At the recent East Region Development Squad Jack Kelly announced the testing programme he wanted in place to track those attending squads whether as wildcards or by qualification. As he says:
The most important part of the Eastern Squad sessions is to guide coaches and gymnasts through the technical priorities which will help them to improve. The actual work on these techniques must be done in the clubs and between squad sessions. In order to monitor progress and provide quality control, three simple test drills are being used. If these were performed at squad sessions it would take up too much time, so we have made it a condition of squad membership that personal coaches test their gymnasts once a month and submit the results to Dave Kingaby on the sheet provided. This process should only take about ten minutes per gymnast per month during club time. The essential qualities measured in these tests are balance, control, height an,d therefore, time of flight. As the squad work develops, other tests will be introduced and you should see this process as a real opportunity for your gymnasts to progress.
An Excel spreadsheet has been produced to enable this tracking to take place and full instructions for its’ use are contained within it. It can be downloaded by clicking on the link below or by contacting Dave by email – [antibot mailto=”[email protected]”].
The three tests to be conducted are:
- ’10-Bounce Time’ – 10 straight jumps timed from a ‘flying start’ when the gymnast is bouncing to their highest controllable ability and says they are ready;
- ’30-Bounce Time’ – 30 straight jumps timed from a completely dead bed with gymnast depressing the bed to start at the same time as the coach depresses the stop-watch; and
- ‘Drill’ – conducted as the 10-Bounce Time but the first 9 bounces are Tuck, Straddle, Pike repeated 3 times followed by a straight jump.
Any clubs wishing to make use of this internally are welcome to have an unlocked copy of the recording sheet as well by asking Dave.
Last Updated on February 13, 2013 by dave
