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.

@Shortfeet I think you can do it without abuse etc. At different points I had 2 very nice respectful coaches and I progressed so quickly with them because I was happy and enjoying the sport. If I was injured they were genuinely concerned and thinking long term. Based on these experiences I think it’s absolutely possible to be successful in the sport even if coaches take an ethical approach.

It would help if British gymnastics lost their obsession with achieving everything so young and started encouraging older gymnasts and dropped their obsession with low weight and focused more on producing powerful strong healthy adult athletes.

I'd also recommend cheer. My girl is built for gymnastics, but there was no way I was putting her through that level of body pressure and stress. Cheer and dance are perfect amounts of tumbling, teamwork and dance ... she loves it and it doesn't come with the pressure elite gymnastics does.

I have a question re the age by which the child you have started her gymnastic “career” and by which she retires.
Is it the same in US gymnastics or just the UK?

When I was young I dont really remember watching the Olympics and thinking that France was any good. I remember the americans winning everything. I was 18 in 1995 so grew up during the mid 80-90s.

Just wondering if thats how the UK and the US produce so much gold. The abuse are tolerated because it is all about winning not about the wellbeing of the athletes.

I m very interested that one poster said that she was able to progress faster and better when she had a nice coach with a long term view. It has been proven in parenting and education that positivity and encouragements take you further than fear so I dont understand why they think it is productive... i think there are sadist everywhere sadly.

Also why do men coach have their place in women’s sports????

I don’t know anything about gymnastics however I love watching it on the tv. I’m 31 and it seems in more recent times the girls have become bigger and stronger, maybe not the Chinese or other Far East. They are proper power houses.
Is there a move from delicate floating girls to strong powerful routines?

Polkadotties, I think part is a result of changes to how routines are scored, making them more suited to muscular gymnasts rather than whispy ones.
Some might be due to “fashion” and the “Simone Biles” effect? Dunno about that.

I don’t have an issue with the brutal hard work it takes to win medals, but I DO have a problem with that level of training being undergone by such young young children.
If you choose to take on the training in your mid-teens, then fine: I do think that’s a choice. But no one is making an informed choice at the age of 6!!!

And if you think the strict training is normal from the age of 6 onwards, you’re not going to realise when it crosses a line to abuse.

My daughter has trained at a few clubs over the years. The coaches she has now are lovely and there is nothing even remotely abusive. However, in previous clubs I have witnessed children being worked/stretched till they cry every session. Screamed at for having mental blocks and told to perform a move or leave while they are balling their eyes out. Being constantly compared unfavourably to each other and given sly verbal digs. This is in front of a gym full of gymnasts and their parents.
The main problem is the power dynamics. The coaches have all the power. If you complain the sport your daughter loves and the team they love will be taken away. The coaches have favourites (usually the most able children) and make this very clear to the others so you don’t want to rock the boat. My daughter was a non favourite with a previous coach and she wouldn’t even watch her in competition she would look away as if she was an embarrassment (even though she won a lot).
They also put huge amounts of pressure on the girls to be perfect and make the girls feel like they have let them down for even 1 tiny toe out of place.

I think there are a couple of reasons why the women have more 'normal' figures now than say 20 years ago. They upped the minimum age for the Olympics to 16, because all the winning gymnasts were 14 and that wasn't viewed as appropriate.

Also, the Chinese, Russian, Eastern bloc gymnasts were often put on puberty blockers. After some of these regimes collapsed and their people got some semblance of human rights, that didn't happen any more.

I would really like there to be a campaign about the women being able to wear more appropriate clothing, low cut leg leotard even if they don't progress to shorts!

Ridiculous where they have to be worn and stuck down with tit tape so they don't move and lose points...

I’m 31 and it seems in more recent times the girls have become bigger and stronger, maybe not the Chinese or other Far East. They are proper power houses.

Simone Biles is 4’8” and solid muscle. She weighs seven stone or thereabouts. She is the ideal shape and size for gymnastics: small, light, strong and frankly shaped like a torpedo, which is what is required to do some of the skills that only she can manage.

The sport favours small, light women. Anybody taller or heavier simply can’t do the same things. I haven’t noticed the skills becoming less demanding since the 1990s, so I suspect that a new physical requirement has been added since then: be small, be light but be strong, too.

Svetlana Khorkhina, a russian gymnast who retired in the mid-2000s, was considered exceptionally tall for a gymnast at 5’5”. She still only weighed seven stone. She was brilliant on the bars and looked graceful and elegant but was often criticised for her floor routines, which weren’t considered difficult enough. That’s because she couldn’t do the more difficult tumbles, which require the gymnast to be tiny and strong. When she led her team out, she looked like a giantess compared to them. At 5’5” she was head and shoulders above them.

I don’t think that the sport has become more accepting of different body types. I suspect that it is even more demanding, if anything.

Khorkhina looked scarily thin in her later years of competing. I saw some footage of her when she was younger and she looked slim rather than skinny then.
My dds both did gymnastics at the local leisure centre. No pressure, lovely coaches. They didn’t progress much but it was fun.
They also did ballet but again it was for fun and to stay active.

@Bubblesgun Usually it's male and female coaches isn't it? Make coaches are better able to "spot" or learning new tricks I would imagine. Basically in teams of coaching, the eastern Europeans were winning. coaches defected and then coached the Americans.

Hopefully now there will be new methods in coaching but that may mean less medals while the new regimes are put into place.

I’ve just finished Athlete A. Absolutely appalling, words cannot describe it

@ Polkadotties

I cant bring myself to watch it. How did you mentally prepare?

For me, the last few minutes of the film made it worthwhile viewing.

Usually it's male and female coaches isn't it? Make coaches are better able to "spot" or learning new tricks I would imagine.

Presuming that was a typo for male, can you explain further?

I also think some of the parents here are underplaying their own responsibility. I don't understand how kids can keep going to a club if the parents refuse to let them go. Why would you not just, you know, refuse to pay for any more classes? Or report the club to the authorities and get them investigated?

Has anyone watched the American college level gymnastics? I’ve only seen a few clips but it might be an interesting model to try in the UK. The gymnasts are all at university so aged 18+ and there are some much bigger women performing to very high levels (double somersaults etc). I think we shouldn’t be saying that bigger women can’t do this stuff because the reality is that UK gyms have never let them try!

@dingledongle

I wonder if this level of 'abuse' is prevalent in other sports too, swimming, cycling etc.

I know of children who train for hours swimming- early mornings, hours on end etc and wonder whether children really 'consent' to this bit get pushed and pulled along by parents, coaches etc

My children are competent swimmers and 'tried out' for swimming clubs but were put off by the attitudes of the coaches (i did not like the way they spoke to the kids either) and the hours of training.

IME swimming has a lot of training (although that varies by club) but the kinds of 'abuse' described on this thread have not in any way been a feature of my DS's competitive swimming life. (I think in the past things might have been bad though - I've heard some horror stories rom parents who swam competitively about training exercises, which coaches no longer use, that were pretty standard in the past).

DS (10) swims at county and regional level (pre-lockdown he was getting very close to national times). We've actually been really lucky with his club - the head coach is all about what he calls 'optimal' rather than 'maximal' training regimes. DS's squad trains for 10 hours a week in the pool, and has some additional land training including and hour of physio led training. This is the first squad he's been in with an early morning (before school) session. Other local teams have the equivalent squad in 18 hours a week, which would be too much for DS.

The land training tends to be game based and is intended to be fun. The physio led sessions are all about getting them to understand and look after their bodies to prevent injury. They also have regular swimmer education work to get the kids to understand what training (on land and in the water) is for and how to get the best out of it, or about diet and the kinds of snacks they should take to events (and why they should bloody drink water during training).

The coaches in his club are brilliant. His coach knows DS really well and understands his foibles. She's been very supportive of him in managing his asthma and working on his resilience. The kids are all really lovely with each other too - very supportive. They're competitive but it's healthy and they are supported to see other kids' success as a positive and something to spur themselves on with. The older, elite swimmers are supportive of the younger kids too (DS was utterly delighted when one of the GB swimmers in his club came to watch his squad do a charity challenge and congratulated him and his friends for having done something really hard for their age).

I officiate at galas, and I don't think that DS's club is unusual in this kind of approach. The coaches I see on poolside are generally great with the kids, and the kids are often lovely with each other. The county level swimmers from different clubs are pretty good natured in their rivalries and the younger ones often seem delighted to chat to each other in marshalling. You see the odd one where you think the coach needs to sort themselves out, but mostly it's all pretty positive. The referees I've worked with would have words with a coach if they were out of line with a child on poolside, because they really do care about safeguarding.

Also: I definitely don't push DS into it. He kind of got into it accidentally, post-swimming lessons. He wants to do it. He loves it and is missing it so much right now. He couldn't be happier that the pools are reopening and he can get back to training (they will be building up again gradually). His friends are generally the same. There is a big push within clubs these days to try to stop the weird, overbearing swim parent thing (you do come across some weird parents, often armed with stop watches, at galas). Our head coach runs parent education sessions emphasising that parents should not coach their kids from the sidelines or be anything other than supportive, however a child has performed (and other such 'parents: don't be dicks' advice).

I'd happily not spend so much time in swimming pools, and certainly would love to ditch 5am starts. And none of us care if he doesn't get anywhere with it ultimately. He really enjoys it; it keeps him fit; he's made lots of lovely friends; he's learning about the importance of hard work and discipline; he's learning skills in resilience from failure. He doesn't need to make it to the olympic team for that to have been a good experience for him. (He's not going to be that good anyway 😂, not with my genetic material)

Which is to say that I'm surprised that British gymnastics hasn't done more to sort itself out. The stories on this thread are dreadful. Other sports that require lots of effort, raining and competition from pretty young kids have been working hard to make things much better than they were in the past (obviously things can always be improved further, and I'm sure there is still too much variation between clubs and coaches). There's no reason why gymnastics can't do things differently too.

I’ve just watched Athlete A. I particularly liked the shouts of “shame!” when the head of the US gymnastics federation left the hearing, having pleaded the fifth.

However, why did it take a sexual abuse scandal to make people look properly at gymnastics? There was a lot wrong with it before Larry Nasser started his activities.

@EggBoxes I mean both male and female coaches would be at the club. The men have more strength , so can physically support the gymnasts more.

There is a gym that several of you have posted about. Have you reported it? If not, may I ask why not? This is horrific!

@EggBoxes "spot" is the term for physically assisting during tumbles etc although at that level I wouldn't have thought coach would be bearing the whole weight of a gymnast anyway?

Ah, yes, we use the word 'spot' in a similar way in rock climbing. I hadn't realised that was what was meant, thank you.

This is USA college gymnastics I mentioned before. They’re not tiny little 15 year olds but they certainly can perform to a very high level