3 Tips to Coaching Positive Gymnastics Coaches

As a mentor and business owner, it is up to club owners to maintain a healthy and positive environment. However, you must learn how to take care of what you want your business to maintain and hold standards by. You must nurture and enable your team by setting an example of how you want to uphold your club’s reputation as having positive and committed team.

By utilizing these 3 steps, you can begin to cultivate a constructive and productive team environment for your coaches, staff, and gymnasts.

1. Create Culture
   Having a club culture is about sharing a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes. Creating an established club culture will leave your team more comfortable and allow for frequent feedback from your team. Set clear goals and policies for your team, doing this will encourage further collaboration within smaller groups and boost productivity. As a club owner you should encourage your staff to come forward about concerns or areas to improve. Take this feedback and put it into a positive light for setting future success and learn from areas that may need growth.

   An important aspect to culture is to ensure every member of your team feels valued and heard, even setting aside individual check-ins with your team shows you have a mutual respect for your teams’ time and values. Another great way to create a greater sense of community is to celebrate individuality and establish a zero-tolerance policy about toxic behaviors and attitudes. Every team member in your club should feel safe by knowing their rights within the workplace and know they will be protected by those policies you have put into place.

2. Support Failure & Reward Success
   Just like in coaching an athletic team, building and growing your team is the goal, and having successes and failures is part of the game. When it comes to coaching your own staff, the biggest leap is to reward those successes and support any failures that happen. While staying positive can be a tricky slope, take a step forward and recognize the extra efforts your team goes through to make your club successful. Building the confidence of your coaches can mean boasting about each coach to clients, parents, relatives, really anyone! When they go the extra mile with their accomplishments, treat them to something like a lunch out.

   While mistakes can happen, you shouldn’t let negative energy be a huge hurdle to overcome. Provide constructive feedback and suggestions allows for the opportunity to learn something new or create different approaches for other techniques. Nothing is impossible, and if you try hard enough, there can be different ways to solve a problem. Be open to communication with your coaching team about upcoming challenges, ask how you can help and support them when facing challenges.

3. Continuous Learning Commitment
   As club owners, engagement and commitment should start with you. You are the model of your club environment and by keeping your own commitment to learning should never faulter. Building skills is an important asset for you and your team. You shouldn’t limit yourself to only certain areas, you should aim to learn more about certain areas of your club you aren’t familiar with or learn about a new approach to gymnastics you haven’t specialized in before.

   Be sure to show interest in your coaching teams’ yearly career goal. Learn how you can aid them to succeed further by allowing your coaches to learn new areas of gymnastics and share their own knowledge and experiences with you and other staff members

The best thing you can do for your club is to allow these tips to shape organically. Keeping and maintaining fulfilling careers takes time, but it should be worth the work. Creating the potential to empower your coaching teams to reach their full potential is the goal, and to inspire them with a more positive outlook will create a brighter future for you and your club. Keep in mind, if you ever find yourself facing a negative environment, reassess your club values and goals by keeping your communication lines open with your coaching team.