Great for cheer girls, awful for competitive gymnasts.
By Anonymous
Don't switch to ASI if you are a serious/natural talented gymnast. My child had been in gymnastics for just over a year at a very tough gym, no prior experience, and had already moved to level 6, winning all around at every meet, and having one of the highest AAs at state. She came from a gym that had an extremely hard coach (wonderful, but very hard), very disciplined, very competitive. We then moved to an area that was too far for the old gym, and started her at ASI. She was there for less than a year before she entirely retired the sport. The workouts consisted of a few laps, 20 or so pushups and crunches, and drills in which coaches did not watch half the time, much less try to assist the girls in bettering thier skills. Meets were not even of importance for certain levels, twice the coach didn't show for the meet until way late. They were satisfied with scores such as 5.5, whereas at the old gym, my child was expected to be nothing less than at least a 36-38 AA every meet. It was very mediocre, more of a social club than a gym, and my child quickly became out of shape and lost motivation and fire for the sport. She began losing skills and settling into mediocrity with the rest of the team. If she worked hard and threw tough skills, she was reprimanded for not staying "with the group" but if she half-tried, that was ok with them. ASI is great if your kid wants to be a cheerleader, or you want to let them run around and get energy out. but not for a strong gymnast. FYI - the "main good" team members had been doing gym since age 4, and at age 11-13, were just now on level 6 or 7. My child had been in gymnastics a total of 1.25 years, was 8 years old, and was already at thier level. Does that tell you something? If it takes you 8 years to get to level 6, you either are not a gymnast, or you don't have a decent coach. Don't let this happen to your kid. Not even encouragement from Carly Patterson (which my kid got) can clean up the damage/defeatist attitude/loss of skill done by a mediocre gym. Again, ASI is great for fun, not for competing. Everyone tried to tell me but I didn't listen. Don't let it happen to yours.
more