10 Tips for a Successful Season

FREE: everyone likes free! ADVICE: not so much! One of the perks of being the owner of a gymnastics club and not being the head coach is that while the coaches are busy with final level determinations, cleaning up their choreography and crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s heading into the optional season, I get to do things […]

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20 Things Only Parents of Gymnasts Understand

1. All music is judged on whether it would make good floor music. 2. This is how homework is done. 3. And math is explained like this: 4. Your tiny sprite of a child has hands of a lumberjack. 5. The panic that ensues when your daughter forgot to remove her nail polish before the meet. […]

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When You Want to Tear Your Hair Out: 20 Tips for Coaching Difficult Athletes

  Let’s face it. If you teach or coach long enough, inevitably you will have some students who you find irritating, abrasive or exasperating. They might not just annoy you, but also other coaches and even their classmates or teammates. Or maybe it is just you. Either way, on the days that they aren’t there teaching […]

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Grounding your Helicopter Parent: 7 Questions To Ask Yourself When You Are Tempted to Intervene

There is a fine line between being a concerned and supportive parent and being a helicopter parent. I know that struggle to walk along that line, and I see so many caring parents trying to navigate it as well.   Let’s face it: it’s really hard to see our kids in pain. But it’s also hard […]

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The Single Most Important Thing Your Athlete Needs to Know

Do you know what the single most thing your athletes need to believe about their coach in order for them to work to their highest potential? It’s not that you know how to teach a perfect back handspring. Or that you know how to coach them through a tough meet. It’s not that you were once upon […]

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15 Tips to Eliminate Parent Complaints Forever

Ok, it maybe Pollyannaish to think that complaints can be eliminated forever, but follow these 15 tips and they certainly will be reduced! Before accepting a family on team, make sure that the family is a good philosophical match. If your gym is one that is intent on team members being on an elite training […]

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Ask Me in Twenty Years…or Sooner

There are some weeks that I wonder if what I do really matters. I know that this sentiment does not make me a special snowflake. In fact, I am fairly certain that most of us consider from time to time how we should measure our efficacy and our success. In any case, for me, the […]

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Parent to Parent: How to Deal with Overly Competitive Parents

Do you have “those” parents on your child’s team? The ones who react like this when their kid wins the meet? The ones who thinks finding seats for the meet is a competitive sport? And who always coaches from the stands? Who has difficulty waiting for their child’s score to get posted? Not to mention their reaction […]

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15 Lessons from Coach Wooden’s Ted Talk: The Difference between Winning and Succeeding.

I love Ted Talks, a series of short, powerful talks, all less than 18 minutes long, on a variety of topics that are always informational and often inspirational. If you are feeling sluggish or uninspired one day, take a few minutes to watch or listen to a Ted Talk and it will most certainly rev […]

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