Being a good gymnast, and a good teacher are two entirely different things. The lady who taught me gymnastics never even did a cartwheel, yet was so amazing and good at teaching that she did it for 50 years.
Being a good gymnastics teacher is a lot like being a good anything teacher, besides the fact that unlike most other sports, hobbies, etc. you have to physically help your students do everything, for a very long time. Unfortunately teaching gymnastics takes a lot more knowledge than taking it, and therefore some teachers who are really gymnasts find themselves at a loss for how to teach someone how to do something. If you can only tell someone to point their toes and try harder it won't ever fix the real problem. But then again, some people think that's better than saying "I don't know what you are doing wrong". I found myself in this dilemma today when I was trying to teach Zach and Jamar Chest-roll-quarter-turn-nip-ups. I can do them myself, but I was at a complete loss as to how to explain to Jamar the simplest part of the whole thing: get on your knees, push your tummy out, and roll down your legs and stomach to your shoulders, but he just didn't get it. Every time, he stuck his butt in the air and neither his legs, nor his stomach ever touched the ground. These sorts of things happen to me far less frequently than they used to when I started teaching, but it bugs me that they still do. My gymnastics articulation is not good enough to be able to explain everything. Maybe someday it will be, but right now I have a long way to go. Especially if I ever start teaching the apparatus. ::becomes frightened::
2 comments:
Hm... I'm not entirely sure how that was a response because, besides being about gymnastics, I don't see how it was related. But perhaps we can discuss this without keyboards sometime.
Well, in essense, I went off on the first ten sentances or so.
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