Back to the Drawing Board

Hello Everyone 

Namaste to all my peers and the fact that we are almost at the half way mark. I am loving the challenges of my daily life. It is forcing me to persevere and feel the captivating moments of success from hard work.

 “Plan your work, work the plan.”

Taking this into consideration, I have been approaching this 2017 season systematically. With great anticipation, I am awaiting the results of the plan.

Reflecting back at the benchmarks that I have set, I am realizing that we may be slightly behind. However, I planned an efficient YTP and we have time to work through it. 

I have taken all of the results that I can find from this season to calculate where my athlete is in relationship to the others in her category. According to the stats, the highest All Around score so far this year is 36.175. When I started to plan for 2017 I was planning to have my athlete be able to score a 34.00 all around to qualify to Nationals. I have now looked at the top 10 scores from each meet so far this season across the country. In order for my athlete to make it onto team B.C., she will need to score approximately 34.00 or greater. We tried Junior Olympic level 10 for the first time last season at a late meet and she scored a 34.00. So far this season she has improved her floor score, but has been less successful on the balance beam and uneven bars. Her all around scores have been even lower…all the way to a 30.11. 

This is a video of her routine in San Diego. She has the pieces, but missed putting it together. At this time, the first skill she falls on needs a lot of work. I do not think rushing to fix it is the best solution. This is just a demonstration of the gap we have to work on.

I knew that uneven bars would be the hardest event to develop this season.  We worked hard and Jenna has learned several new skills. The trouble has been sequencing them together. In the early part of 2017, I chose to compete this athlete in Alberta and the U.S.A.. I am hoping that this helps her develop skills for the long term and for the second macrocycle. I believe that the experience with the other province was valuable and so was the experience in the U.S.A., their talent pool is so much larger and stronger. I have been happy with how Jenna’s routines have come together, we just have to figure out how to hit consistently now that we are in to the second part of the season. 

She needs to gain 1.5-3.0 points for the next two competitions to qualify for Team B.C. to go to Nationals. At all her meets this season she missed skills, connections and bonuses. This affected her start value and final score greatly.

We went back to the drawing board. I have always taught this athlete to have as many tools in her tool belt as possible. This is so that if we need them we can use them. So we reviewed the tool belt and we are bringing back a necessary skill on the uneven bars. I am a judge and coach, so I spend a lot of time reviewing the rules and trying to use tactics and strategies to qualify my athlete onto team BC. For a couple of days, I could not see the solution to her uneven bars problem. I was struggling to find a solution to the problem and we needed one fast. Eventually, we looked back in the tool belt and found a good idea. We are now working on a revised routine that fulfills more requirements than our previously harder plan, that was not very successful in Edmonton or the US.

Here is a clip of Jenna learning this skill a couple seasons ago and then a video of her bringing it back and mastering it, in about 2 weeks. This is going to be more successful and will raise her score. We will still work on her harder skills as well, but at this time it is all about tactics and having solid routines to perform.

Hopefully this will be a solution to get us back on track for the benchmarks and ultimate goals.

Hopefully we can pull this routine together and it will bring her all around score up to where it needs to be.

Cheers,

Jesse