Competitive gymnastics is a grueling sport that requires and an exceptional amount of time and effort. If your daughter wants to participate in competitive gymnastics, there are several things that you as the parent as well as your daughter as the athlete need to consider.
Time, money, commitment level, risk management, talent, and ability should all play a part in your decision. If you are considering making the jump to the competitive level of gymnastics, use this guide to help you walk through the different factors that should go into your decision level.
Is Your Child Good Enough?
The first component of the decision to move to competitive gymnastics is ability level. If your daughter is currently in recreational gymnastics and is thinking about moving to competitive gymnastics, you should consider her current talent level in the sport. Competitive gymnastics requires a high level of skill.
If your daughter struggles to master new skills or is falling behind her peers, competitive gymnastics may not be the right decision. Athletes involved in competitive gymnastics advance faster than their peers have a heightened level of skill and ability, and master challenging new skills at a faster rate.
If your daughter is exceptionally young, consider her natural skills and coordination levels in comparison to her peers. If your daughter is already in recreational gymnastics, consult her coaches to determine if competitive gymnastics might be right for her.
Time commitment
Once you have determined that your daughter has the skill to handle competitive gymnastics, the next step in your decision should be to gauge how committed your daughter is to gymnastics and discuss as a family how much time you may want to commit to a sport. While recreational gymnastic practices may only last for 1-2 hours a few times per week, competitive gymnasts often spend 20 or more hours a week in the gym.
This means that your daughter likely will not be able to participate in any other extracurricular activity. If there are other sports, clubs, or activities that your daughter enjoys, you should take time to find out which ones are the most important to her. If gymnastics is not the top priority, competitive gymnastics is not the best option.
As a parent of a competitive gymnast, you should be prepared to travel for competitions, spend long weekends and late nights at the gym, and devote much of your daughter’s free time to the sport. The most elite gymnasts are often homeschooled or are on some altered school schedule to spend more time in the gym practicing.
Elite gymnasts also spend summers at gymnastics training camps and train on a year-round schedule. Your daughter must understand the time requirements of competitive gymnastics before taking the leap. Time away from the rest of the family is often an issue for competitive gymnasts.
Often one parent is in charge of going to practices, traveling competitions, and training while another parent works full time or helps to take care of other children. Therefore, it is essential to consider family vacations and other commitments that might have to be sacrificed in order to dedicate time to gymnastics.
Financial Considerations
Money is another crucial factor to consider when thinking about starting competitive gymnastics. Competitive gymnastics often cost significantly more than your average sport. When you combine the cost of training, competition leotards, summer camps, and travel can add up quickly.
Competitive gymnastics can often cost $200-500 dollars a month, with the most elite athletes paying a premium of $1,000 or more per month for gymnastics. It is essential to consider any financial strains that this may cause and determine if this is something that your family is able to do.
While some costs can be cut or avoided, you want your daughter in the best programs in order to do well, which is not cheap. Talk to your daughter about the costs of a competitive program and determine if she is committed to such a large investment.
Risk versus Reward
Risk of Injury
Another essential aspect of competitive gymnastics is the risk factor. Gymnastics is a high-intensity sport, and accidents can happen. While the sport is continually increasing safety regulations, your daughter may be flying through the air, flipping her body, or completing high-risk skills to be competitive.
Gymnastics is rated one of the most dangerous sports, and high impact injuries can be expected. Often, there are athletic trainers and physical therapists on staff at a competitive gymnastics gym in order to help gymnasts recover from injuries.
Sports Medicine Today mentioned that as the sport grows in popularity, the number of dangerous skills being performed has increased dramatically in the past few decades.
Ankles, knees, and hips in female athletes are at a high risk of injury in gymnastics due to the intensity of the sport. Elbow, wrist, and shoulder injuries are also common because of the increased level of weight-bearing in these areas during competitive gymnastics.
When deciding if you are going to put your daughter in competitive gymnastics, make sure to think about the risks. One significant preventative measure is to make sure that the gym you decide on has a proper training program in place. Strength training, cross-training, sports therapy, and an onsite physical therapist can help to prevent injuries.
A competitive, safe, and worthwhile program will offer its athletes all of these things and more to prevent injuries to athletes. Injuries can cause permanent damage and lead to more serious issues, so it is important to think about these risks when contemplating if you are going to put your daughter in competitive gymnastics.
Rewards of Competitive Gymnastics
While there are many things to consider when it comes to competitive gymnastics, there are many excellent benefits. The first positive that is likely to come from competitive dance is discipline. Even if your daughter does not make it to the Olympics, the life skills that she will learn from being a part of a high-intensity sport will follow her outside of the gym.
Dedication, discipline, determination, and perseverance are all attributes that your daughter will likely learn from competitive gymnastics. The many hours of training, tough competition, and sacrifices she will have to make will imbed these traits in her for life.
Another positive that will likely come out of competitive gymnastics is friends for life. In between all the hours of training, summer boot camps, and competitions, your daughter will probably find a close friend group with her team.
In a grueling sport like competitive gymnastics, having people to lean on will be necessary for your daughter, and she will likely find support in her peers. Many gymnastics end up with friends for life after just a few years of competitive gymnastics.
College scholarships are another possible positive outcome of competitive gymnastics. Although there is fierce competition in elite gymnastics, if your daughter finds success, many colleges will offer a considerable amount of money in scholarships for talented athletes to join their teams. If your daughter is not at an Olympic level but is still extremely talented, college gymnastics paired with national competitions may be the way to go. The opportunity to compete at the college level is an honor and one that your daughter should be happy to be a part of, depending on her skill level.
What Age should my Daughter start Competitive Gymnastics?
One question you may be asking yourself is what age I should put my daughter in competitive gymnastics? In the United States, the minimum age required to compete is six years old. If your daughter is six, you should consider the maturity level of your daughter to determine if the time commitment makes sense.
Often times, children as young as six can spend 10-15 hours a week practicing. For some, this training schedule may be too demanding. While some gymnasts start the sport significantly later, many elite athletes began recreational gymnastics when they were three and began competitive gymnastics at age 6.
If you start your daughter in competitive gymnastics at a young age, they are going to get the most years of training and practice before they reach their most serious competition years. Skill levels and range of difficulty in performances can greatly depend on how much time a child has been able to dedicate to training. If your child began at age 6, they might have a competitive advantage over a child that began the sport at age 8.
Competitive gymnastics is not for every athlete or every family. Before you enroll your daughter in a competitive program, you should spend time considering the time commitment, money, skill level, risk, and reward. There are many different positives and negatives, but it comes down to the level of commitment of your daughter and how dedicated she is to gymnastics.
For younger girls, you may need to weigh more of the pros and cons yourself, as the parent, but you should still consult your daughter and talk to her about what joining competitive gymnastics would mean.