The following is an insightful guest blog on improving mentoring and injury management in gymnastics:
Having followed the current conversation on abuse in gymnastics, I have put together the following thoughts on the mentoring system of training.
For context, I came into gymnastics coaching a few years ago having done 4-6 hours of recreational gymnastics a week as a child in the seventies. My perception is that the abusive culture described by elite gymnasts pervades all gymnastics-like sports even at the recreational level and may arise with the general population rather than within the sporting community. In particular, the tendency to minimise children’s perception of pain and injury.
The mentoring system: the web of social obligation that binds all coaches together and excludes outsiders from the world of gymnastics
In order to qualify as a Level 1 Assistant Gymnastics Coach, you have to attend 4 training days and complete a series of assignments over a few months which ends with an examination. At the training days and the exam, you have to bring gymnasts along to work with. To guide you through the course, the assignments, and to prepare for the exam, you must find a mentor. The mentor must be a British Gymnastics coach, at Level 2 or above. The gymnasts must be able to demonstrate all the skills for Level 1. The mentor does not normally get paid for serving in this role, nor do the gymnasts get paid.
Level 1 only allows you to assist a Level 2 or higher coach. If you get a Level 2 qualification, you can run a beginner gymnastics class in a school or community hall, or even start a whole new gymnastics club. For Women’s Artistic the skills include: round-off back handspring tuck back salto on floor; upstart, cast towards handstand, and clear circle on bars; handspring vault; cartwheel 1/4 turn tuck back salto dismount from beam.
To qualify as a Level 2 Coach, the process is similar to Level 1, but the mentor must be Level 3 or above, and naturally the gymnasts must be able to demonstrate all the Level 2 skills. The mentoring role includes operational time in the gym, so the club management also has to agree. Few gymnasts can demonstrate the Level 2 skills, and those who can are all in competition teams, so the mentor has to approve the gymnasts and then ask them and their parents on behalf of the trainee coach.
All big gymnastics clubs have a continuous supply of teenagers keen to train as coaches. They can qualify as Level 0 at 14 years, Level 1 at 16, and Level 2 at 18. They seem ideal: with recent and often current experience of gymnastics training, they are familiar with progressions, supporting techniques, and terminology used by the club. They may have been attending sessions at the club for ten years or longer, so they are already well-known to the senior coaches, and may be friends with the younger gymnasts who can demonstrate for them.
Teenagers typically get not only mentoring but also, they get coach training fees which for Levels 1 and 2 Coaching, plus the required Safeguarding and First Aid comes to over £1000. Some clubs will pay these fees in exchange for a contract binding them to continue to work for the club on pay that might seem low to any outsider but which is more valuable for them as they can combine travel to both training and work, and it is a familiar environment to begin their working life in.
In this way, the mentoring system produces coaches who are legally and financially bound to be loyal to their club, and who have little or no experience of the world outside. If they have concerns about coaching behaviours or incidents that they witness, they are in an awkward position to speak out.
The main reason adults start training as coaches is when their own children ask to do gymnastics. There’s a shortage of gymnastics classes so most clubs have long waiting lists with some children staying on several lists from age 3 to age 10. Training as a coach and volunteering is often the only way to get your child into a class.
Adult coach trainees have a great deal to offer. They may be qualified teachers or educators in other sports and activities. They may have medical qualifications which afford them greater understanding of the human body. They may know about business management and employment law.
For would-be coaches coming into gymnastics from outside of the sport, competing for mentoring time with the teenagers is tough. But most of all, they have to convince the Head Coach that they will support them and their club. If you have concerns about the club or coach, you might not feel they are ideal mentors. If you speak out about your concerns on an informal level, then asking for mentorship would be somewhat awkward.
In this way, it seems to me that the mentoring system has manifold consequences:
- Firstly, it binds coaches together in a web of social obligation. Before a coach can qualify, they can’t challenge the status quo as they probably won’t get mentored. After they qualify, they owe their mentor for helping them to qualify.
- Secondly, coaching tends to be dominated by people who came into coaching as teenagers direct from competitive gymnastics, with little experience of the wider world.
- Thirdly, coaches who stay in spite of feeling uncomfortable may find themselves in situations where the harsh coaches criticise them and contradict them in front of parents and gymnasts, who may come to mistrust their abilities as a coach.
- Fourth, crucially, anyone who feels uncomfortable and asks questions leaves gymnastics and therefore is not around to question any more.
- Fifth, it makes it extraordinarily hard for anyone to open a new gymnastics club with a different ethos.
To sum up: the mentoring system excludes newcomers from the sport and binds coaches together in a way that makes informal challenges awkward, and deters formal reporting of abuse.
The minimisation of children’s’ experience of pain, injury and illness
My perception is that children’s experience of pain and illness is commonly minimised by adults in all settings, including professional medical settings with trained and qualified staff. There is a widespread tendency for adults to undiagnose children even where they have a formal clinical diagnosis, and to sneer at adults who attend to children’s signs and symptoms. It is significant that adults who minimise children’s suffering seek support from other adults in this bullying way. An adult who might be expected to have some professional understanding of injuries can provide false reassurance.
In gymnastics, even at the recreational level, the potential for children to injure themselves slightly is high. Serious injuries cannot be completely eliminated. However, where a rec gymnast has a one hour class once a week, if they are hurt or ill, they have a week to recover. If they are still unwell after a week, they tend to refuse to go to gym and the situation ends there.
In competitive gymnastics, and more so in the elite track, the potential for children to injure themselves is greater because they are trying to do more difficult and dangerous skills, and many more repetitions. Many gymnasts believe they have to limit their weight, and do so by eating food that is not only lacking in energy but also lacking a wide range of nutrients. The extraordinary high number of hours that elite gymnasts spend indoors deprived of sunlight ought to be investigated as a potential cause of vitamin D deficiency – which may lead to weakened bones. Thus, competitive level gymnasts are more likely to be injured, the injuries are likely to be worse, and the training schedule is likely to have little recovery time built in.
When a competitive gymnast is hurt or ill, their desire to continue training may be influenced by their parents and their coach. In this situation, the general tendency to dismiss children’s reports of pain reaches new levels. If a coach tells the parent the child is fine to train when they really are not, then the parent may respond by pulling the child right out of gymnastics altogether. As this may happen early in the athlete’s development – when they are seven or eight years old – by the time the athlete is nine or ten years, all the athletes left in the competitive programme are those whose parents comply with the harsh training regime. Thus training on injuries is normalised within the child-athlete’s immediate community.
Since minimisation of children’s’ experience of pain is common in the wider community, the only way to protect children is to have a robust system of checking and ensuring that child-athletes are kept healthy and safe. Education is not enough, there has to be enforcement. British Gymnastics has clear policies which if followed would keep children safe. Most parents would be astonished to learn that British Gymnastics does not have any programme of inspection to ensure that gymnastics clubs are in fact complying with the standards set out in the policies.
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