One of the biggest challenges coaches face is keeping athletes interested, motivated, and improving all year (or season) long. This is particularly important in sports where there is a lot of repetition and long hours. I know I have posted about making conditioning fun before, but it really does make a difference!

Play Games

Who says warm ups have to consist of just running in circles? You can get the same benefit by playing games (like my favorite Here, There and Everywhere), changing locations (we have the kids bring tennis shoes and we run outside to warm up on nice days), or changing the routine (like creating a big obstacle course).

The same goes for conditioning. Make it a challenge, use some creativity and have fun. Check out this great video of gymnasts trying to stay on the crazy block! I am definitely going to try that with my athletes.

Change Things Up

Instead of doing the same old drill and routine practice after practice, change the order, try new drills, and the athletes may not even realize they are perfecting the same skills.

Offer Rewards

I love rewarding kids for good effort. When we do conditioning as a group, I frequently give out trips to the “Lemonade Lounge” - a totally fictitious place that usually ends up being the trampoline or foam pit. The gymnast who is working the hardest on a set of exercises.

Sometimes we offer up rewards of random things like pennies, Skittles, jumps on trampoline, free time, or goodies that we have picked up for relatively little at the dollar store. You’d be surprised what kids will do for a reward of any kind.

Put The Athletes In Charge

One of my favorite conditioning games is having the girls start off running laps and then each time I say freeze, another member of the team gets to decide what exercise they will do 15 of. You’d be surprised how hard they work when the task is created by a peer. Sometimes we partner up and the girls are in charge of counting each other’s reps, making form corrections and making sure their partner gets the job done.

One of my favorite things to do as a coach is disguise work as fun. My new favorite game is called “Here, There and Everywhere”. We played this with a group of 25 gymnasts on a standard gymnastics floor and not only did they break a sweat, they kept asking to play it over and over! Here’s the run down on how to play.

What you need:

• A group of kids of any age - the game can be played with 1-100 kids
• An adult or older child to act as the “caller”
• A large enough area for kids to move - obviously the larger the group the larger the space you need. Can be played outdoors, on a sports court, gymnastics floor or even in the pool.

How to play:

• Define your play space and then identify 3 landmarks (a tree, a cone, a tape line, or any other visual) - name them “Here”, “There” and “Everywhere”
• Start all the kids on “Here”
• Then the caller gets creative! Caller says “Go there” and all the kids go to the spot identified as “There” - anyone who goes to the wrong place is out. The next command gets called - “Skip everywhere” and anyone who goes to the wrong place is out. Keep repeating with new ways to get here, there and everywhere until you declare a winner or everyone has had enough.

Command ideas:

• Go here
• Skip there
• Sit everywhere
• Stand everywhere
• Jump here
• Hop there
• Swim everywhere
• Spin here
• Bounce there
• Crawl everywhere

This game is guaranteed to make kids move and have fun doing it.

Rick at Gymnastics Coaching recently posted about a great resource for games like this one - the book, called No Standing Around in My Gym, is by J.D. Hughes and features more than 70 games plus variations that will keep even large groups of kids moving and having fun.

I have a few more games that are popular with the kids at our gym. I will try to write them up soon and share them here.

While every state is different, my state will wrap up its competitive season for gymnastics this weekend when the Level 4s have their state championships. As a coach, it is my favorite competition of the year. It is  exhausting, rewarding, fantastic and stressful all wrapped in one. We have a large team and the Level 4 meet is a huge one, so I will be coaching what essentially comes out to be 6 meets back to back. Instead of having all of our girls in one session, at the state meet they are broken into sessions by age. This is fun because we get to focus on 3-4 of our own gymnasts at a time.

All of my gymnasts have worked so hard this year. For many of them, it was their first experience competing and they have transformed from little girls who take gymnastics class into gymnasts. They’ve had their ups and downs but they never give up. For most of them, this will be their last competition at this level - a graduation of sorts - as they get ready to start the next chapter in their gymnastics journey at the next level.

Normally this weekend is also bittersweet for me. For the past few years I have coached the Level 4s, but this year I am going to move up with this particular group which is just so exciting. The girls are fantastic and it is partially thanks to the fact that they all have great parents, too.

So, I’ll see you all next week. Have a great weekend and wish us luck - it’s going to be fun.