Planning the bigger picture 2
Reality Check – Analyse yourself, your gymnasts and your environment to ensure all have the sufficient attributes to achieve your vision.
COACH: Is your knowledge and experience sufficient to achieve your goal? If not, how will you develop it? Do you have a knowledgeable mentor? Are you driven and motivated enough, and willing to make the personal sacrifices that come with increased performance levels? Are you patient and resilient enough to navigate setbacks and play the long-game?
GYMNAST: Does the gymnast have the correct physical attributes (eg. strength, flexibility, body-type)? Are they mentally suited to the goal and respond well to coaching? Are their parents willing to support them and buy-in to your vision?
ENVIRONMENT: Is your facility adequate and can you access sufficient time in the gym? Do you have access to external support (eg. physio)?
Needs Assessment – Consider where you are now, compared to where you need to be in order to realise your vision. Profile (gather and record information) your gymnasts to identify their current level, their areas of strength and their weaknesses. Using this information, define individualised key objectives and determine the areas to develop in order to achieve these
“For every minute spent in organising, an hour is earned.”
Benjamin Franklin
Having considered these factors, we can begin to build our plan. A plan can be made for any situation where you want to progress from where you are currently, to where you want to be. For example; a performance or competition outcome, to achieve a skill, for a period of time, for a training phase, for a single training session, or for a half an hour rotation on a specific apparatus. But what benefits does planning bring, and why is it so critical to achieving successful outcomes?
*Extended answers below for easy reading*
- provides motivation and structure to ensure focus remains on productive tasks, minimising distractions and wasted efforts.
- enables a choice of action that is most beneficial towards the goal.
- provides foresight of potential difficulties and how to avoid/overcome them, thus minimising their impact on progress.
- helps determine which activities are likely to have the most impact and are most beneficial towards the goal.
- helps determine how much time should be allocated to various activities, maintaining a good balance and resulting in less time wasted.
- helps determine progress made and timescale in relation to short and long-term goals.
- promotes understanding and synchronisation between coach-gymnast-parent by providing knowledge of what to expect, training updates and progress feedback.