Just seeing this! I cannot thank you enough! We much change this culture before the cycle continues to break these young girls! Bela and Marta should be jailed along with many many other coaches who would care less about these kids. It breaks my heart!
I've seen a lot of girls broken by gymnastics, and even the ones who weren't (me, included) always say "gymnastics is an amazing sport... 'but'....". I really hope that "but" goes away someday. I'm so glad I found your website and have been following your work these past years. Great film.
Greatly appreciate you watching and your comments! Yes the sport is absolutely incredible, but there is so much work that needs to be done to evolve it into a much different version that helps produce high performing, heathy, and happy athletes as well as coaches, parents, medial providers, support staff, etc 🙏
Thank you so much for this awesome short film! I was so lucky to have coaches that actively taught me to advocate for myself and my safety and it was a life lesson just as important as the discipline, work ethic and willingness to fail and try again. I want more gymnasts to have that experience and to have healthy careers and lives based on that.
No problem, happy to share! It’s so great to hear you had an awesome experience and supportive coaches. There are so many fantastic people out there doing the hard work to help kids develop and we need to make sure we praise them and raise them up in the sport so their voice can be heard and example can be followed 🙏
I responded to one of your videos yesterday talking about eating disorders, I shared my struggle with having one, this video explains how I got one. Please keep making and posting these, I really do hope the sport changes to being something better, healthier and more productive for girls and women
Thanks for sharing Kat. I am so sorry to hear about your struggle with an ED. I hope you're doing well now. I am so happy our films are resonating with you. We will be sure to continue making them!
All your work has been important but your *bravery* and dedication - along with the coaches and athletes who have been speaking up - to shine a bright spotlight on gymnastics’ biggest challenge: breaking childrens’ bodies and spirits for no reason other than reputation, ego, money, and ignorance. THANK YOU!
I absolutely loved it! I do envision a near future of (any) sports where the athlete is positively empowered to do better instead of pushed, defied, bullied or forced to fit into a twisted pattern. Respect 👏
@@laanatomista3962 Thank you so much! I agree this vision of the future is definitely coming and we can all work collaboratively to help it get here faster 🙏
Thanks so much for the kind words Angie! We hope that it can help foster some important conversations and inspire people to make small changes in their every day life to improve their communities 🙏
Thank you for this video. As a parent of a gymnast it is encouraging to see there is someone out there trying to make changes in this sport. My question is, what can a parent do? I will certainly share this video with my daughter’s gym, but what else came be done now. The word is out that things need to change. Now we need to take action. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you so much and great question! My answer would be starting with radically open communication, and also education. Talk more with coaches, gym owners, and other support staff to understand their point of view, what they are struggling with, your point of view and what you are struggling with, and how as a collaborative team you can improve the experience for all the athletes in the gym. Also, unconditionally support and encourage your son/daughter in their gymnastics helping to develop a holistic human and don’t get wrapped up in the actual gymnastics side of things. Supporting athlete and coach (pending they are acting with a sound moral compass) without overstepping into the actual technical coaching side is massively impactful for both athletes/coaches. Then from there, become educated on how to solve those problems and brainstorm constructive solutions. That way, everyone feels like they are listen to, and their problems are being addressed. That serves for the best foundation!
Awesome film. It would be great to offer solutions and ideas for changing gym culture. As a coach (for over 35 years) I see parents with unrealistic expectations, gymnasts who are present, but unmotivated, nagging aches snd pains that seem to be excuses for avoiding training on certain events, some coaches don’t listen to kids who are in pain, etc. I would love to see some physics therapy for keeping joints healthy. I notice a whole lot of heel pain, shin splints, knee pain, hip flexors, wrists, hands, elbows...with that, some kids won’t condition properly.
Thanks for watching and the kind words! We have some more content on other videos or our podcast for ways to implement practical solutions if you would like! Check out The SHIFT Show on iTunes and Spotify 👍
Very strong point about "over developing" pre-pubescent girls and burning out / destroying juniors. It's the money and, as we've grown up, elite athletes (who can power through what is correctly termed abuse) are the models for both athletes and athletes' parents. Part of our discussion has to be about backing off the hyper-competitive "gym mom." That's a problem in all youth sports as it's become commercial and parent-driven.
@John Sweeney "The hyper-competitive 'gym mom.'" The fact that this comment only has one like. That needs to be one of the biggest topics of conversation to be had, but what it would take to have it. Because that kind of behaviour is not only accepted its virtually praised. Look at this example - ua-cam.com/video/EaUQ3CnmuhQ/v-deo.html it is outwardly stated that the parents are more competitive at "that age," and the age is 12. Why are parents competing with each other through their children? Not only are attitudes like that literally turns gyms into battle grounds for localised _cold wars_ whereby _weak_ parents pull the children out when they can see that the environment is (or becoming) toxic and/or abusive. For me it is one of the core issues at the heart of the Nassar scandal, because when a parent is more concerned about their own status than they're child's wellbeing they'll let seemingly let anything happen.
I personally believe it's time to move elite programs to age 14 and NCAA recruiting to age 17. With these simple changes, you will see the peaking done at the time of an Olympics and NCAA people not signing so early that majors or even schools weren't on the radar as yet.
That is definitely an interesting idea! I think it would have to come with a lot of different changes made around the entire progressional system leading up to it, as well as the need for coaching / parent / college buy in. Thanks for the comment and ideas though!
@@shiftmovement Not really a lot of changes - just add in a 12-13-year-old pre-elite level using the same scoring system as the elite program and run on the level 10 competition schedules. Also, the NL cup could draw from these athletes versus level 10s. As to the NCAA, they could change the recruiting rules themselves and say off-limits until athletes reach their 17th birthday or high school graduation year.
So the main training difference would be to stop pushing young athletes to be at an elite level? That actually makes a lot of sense. This is such an important topic!
All my life up until I saw this video I’ve been so insecure about the fact that I could of started gymnastics when I was 5. It feels like some of us are just like being thrown away because of our age. If we are too old we can’t make it to elite if we are young naive and skinny you will succeed
I'm so sorry to hear about your experiences! Gymnastics is for anyone, at any age. There is no reason to force athletes into a specific expectation. I wish you nothing but the best!
Can you make a video about rhythmic? Which literally destroys people... I told a coach that her methods were dangerous and outdated and I spent a week preparing for this conversation so I could do it in the nicest way possible. I even talked to 4 doctors about it to make sure. She told me to never come back to the gym.
I'm so sorry to hear about that, it must be extremely frustrating and hard. I can definitely look into finding some ways to develop more content around rhythmic culture change 🙏
@@shiftmovement Thank you - Rhythmic is getting more popular and I worry about all of the little girls copying the older ones. The core issues that I know of are: destructive & outdated stretching (stretching ligaments/joints), over training leading to over use injuries (do x skill 1,000 times in a row), and another big problem is the "rhythmic look" which is extreme thinness. It is so sad hearing 6 - 7 year olds asking about dieting over and over again. From my experience, it seems like most coaches have no education and just repeat what was done to them as an athlete. Here's a weird part: coaches require you to get massive over splits - however the code of points only requires splits of 180 degrees - and you don't get extra points for bigger splits - so... why are we doing this to kids? Sorry for the rant I just love the sport so much and had no idea how dark it was. Talk to Jessica Howard (USA) - she will give you the tea!
Was the coach East European? Here in San Diego every rhythmic gymnastics program is headed by a coach from Eastern Europe primarily Russia.... and they often bring the mentality of the old Soviet Bloc programs of absolute control of the program, often like a dictatorship of sorts. You have to break through that type of mindset or you will go nowhere with them... this is a problem in other forms of gymnastics as well unfortunately. They bring a lot of what was wrong with the programs of those days and very little of what was right ie sports scientists, sports psychologists, recovery modalities, courses in pedagogy etc. Good luck...
@@ExProforlife Yes! She was! From my experience most programs in the USA seem to be lead by someone from Eastern Europe. This is just my experience though and may not be accurate. To be fair, the other coach - an American - agreed with her on everything and even made fun of me when I said that smashing my toes into the hard wood floor (as I was instructed to do!) hurt. What gets me is the exercises coaches make their athletes do - hours and hours of stuff that they make up. It's very creative but most of it doesn't have any correlation with actual skills. Like there is no "we are doing x to improve y". Very strange! But like you said - they just don't have the knowledge of sports science, pedagogy, etc. Any tips for "breaking through the mindset"?
@@yumyumoryuck8675 it's difficult to break the mindset that has, for lack of a better term, been indoctrinated into their way of thinking. Unfortunately a lot of Western coaches have taken their cues from the Eastern European coaches based upon their success in gymnastics, and often just having that Eastern European name draws parents to the gym because of those successes.. and because they haven't been shown anything else that would work. This is the challenge that we face when trying to motivate coaches to try something different, since as Dave has said the culture is geared towards success of the coaches rather than the health and success of the gymnasts themselves. In all honesty much of the change has to come from USAG or whatever organization represents the athletes in the future... typically those types of coaches will not listen to anything that does not have the term gymnastics attached to it... Therefore your best bet is to find position statements and best practices from the USAG educational site...FIG also have some information as well. You can try copying those and giving them to the coach... unfortunately many of these coaches do not believe they need to learn anything more than what they already know so right there that is a challenge. Another avenue you could take is to bring a copy of position stands on training youth athletes.. in particular the IOC's position stand published a few years ago. I would also make use of some of SHIFT's articles as well.. but there again the coach has to be at least somewhat open to new information. Hope that helps!
1.) American Gymnastics didn't exist before the karolyi's !!! So can be be a little respectful !! 2.) Mad respect to #Simone & #Raisman, but #Aliya_Mustafina is the #Queen of #Gymnastics !! Why ? Because she is #Smaller/#Lighter & no matter how Simone & Raisman were strong, powerful & they could perform the most complicated skills, they can never, ever, compete with the aesthetic appeal of a small figure gymnast like #Aliya_Mustafina !!
@Omar AA *1 -* American Gymanstics absolutely existed before the Karolyis. Cathy Rigby, Kathy Johnson, Marcia Frederick all won medals before and/or without the Karolyis' training. Jackie Fie was an American gymnast in the 50s who then ascended to becoming president of the Women's Technical Committee 1992 (and in my opinion was one of the best). Not to mention the fact that even before the Karolyis, the U.S. women's team ranked 6th at World and Olympic Championships on average, making them a good team. *2 -* Simone Biles is 4"8/142cm, Aly Raisman is 5"1/157cm and Aliya Mustafina is 5"4/162cm making her 1inch/2.5cm shorter than Svetlana Khorkina and the tallest out of the three. Not only that, due to her height she was probably heavier than Biles and Raisman, and although she was not muscular, she did have an atheltic physique; much like Anna Pavlova and Ksenia Afanasyeva. Mustafina was definitely the most complete gymnast of the three, boasting a much wider repertoire of connections and skills, and a much more diverse competitive history. So for those reasons I would consider her the best out of Raisman, Biles and herself. But she was far from the petite Russian gymnast of yesteryear that you are trying to make her out to be.
@@MD-722 That's crazy honestly I believe you are right, I just made the observation from the muscular difference between Biles, Raisman & Mustafina. I just love watching Aliya Mustafina move more than any other gymnast to be fair.
Just seeing this! I cannot thank you enough! We much change this culture before the cycle continues to break these young girls! Bela and Marta should be jailed along with many many other coaches who would care less about these kids. It breaks my heart!
No problem, we are happy to share and glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for watching!
I've seen a lot of girls broken by gymnastics, and even the ones who weren't (me, included) always say "gymnastics is an amazing sport... 'but'....". I really hope that "but" goes away someday. I'm so glad I found your website and have been following your work these past years. Great film.
Greatly appreciate you watching and your comments!
Yes the sport is absolutely incredible, but there is so much work that needs to be done to evolve it into a much different version that helps produce high performing, heathy, and happy athletes as well as coaches, parents, medial providers, support staff, etc 🙏
Thank you so much for this awesome short film! I was so lucky to have coaches that actively taught me to advocate for myself and my safety and it was a life lesson just as important as the discipline, work ethic and willingness to fail and try again. I want more gymnasts to have that experience and to have healthy careers and lives based on that.
No problem, happy to share! It’s so great to hear you had an awesome experience and supportive coaches.
There are so many fantastic people out there doing the hard work to help kids develop and we need to make sure we praise them and raise them up in the sport so their voice can be heard and example can be followed 🙏
I responded to one of your videos yesterday talking about eating disorders, I shared my struggle with having one, this video explains how I got one. Please keep making and posting these, I really do hope the sport changes to being something better, healthier and more productive for girls and women
Thanks for sharing Kat. I am so sorry to hear about your struggle with an ED. I hope you're doing well now. I am so happy our films are resonating with you. We will be sure to continue making them!
This is a very powerful and important message that needs to be shared...thank you for making this!
Thank you for watching and for the kind words! greatly appreciate it 🙏
All your work has been important but your *bravery* and dedication - along with the coaches and athletes who have been speaking up - to shine a bright spotlight on gymnastics’ biggest challenge: breaking childrens’ bodies and spirits for no reason other than reputation, ego, money, and ignorance. THANK YOU!
Appreciate the support Chris and thanks so much for watching!
Thank you so much for watching! Please leave some comments because we would love to hear your thoughts.
I absolutely loved it! I do envision a near future of (any) sports where the athlete is positively empowered to do better instead of pushed, defied, bullied or forced to fit into a twisted pattern. Respect 👏
@@laanatomista3962 Thank you so much! I agree this vision of the future is definitely coming and we can all work collaboratively to help it get here faster 🙏
Thank you for shining a light on this topic. I hope your excellent video goes viral.
Thanks so much for the kind words Angie! We hope that it can help foster some important conversations and inspire people to make small changes in their every day life to improve their communities 🙏
Excellent! In a short 13 minutes, this film summed up so much that can be changed to make this sport a more positive experience for so many!♥️
Thank you so much for watching and for the kind words! 🙏🙏
Thank you for this video. As a parent of a gymnast it is encouraging to see there is someone out there trying to make changes in this sport. My question is, what can a parent do? I will certainly share this video with my daughter’s gym, but what else came be done now. The word is out that things need to change. Now we need to take action. I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you so much and great question! My answer would be starting with radically open communication, and also education.
Talk more with coaches, gym owners, and other support staff to understand their point of view, what they are struggling with, your point of view and what you are struggling with, and how as a collaborative team you can improve the experience for all the athletes in the gym.
Also, unconditionally support and encourage your son/daughter in their gymnastics helping to develop a holistic human and don’t get wrapped up in the actual gymnastics side of things. Supporting athlete and coach (pending they are acting with a sound moral compass) without overstepping into the actual technical coaching side is massively impactful for both athletes/coaches.
Then from there, become educated on how to solve those problems and brainstorm constructive solutions. That way, everyone feels like they are listen to, and their problems are being addressed. That serves for the best foundation!
Awesome film. It would be great to offer solutions and ideas for changing gym culture. As a coach (for over 35 years) I see parents with unrealistic expectations, gymnasts who are present, but unmotivated, nagging aches snd pains that seem to be excuses for avoiding training on certain events, some coaches don’t listen to kids who are in pain, etc. I would love to see some physics therapy for keeping joints healthy. I notice a whole lot of heel pain, shin splints, knee pain, hip flexors, wrists, hands, elbows...with that, some kids won’t condition properly.
Thanks for watching and the kind words! We have some more content on other videos or our podcast for ways to implement practical solutions if you would like! Check out The SHIFT Show on iTunes and Spotify 👍
Excellent first movie S. I look forward to seeing more.
Thank you Thomas! We appreciate the kind words and are excited to continue launching projects 🙏
Very strong point about "over developing" pre-pubescent girls and burning out / destroying juniors. It's the money and, as we've grown up, elite athletes (who can power through what is correctly termed abuse) are the models for both athletes and athletes' parents. Part of our discussion has to be about backing off the hyper-competitive "gym mom." That's a problem in all youth sports as it's become commercial and parent-driven.
I’ll really good points your John, and thank you so much for listening and for sharing!
@John Sweeney "The hyper-competitive 'gym mom.'" The fact that this comment only has one like. That needs to be one of the biggest topics of conversation to be had, but what it would take to have it. Because that kind of behaviour is not only accepted its virtually praised. Look at this example - ua-cam.com/video/EaUQ3CnmuhQ/v-deo.html it is outwardly stated that the parents are more competitive at "that age," and the age is 12. Why are parents competing with each other through their children?
Not only are attitudes like that literally turns gyms into battle grounds for localised _cold wars_ whereby _weak_ parents pull the children out when they can see that the environment is (or becoming) toxic and/or abusive. For me it is one of the core issues at the heart of the Nassar scandal, because when a parent is more concerned about their own status than they're child's wellbeing they'll let seemingly let anything happen.
Great video and an important topic. Lots of interesting ideas presented in this film.
Thank you so much Joy! We appreciate you watching 🙏
Exited to watch!
Thank you! We can't wait to share! 🙏
Super stoked for this!
Thank you so much, and I hope you enjoy! Would love to hear your thoughts 🙏
I personally believe it's time to move elite programs to age 14 and NCAA recruiting to age 17. With these simple changes, you will see the peaking done at the time of an Olympics and NCAA people not signing so early that majors or even schools weren't on the radar as yet.
That is definitely an interesting idea! I think it would have to come with a lot of different changes made around the entire progressional system leading up to it, as well as the need for coaching / parent / college buy in. Thanks for the comment and ideas though!
@@shiftmovement Not really a lot of changes - just add in a 12-13-year-old pre-elite level using the same scoring system as the elite program and run on the level 10 competition schedules. Also, the NL cup could draw from these athletes versus level 10s. As to the NCAA, they could change the recruiting rules themselves and say off-limits until athletes reach their 17th birthday or high school graduation year.
Omg this is gonna be dope i'm so excited!
Thank you! We are so excited to launch it 😃
im so exited and question how long will the film be
It's a short film, so about 14 minutes or so!
So the main training difference would be to stop pushing young athletes to be at an elite level? That actually makes a lot of sense. This is such an important topic!
Thank you so much for watching Evan!
Amazing!
Thanks so much Emily! 🙏🙏
All my life up until I saw this video I’ve been so insecure about the fact that I could of started gymnastics when I was 5. It feels like some of us are just like being thrown away because of our age. If we are too old we can’t make it to elite if we are young naive and skinny you will succeed
I'm so sorry to hear about your experiences! Gymnastics is for anyone, at any age. There is no reason to force athletes into a specific expectation. I wish you nothing but the best!
Can you make a video about rhythmic? Which literally destroys people... I told a coach that her methods were dangerous and outdated and I spent a week preparing for this conversation so I could do it in the nicest way possible. I even talked to 4 doctors about it to make sure. She told me to never come back to the gym.
I'm so sorry to hear about that, it must be extremely frustrating and hard. I can definitely look into finding some ways to develop more content around rhythmic culture change 🙏
@@shiftmovement Thank you - Rhythmic is getting more popular and I worry about all of the little girls copying the older ones. The core issues that I know of are: destructive & outdated stretching (stretching ligaments/joints), over training leading to over use injuries (do x skill 1,000 times in a row), and another big problem is the "rhythmic look" which is extreme thinness. It is so sad hearing 6 - 7 year olds asking about dieting over and over again. From my experience, it seems like most coaches have no education and just repeat what was done to them as an athlete. Here's a weird part: coaches require you to get massive over splits - however the code of points only requires splits of 180 degrees - and you don't get extra points for bigger splits - so... why are we doing this to kids? Sorry for the rant I just love the sport so much and had no idea how dark it was. Talk to Jessica Howard (USA) - she will give you the tea!
Was the coach East European? Here in San Diego every rhythmic gymnastics program is headed by a coach from Eastern Europe primarily Russia.... and they often bring the mentality of the old Soviet Bloc programs of absolute control of the program, often like a dictatorship of sorts. You have to break through that type of mindset or you will go nowhere with them... this is a problem in other forms of gymnastics as well unfortunately. They bring a lot of what was wrong with the programs of those days and very little of what was right ie sports scientists, sports psychologists, recovery modalities, courses in pedagogy etc. Good luck...
@@ExProforlife Yes! She was! From my experience most programs in the USA seem to be lead by someone from Eastern Europe. This is just my experience though and may not be accurate. To be fair, the other coach - an American - agreed with her on everything and even made fun of me when I said that smashing my toes into the hard wood floor (as I was instructed to do!) hurt. What gets me is the exercises coaches make their athletes do - hours and hours of stuff that they make up. It's very creative but most of it doesn't have any correlation with actual skills. Like there is no "we are doing x to improve y". Very strange! But like you said - they just don't have the knowledge of sports science, pedagogy, etc. Any tips for "breaking through the mindset"?
@@yumyumoryuck8675 it's difficult to break the mindset that has, for lack of a better term, been indoctrinated into their way of thinking. Unfortunately a lot of Western coaches have taken their cues from the Eastern European coaches based upon their success in gymnastics, and often just having that Eastern European name draws parents to the gym because of those successes.. and because they haven't been shown anything else that would work. This is the challenge that we face when trying to motivate coaches to try something different, since as Dave has said the culture is geared towards success of the coaches rather than the health and success of the gymnasts themselves. In all honesty much of the change has to come from USAG or whatever organization represents the athletes in the future... typically those types of coaches will not listen to anything that does not have the term gymnastics attached to it... Therefore your best bet is to find position statements and best practices from the USAG educational site...FIG also have some information as well. You can try copying those and giving them to the coach... unfortunately many of these coaches do not believe they need to learn anything more than what they already know so right there that is a challenge. Another avenue you could take is to bring a copy of position stands on training youth athletes.. in particular the IOC's position stand published a few years ago. I would also make use of some of SHIFT's articles as well.. but there again the coach has to be at least somewhat open to new information. Hope that helps!
1.) American Gymnastics didn't exist before the karolyi's !!! So can be be a little respectful !!
2.) Mad respect to #Simone & #Raisman, but #Aliya_Mustafina is the #Queen of #Gymnastics !! Why ? Because she is #Smaller/#Lighter & no matter how Simone & Raisman were strong, powerful & they could perform the most complicated skills, they can never, ever, compete with the aesthetic appeal of a small figure gymnast like #Aliya_Mustafina !!
@Omar AA *1 -* American Gymanstics absolutely existed before the Karolyis. Cathy Rigby, Kathy Johnson, Marcia Frederick all won medals before and/or without the Karolyis' training. Jackie Fie was an American gymnast in the 50s who then ascended to becoming president of the Women's Technical Committee 1992 (and in my opinion was one of the best). Not to mention the fact that even before the Karolyis, the U.S. women's team ranked 6th at World and Olympic Championships on average, making them a good team.
*2 -* Simone Biles is 4"8/142cm, Aly Raisman is 5"1/157cm and Aliya Mustafina is 5"4/162cm making her 1inch/2.5cm shorter than Svetlana Khorkina and the tallest out of the three. Not only that, due to her height she was probably heavier than Biles and Raisman, and although she was not muscular, she did have an atheltic physique; much like Anna Pavlova and Ksenia Afanasyeva.
Mustafina was definitely the most complete gymnast of the three, boasting a much wider repertoire of connections and skills, and a much more diverse competitive history. So for those reasons I would consider her the best out of Raisman, Biles and herself. But she was far from the petite Russian gymnast of yesteryear that you are trying to make her out to be.
@@MD-722 That's crazy honestly I believe you are right, I just made the observation from the muscular difference between Biles, Raisman & Mustafina. I just love watching Aliya Mustafina move more than any other gymnast to be fair.