How To Help Your Child Become A Gymnast

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Hi. My name's Desmond Aspill, and I've been teaching gymnastics for 20 years, and today we're going to break down some of the difficult elements of gymnastics so that it's more approachable. With techno-gymnastics, we try to make things more approachable, building confidence, and making gymnastics fun.

Parents often come into the gym and ask me, "How do I help my child become a gymnast?" Well, this is really important. There are only so many things we can do in the gym. We can improve skills, and we can do the more dangerous things.

But you at home can do splits practice, you can do handstand practice without too much danger. There's lots of things you can do at home, but I'd say the most important thing is view the whole sport as a holistic exercise, if you like. The child needs a lot of encouragement, a lot of support.

I think the most important thing they can do at home is, yes, practice splits, yes, practice bridges, all the things that you need in the gym, handstands. The bigger skills, we can do here. But I would say praise.

Praise, when they're doing something good, even if you don't know if it is technically correct or not, "Well done, well done." And that will build their confidence so when they come into the gym, they're ready to go and charged up from all the help they've had at home. So, that's what I would say.

The more you can help at home, and support, and praise, the more we're going to get out of the children in the gym.