How seriously to take gymnastic

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Just out of curiosity. My nearly 5yo started gymnastics a few months ago. He loves it but the coaches have said he's got potential and have asked that he starts attending twice a week. Initially it was just to improve his focus and for a bit of fun, however the coaches have suggested taking it quite seriously. He seems very young to me to be taking something so seriously, but then I never did any clubs as a kid so might just be out of touch. They keep talking about competitions and in house events. I'm not sure he will even be that good in such a short period of time (do they really get properly good at gymnastics at such a young age?).

What have been your experiences of gymnastics with young children?

And there's also the cost!

Does he want to do it? If he wants to I would let him but if he's not bothered I wouldn't.

He's excited that he might get to go more than once a week. But I hear about how expensive gymnastics can be and about how kids lives can completely revolve around gymnastics when they start to take it seriously. Not sure I'd be able to afford it!

There's a boy in my 7 yr old ds's class who is a gymnast. He is really talented and has won international competitions. His mum says he absolutely loves it but it does come at a cost - he is never able to have play dates, other hobbies, go to parties and basically spends all weekend being driven around to training and competitions. I guess you don't have to take it that seriously but he does to fulfil his huge potential.

My now 15 year old son started gymnastics at 7 and quickly moved into an advanced squad training 5 days a week. At 8 he was doing 15 hours training - the gymnastics that he does (acrobatic) is lower on boys so they are very keen to develop boys that show promise. It is a big commitment though, and they do sacrifice other parts of their lives - the cost isn’t the biggest issue to me, they only compete 5/6 times a year so that’s not too bad - it’s the year round commitment to training that is the thing that has had the biggest impact.