KIN 530: Training and Competitive Readiness

We are just wrapping up the season, and it has been another exciting year. The results were stronger in 2018, as one athlete qualified 1^stat Provincials and 11^that Nationals, and 18th in Canada after Finals. We also had bronze on Vault and Uneven bars in the JO 10  category at Provincials, and had two athletes who just missed qualifying for the team.

As a coach, I am improving my ability to train a team of athletes at the HP level. Thanks to this program and my dedication to reflection, I am making progress. I started the season unsure of how it would work out, but it has truly been a great time.

I want this blog post to be a spring board for next year’s planning. I had three level 10 athlete’s tryout for Nationals this season and one athlete made it. I am going to spend time analyzing the pros and cons of the YTP’s and make a plan for changes in the future. I have created some spreadsheets to visually see the season and analyze the performance of the plan.

Athlete 1

Athlete 2

Athlete 3

These charts are for my three JO 10 athletes. I have highlighted any score that is over a 9.0 and any time the athlete is on the podium. We competed in two categories this season. We always play it safe going down to the USA and that competition was very early season, so it was used as a builder meet to start bringing the difficulty up for trials. The Delta competition is a Cash and Carry and therefore they used the lower code of points to have a larger more exciting session.

This is the YTP for athlete 1, she spent the first part of the season working towards Junior HP, and then transitioned to the level 10 category in January after an unsuccessful attempt at Junior. This athlete transferred to my coaching in January 2018.

This athlete was training at a much higher volume from September to December in a different program. However, she was injured and struggling emotionally. The transition included emotional coaching, mental preparation and a lower load overall. My philosophy is to use time wisely and not overtrain. The intensity was increased and the volume was lowered. We brought her difficulty up and were able to create intelligent routines. She was also able to train more consistently. I believe this had a major effect on her performance in the second part of the season. She was having time to recover and her body felt stronger and healthier. After years of high volume training, this was the first time she has ever qualified for Team BC. So we are happy with this performance.

Moving forward, it is important to continue to provide a challenging atmosphere while maintaining the balance. I have calculated the total hours for the year (917), this will be interesting to track as we work towards 10000 hours.

Athlete 2 just missed Team BC this season, but she improved her scores and overall difficulty from the previous season. She is in the top of the pack on Bars and Beam. We have to get consistent and improve the overall performance and confidence with this athlete.

When we made the season plan for Athlete 3, our goal was to get the skills needed to move up into JO 10. This athlete mastered a new skill on each apparatus. She performed a new release on bars, a harder more challenging vault, and a brand new double back on floor. I find this the more amazing to analyze. This athlete is 17 years old and officially the highest level and oldest athlete our club has ever had. I am so proud of her accomplishments and dedication to the team. Since she is in grade 11, and attends public school, there is a lot of challenges with scheduling practices and keeping balance with sport, school and life. From this analysis, it is easy to see that attendance was a major short coming (600 hours) and so there was no time to refine the routines. However, the majority of the season was injury free and her mental mindset was great. She is also planning on completing one more season of gym which means that she will be our first ever Graduating high performance athlete. She has been on my team for the last 8 years, and my dream of long term athlete development is coming true.

Lastly, my partner and I have created Bandwidth charts to analyze the athletes performances. This gives us an idea of where our highs and lows are, and how we can work on our strengths to bring up the scores.

What you can see is that our width is quite drastic and therefore, we need to work on our consistency. It is also easiest to be consistent on vault, as you can see in the charts.

In the next YTP, I will try to increase the volume of training, especially in the first half of the year. Maybe a higher volume will give us more time to prepare for the Trial events. We were so close this season, we just have to keep working hard into next year. I will also be adding in some more camps to increase the confidence and get the athletes out of the Okanagan. I think that would help to increase their mental toughness and help them to know they are in the right level. This season it seemed that they stepped back slightly. I want to see more attack, and desire to persevere.

We will have to be very deliberate next season, and have a strategic schedule. Space and time in our facility is a challenge, and now we are doing very big skills, so there is an added level of safety concern.

In order to reach our goals for next season, I will have to reach out to some technical mentors to master the next calibre of skill teaching.

Stay tuned for my summer post with all our new tricks!!