at all - lots of transparency, feedback etc), it does seem to me that there is a different culture around boys' gymnastics. It may have something to do with the fact that a lot of the boys' coaches come from overseas, often with a background of having themselves competed to a high level in notoriously abusive programs. DS1 has been coached by three former Olympic medallists from regimes known for treating young athletes appallingly. They were all extremely cautious with the boys' development, and very much in favour of slow, steady progress, without them being pushed early on. They were particularly careful around growth spurts. The boys' hours went up only after lengthy discussion with the parents, and other options were always available for those who did not want to take the next step. They were extremely careful about injury - DS1 was asked to see a physio after an injury, before his coach would agree to take him to a competition.

There seems to be less emphasis on body-conformity with the boys. Obviously, the coaches are looking at physiology, strength etc, but there does seem to be much greater variation in the build of the boys who compete with DS1 - possibly because the different pieces favour different strengths.

A previous poster mentioned clothing differences. I have always been uncomfortable about the way boys' gym showcases strength and power, without any of the decorative stuff - plain leotards and shorts, no music for routines, no dance elements - while the girls are expected to look nice, smile, and do lots of dancing around between the main skills. It always feels as though the girls are being treated as show ponies to some extent, while the boys are allowed to just get on with the main 'business' of gymnastics. Having said that, I have noticed what looks like a change coming through in girls' gym - the young teen girls I see training now look stronger and healthier, and often taller or bigger built - than was the norm even a few years ago.

Maybe we've been lucky in our region - and maybe there is a clear difference in culture between girls' and boys' programs, but there certainly are clubs getting it right. Hopefully, with people speaking out now, pressure will be put on the other clubs to improve.

@TheAnon1 thanks, intensity is a good descriptor. I was still in primary school the first time I was publicly and repeatedly told I was too fat. My coach was particularly keen on humiliation as punishment so threats of public weigh ins or being made to eat at 'the fat table' were common. He used to encourage my disordered eating. I was training 3 hours most days and would spend my college lunchbreaks running 10kms wearing black sacks under my jumper at his suggestion.

To this day I panic when there's a sudden interruption. Because he used to stop us all in the middle of sessions to yell at us, sometimes for 30 minutes or longer. It was always talked about with humour, like 'oh isn't he a character?' and because he'd trained Olympians it was all somehow OK. I spent years thinking I was just really oversensitive.

Agree with @kungfupannda. Even back in the 80s the boys training was very different. The girls were ten a penny but there weren't many boys back then so it wasn't as competitive and they were treated like stars regardless of ability. They were encouraged to do weights at home so didn't have to do as much training as we did in the actual gym.

@grumpytoddler1 I do agree with you about parents watching. It's a really tough one as you get the competitive parents trying to coach from the sidelines too.
Talking about the leotards, my daughter started her periods just as she turned 11. She was regular every month from the beginning. One month not long after, there were 2 competitions scheduled and I asked one of her coaches whether she could wear shorts, at least at the club comp. We were told no. It is so degrading for them. What was she supposed to do? Use a st, and run to the toilets as she was about to start and take it off I was told.
We left before those comps.

I did recreational gymnastics as a child, and don't remember anything bad happening. Thankfully. I was quite crap, so I wasn't elected for any other groups- I'm thankful for that.
I don't think this is limited to just gymnastics. One of my friends did ballet and was often scared to eat anything in case she put on weight. She was 11/12 at the time.

My DD did gymnastics from the age of 3 until she was 11, just at a recreational level. She's tall, physically strong and well built but not overweight. She would enter the club recreational gymnastics comps, often winning medals and even a few 1st places but was never picked for the squad.

I would regularly see new children joining and being picked off for the squad within a few weeks, just based on physical appearance and perceived potential rather than actual skill level. When DD started picking up on this and getting upset we called it a day. I could see that even on that lowly level of club squad there was potential for psychological damage so we called it a day.

I’m so sorry for all these stories, it’s horrific. My dd does gym 12 hrs per week but isn’t at a high level. Definite money maker as she isn’t even going to get to county squad but it does mean she isn’t under pressure and has a lovely coach. She loves it although I worry the hrs of training may have impact on her body.

@kungfupannda There were boys training at some of the clubs I trained at and I never heard them yelled at or treated badly in the same way as the girls. I felt like MAG was a healthier sport. Also MAG tend to be a bit older which I think probably makes them less vulnerable. I would be really interested to hear more experiences from men in the sport

DD is a competitive gymnast doing National comps and lots of hours so I have been closely following the recent news and have been horrified by some of the stories coming out. It seems things have been brushed over for years! DD has been at two clubs and the experiences I have read about don't reflect hers. For her gymnastics has been a positve environment with open doors for parents to watch and none of the forced stretching, belittling or weight monitoring I have read about. She has made some strong friendships and her coaches are nurturing and approachable. It sounds like we have been lucky and that in itself is saddening as it should be positive for all. Gymnasts are very young and for me that needs to change. DD was 9 when she joined a club and apparently that is old! A Some clubs are not interested in putting older children in squads as they are already out of age for the compulsory route. By the time DD joined squad she was 10 but she has still gone on to do well and more importantly still loves the sport.

@ScoobySnacker I agree with you about the age thing. They need to be open to gymnasts starting older and finishing older too. Are there many over 18s still training at her club? There were never any at mine. There was no continuation of sport into adulthood at any level which I always thought was a shame. Mind you we all left because of the abuse so maybe they didn’t get the chance.

DD did gymnastics at a local club for two years.

She was getting ready for her competition and I did something the club didn’t like. From that point she was told she was no good. I came back early to pick her up one day and sat in the viewing gallery and one of the bigger kids was sat on DD stretching her out. DD came out in tears. We didn’t go back.

This was the final straw. There were other incidents but she was insistent that she didn’t want to give up.

Again 12+ hours a week from age 6.

I raised concerns and a complaint with BG as the coaching practice at the gym didn’t follow their guidelines.

The gym is still open, treating kids like crap, but they’ve two national high ranking gymnasts there with more in development. It’s quite sickening.

Not gymnastics, a different sport to top 6 in the UK, but I remember one of the coaches saying about how if you get a box of eggs and throw it against a wall the strongest remain, this was how he felt about coaching us.

Although DD is at a “school hall” gymnastics group, there is still an obvious bias in selection for “squad”, based on height, weight, body shape not actual current skills and abilities.
They have to be very much better to get into squad if their body type is “wrong”.
The club is not “competitively successful” so it’s wholly pointless as a selection feature anyway.

There’s no abuse, coaches are smiley and friendly and kids are encouraged to hold stretches and do conditioning-by, for example, can they hold a plank longer than the coach, etc.

I used to do a lot of ballet, although I wasn't ever particularly good. It felt like there was a bit of a shift around 2000 (especially on stage and in the big companies) away from the everyone must be anorexic model. I guess they'd had a bit of a backlash in the press to coincide with anorexia being more prevalent in schools and the heroin chic fashion trend. More focus on nutrition and science and building strength. That fed down to the children's classes.

We used to get gymnasts in 'to learn how to dance'. Even though none of us were exactly fat, it was always noticeable how pale and stunted and afraid the gymnast were. They were massively thinner than us, and normally much shorter for the same age. And whilst we had a reasonable amount of discipline, there was no fear of asking when we didn't understand.

There were definitely better and worse dance schools, but most of the unhealthy pressure I experienced was from the other kids, not from above. I guess there's more dance schools than gyms so parents have more choice to leave a toxic environment.

I was doing gymnastics in the 1970s I can honestly say so never saw any bullying. We had a couple of better gymnasts than the rest of it and we would all be told what we'd done well and what could be improved.

Gym in Buckinghamshire? This is where DD was.

I get the chills going past it to the tip now. Hateful place.

To be fair I can remember boys being treated pretty badly too. There was just a lot less of them so you didn’t notice as much as with the girls. My brother did a bit of gym then stopped “because I don’t like the coaches”.

I went to a (boarding) school which had quite a few high level gymnasts as pupils on sports scholarships, and a very competitive club on site. I did a bit recreationally and was on the 2nd school team but I was far too old (at 11) and tall to do anything high level. I really enjoyed it but I did see how the girls' lives were just ruled by gymnastics. They were allowed out of certain lessons to train, did it instead of all our team sports (we were a sporty school so compulsory games 4x a week on top of PE lessons), in our longer lunch breaks etc. They were brilliant but so tiny! Several of them quit over the course of their time at school and they would often shoot up several inches, suddenly grow boobs and hit puberty as soon as they finished. The gym was obviously keeping them stunted.

At the time we thought it was normal to sit on each other for stretches, run with ankle weights etc, even at my very amateur level. The "high" of learning a new move, performing etc was huge. I never saw any overt abuse but it may have happened when we second raters weren't about. It's a crazy world, for sure.