Make Them Role Models In Your Gym
There is little to nothing done to even let the other aspiring gymnasts or potential future team parents within the local gym know about the successes of their potential role models.

Winners?
And all of this is talking only about those gymnasts who do win.  What about the 117 gymnasts in the session who didn’t “win”.

Don’t Understand Why They Quit?
It never fails to amaze us how coaches can yell at their gymnasts, do nothing but point out their faults, pressure them unmercifully before competitions, fail to reinforce them after competitions year after year and then not understand a gymnast’s decision to quit the sport.

Lack of Reinforcement
Coaches who don’t take the time to point out at every opportunity to individual gymnasts, the team, parents, the gym, other gym parents and gymnasts and the media, the successes of their gymnasts are causing their athletes to go into reinforcement-debt.

Reward With Awards
The sport, with its current competition structure, is in reinforcement-debt anyway.  Any owner, coach or parent who doesn’t take the time or effort to reinforce their gymnasts along the way should not be surprised about the high rate of turnover in the sport and the paucity of gymnasts who continue the sport past puberty, much less until International competition age or college scholarship age.

Solutions – get creative or stay tuned.

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