The ‘Fine Line’ Between Tough Coaching and Abuse

Has it ever occurred to you that our top gymnasts have succeeded DESPITE the way they have been coached and not because of it?

A few months ago, I noticed this tweet from a senior sports psychology lecturer:

I was astonished. Here she was, a grown, highly-educated adult, yet her conditioned beliefs, moulded by an abusive and manipulative coach, who’d persuaded the child she had been that she was nothing without her coach, were still writ large on her psyche. I responded…

Her response was equally surprising

And it seems that a lot of perspectives need changing. Our current gymnastics system doesn’t so much make athletes, as it both mentally and physically breaks them. Those who survive this brutalised last-man-standing competition may be viewed as ‘the strong ones’, but they are often equally damaged or arguably even more so, than the ‘too weak’ athletes who never made it (See Ellis O’Reilly’s tragic story for just one example).

While the technical competence of coaches has arguably improved in recent decades, the understanding of wider aspects of coaching remains largely mired in an uneducated, uninformed past. Thus, overtraining and poor injury management (as short-term goals are prioritised over long-term health and welfare) result in the physical breaking of our child athletes, while their mental health is equally neglected. They, young children, are conditioned, even brutalised, to become compliant, deferential to an almost cult-like degree, and docile. The ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ school of ‘mental-strength development’ appears to dominate. Those who are born with great resilience, determination and discipline will survive longer, but these talents are certainly not developed by their training, on the contrary, gymnasts survive the training because of these traits. The longer you last in the sport the more mentally strong you are thought to be. However, with approximately 10 or more years of intensive training to endure, the vast majority of talented children will break long before the ‘finish line’.

Unfortunately, such a system may appear to work in some countries in that they consistently ‘produce’ world-class athletes.  The hidden costs however, are high and terrible. In relatively impoverished and/or oppressive countries, such as the old Eastern Bloc or China, this may be sustainable as there is a never-ending supply of children, or fodder, for the system. It doesn’t matter how many they break along the way. Some may do it for the ‘glory of the motherland’ but many others may not have the choice. In America, the ‘land of the free’, we cannot point to oppression but, a sports-and-success obsessed culture combined with the real potential of financial reward, university scholarships and celebrity may provide some motivation, but there too, the system is fed by a huge population.

What then of smaller countries? Let’s consider what has happened in Australia. Jane Allen, BG’s current CEO, was Gymnastics Australia’s CEO from 1997 to 2010 alongside Karolyi-inspired Head Coach, Peggy Liddick (1996 to 2016). While there was arguably some initial success, it is sad to say that many would now describe Australia’s elite pathway as largely broken. In 2016, Australia failed to qualify a team for the Olympics for the first time in 30 years. There simply isn’t the quantity of children/parents able or willing to endure the abuse thought necessary to achieve success. Not enough are surviving the process. #GymnastAllianceAus

While we may feel that British Gymnastics is more successful, it is stark how few athletes we have at the top level and how fragile the top tier appears to be. British Gymnastics has approximately 360,000 members (approximately 100,000 more than Gymnastics Australia) and according to independent research there are an astonishing 1.1 million people participating in gymnastics each month. How is it then that we are left with so few at the top? The attrition rate in gymnastics is eyewatering. The true gym fans among you will be able to remember just too many young gymnasts, British champions among them, many touted as future Olympic hopes, who have been lost, like so much chaff, over the years. When will we have the open and honest conversation to decide whether the toll, thousands of children left with potentially lifelong physical and emotional damage, is worth the “success”?

The saddest thing of all is that this simply isn’t necessary. The hard work and dedication are (although not at such a young age as now), but the abuse and brutality are not. We can have success another way.

The first thing to understand is that no matter how many times you hear it asserted, there just isn’t a ‘fine line’ between “tough” coaching and abuse. The idea that positive and abusive coaching are two ends of the same continuum is entirely false. Proponents of this idea are often those who pride themselves on their skill at staying just the right side, they say, of the abuse line, almost as if they were performing a high-wire act between the two. Inevitably they will see themselves as better than another coach whom they might label as abusive. Are they right? It depends. Can the man who beats his wife only a few times a week consider himself better that the neighbour who beats his wife every day?

Those coaches who claim that their success is due to their skill at remaining just the ‘right’ side are simply drawing their own line in the sand as to how much of what we would call abuse they deem necessary to achieve their goals.

Consider an example given by sports psychologist Misia Gervis in the Telegraph recently. She explained:

“I had a masters student who did her research working with a gymnastics coach over a period of a couple of months, trying to retrain and re-educate her,” … “Mid-way through the programme, what was so sad was the coach said, ‘I now understand what I shouldn’t say, but I don’t know what I should say’.

As you can see, when you strip away the abuse you are left with nothing. You are not moving closer to positive coaching; you are left with nothing. Positive coaching involves a completely different mindset, one that actively builds the mental strength of the athlete and values their long-term health and welfare.  Positive coaching is also tough and exacting, it must be to achieve world-class success, but it never becomes abusive. Unfortunately, abuse has become so normalised in gymnastics that many within BG seem no longer able to recognise it for what it is. Their understanding is so distorted that they look upon a docile, compliant young gymnast doing whatever is demanded of his or her coach, no matter how painful or frightening, as a ‘beautiful relationship’.

Gervis explained further:

“What that (the example above) shows me is that when behaviour is normalised, when you have lived it and it is reinforced constantly, who is teaching you a different way to do it? Coaches have to understand the emotional impact and the psychological vulnerability they create by constantly humiliating people or ignoring them.”

As reporter Molly McElwee explains:

Gervis says for this cultural shift to happen, coaches at the top level must be the first to receive a “re-education”, including how to develop positive gymnast-coach relationships and understanding the perils of things like forced physical exertion, where gymnasts are punished through extreme physical activity.

“If I was in charge, I would mandate all of those elite coaches first of all go on a positive coaching and relearning course. I’d start there, because they’re often the coaches coaching the next generation of coaches. You look around the people who are the pillars of the sport, the experts, they can’t teach that because they don’t know it. The people who are in it, they replicate [behaviours] and nobody is challenging that, because they want the medals. And at what price? The price we’re paying is these damaged kids, and for some of them that will be long-lasting.”

We have a long way to go before this is achieved but let’s start by having an open and honest discussion. Why is it that we (or the NGB that we should be able to trust) accept abuse in gymnastics that was outlawed in our schools decades ago? This must change. Let us imagine a future where the talent we are now losing is retained and developed to its full potential. It takes both genetics and good coaching to make a great athlete, they are both born AND made. So, just think what we might achieve if we truly nurtured what nature provided…