This is one part of training that is too often neglected, forgotten or avoided. It takes time and is often uncomfortable... yett should never be painful. Of course I am talking about stretching!

I feel like there are 3 types of people when it comes to stretching and flexibility training: Person 1. Loves it! Person 2. It's Ok I guess Person 3. Really REALLY doesn't like it.

We all have different natural ranges of movement, which is going to heavily impact on this outcome. The problem is that no matter what your opinion on stretching is, your attitude could be effecting your likely hood of injury. 

If you are naturally very flexible and find stretching easy, there is a chance you could over stretch and injure yourself because you don't feel the stretching sensation like somebody else might. Alternatively if you truly dislike stretching you could be susceptible to injury through lack of stretching, lazy stretching or through a forced/strained range of movement. 

The most common injury points I have witnessed occur through the hips or hip flexor region, back of the legs through the hamstring or sciatic nerve or also commonly through the shoulder in one of the many rotator cuff muscles.

A strain will occur if a muscle, tendon or ligament is torn. This could occur from holding a stretch position for too long, progressing too quickly, inadequate positioning while in the stretch or bouncing in a stretch.

There are 2 main types of stretching. Passive Stretching which involves holding a position over a long period of time with zero or limited movement. Active or Dynamic Stretching which involves a large range of movement through out a stretch (think lunge walks or needle kicks). Both have their benefits, but doing one completely on it's own in a training schedule will only get you so far!

I'm going to outline a very basic stretching routine structure for you all:

• 5-10 minutes of cardiovascular exercise - This is essential to warm up the muscles in the body, preparing it for the stretching to come. Stretching cold muscles is a one stop shop to injury town... so best to avoid that!
• 2-5 minutes of Range of Movement exercises - This is best to work more than one body part at a time. For example, walking lunges and making large arm circles above your head. Caterpillar walks, bear walks etc.
• 2-3 minutes for articulation - This is important for activating all the joints. If you skip this, you will have nice warm muscles surrounding the joints, but still have stiff or "sleepy" vertebrae. All of these should be very slow and controlled. Think about standing and slowly rolling down through your spine until you can touch the floor/reversing this movement. Some other good ones are head circles, shoulder rolls, ankle and wrist circles, scrunching and spreading your fingers and your toes etc.
• 5-10 minutes full body stretches - I like to work from the top down, this way its harder to miss a muscle group. So for example you can start with shoulder/forearm stretches, then back stretches eg. twisting side to side or extension and retraction of the spine. Then moving down to hip stretches/hip flexors eg. hip circles, deep lunges, triangle pose stretch etc. Move down to abductor/hamstring/sciatic nerve/calve stretches and lastly finishing off with ankles and wrist stretches.
• 5 minutes of GOAL stretches - Here's the thing, if you have a flexibility goal you need to make time to work on it and it needs to be consistent. If  you really want to progress in your splits, now is the time! If you want to open up your shoulders and upper back, do some bridges or wall shoulder stretches. If you spend the time working on these when your body is the most prepared it will be a lot easier and a lot safer!
  
  
  

Alternatively if you really can't make the time to stretch outside of your gymnastics class you could try these:
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- Having a light stretch after getting out of a hot shower as the water will of raised your muscles temperature which will make it more receptive to stretching.
- Practicing a few stretches daily each time you wake up from bed. Don't expect to be doing walk overs first thing in the morning, but practicing simple stretches and joint articulation will really benefit you and the rest of your day. 


Stretching is super important to maintain your over all health whether you partake in gymnastics or not. However if you partake in gymnastics it should be a priority of yours to not only maintain but progress your skills!

Do you have any stretching goals for 2019? Share them with us, we would love to know!

Signing off for now,
Coach Maygan.

 We all know that gymnastics is great, and we love it! We also know that it teaches lots of physical skills to all those involved. A gymnast who has discovered new movement patterns, pathways and more can leave the gym feeling like they have learnt something. But what about the more important stuff? The skills that will stay with you for the rest of your life? By that I don't mean can  you still put your foot on your head in 30 years time. All though that would be incredibly impressive.

I'm talking about those fantastic SKILLS FOR LIFE, that we pride ourselves on teaching.

The emotional and mental developmental skills our gymnasts might not even realize they are learning. Those skills!

I have asked a few of our amazing coaches to share what they have learnt through Gymnastics. So I thought I would share them with you also!

"Coaches, what is one thing you have learnt from being a part of gymnastics?"

Coach Saskia -  Resilience. I have learnt how to take my time. People might get a skill before me, and that's ok. You need to wait and keep trying. "You're on a different time schedule to everybody else (when it comes to skills)".

Coach Judy - "That I can do things if i set my mind to it!" 

Coach Toby - "How to adapt to different situations." Flexibility in all aspects of life. Emotional flexibility, physical and mental. Especially being flexible when it comes to time management. Being able to change things in the moment to be extra beneficial. 
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Coach Thomas - "How to fall with style!" Being able to get up from a fall both physically and metaphorically. 

Coach Kelesa - Discipline. Growing up in gymnastics taught me I had to be there for my teammates. I had to get up early on the weekends, and train really hard. I had people counting on me. "Coming from an Acro background I couldn't miss any training session because all my teammates would be there and it would be bad for them."

We all have things that we will take away from our gymnastics experience. They will become individual to us and only we will be able to have that particular experience. This is why sharing our knowledge and applying it to our coaching is vital for us. We really want to help our gymnasts along in their own personal journeys. Who know's what they might learn!?

Did you want to see more blog posts like this? Do YOU have any questions you would like to ask the coaches? Let me know in the comments and I will be sure to make a blog post about it in the future!

Signing off for now,
​Coach Maygan.

 Are you running out of ideas for the kids over the summer school holidays? Not sure how a school holiday program works, or how your kids would enjoy it? Did you know we run an extensive school holiday program right here at FCGC?!
 
Trying to keep the kids entertained and active over the holiday period can be a challenge, especially if you have to return to work before the youngsters go back to school.

We all want to keep our kids happy, healthy and engaged! One of the best ways we can initiate this, is to allow them personal time to develop and explore in a safe environment. 

Allowing a child to participate in a school holiday program, can boost a child's learning capacity in nearly all aspects of the social, personal, physical and emotional development.  A child participating in our program will develop communication skills with others, leadership skills, group interaction skills, safe play skills as well as confidence and many more important skills for life!

FCGC's school holiday program has been created with an array of participants in mind. We truly believe we offer a unique program for all those involved. 

Each day of FCGC's school holiday program has been designed so all children will get the most out of their experience. Our weekday programs offer multiple different themes, all with new exciting activities! From arts & crafts, to science experiments, food creations, brain teasers and more. Each individual experience should be special, fun and over all educational in many ways. The best part is, they will be having so much fun they will hardly notice they are learning as they play and create!

Our gym time and free play sessions will also allow them plenty of time to get all their sillies out - so to speak! Movement is the biggest facilitator for learning, for all gymnasts big or small, new or experienced. Rest assured your little gymnast will have plenty of opportunities to practise new and old skills, run, jump, climb and more!

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Does this sound like the perfect program for you? I think it does too!

Check out our School Holidays Program tab on our website or click HERE for more info.

We can't wait to see you over the holidays!
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Signing off for now,
​Coach Maygan.

-Yes, you did read that correctly. It’s also entirely accurate.

However, we don’t sit your little gymnasts down in the gym with a large text book on The Laws of Physics and ask them to “turn to page 203”.

Instead we are using Physical Sciences and Bio-mechanics to help teach your gymnast every time they do a roll, tumble, cartwheel, somersault or bar skill. Or maybe I should say, they are teaching themselves to be Physicists.

This is likely something that has never crossed your mind before, so let’s break it all down so we can understand together how and why Gymnastics is teaching your gymnasts Physics.

Let’s introduce you to some very close friends of a Gymnast: Velocity, Rotation, Momentum and Mass. These aspects of Physics are the driving forces behind everything you see in Gymnastics.

Expecting a gymnast to remember all the technical terms or being able to explain them isn’t crucial. However, without their knowing, they are learning to understand how they are applied to their actions and motion any time they do literally anything.

Every time they walk, they are learning how to adjust their Center of Mass. Whenever they run and must suddenly stop, they are making tiny corrections from their heads down to their toes that will affect their Center of Mass and Velocity.

In Gymnastics it is the same techniques but applied on a much bigger scale. As we all are aware, there are many apparatus’s and skills involved in Gymnastics and they all require a particular formula to be applied to get the desired result.

For example, when a Gymnast leaves the mat they have applied an angular momentum from their push-off. Once they have left the mat, the momentum cannot be changed. However, the Gymnast may be required to change the speed of their rotation while moving through the air.

Ok sounds simple enough, right? But how can they alter the speed of their rotation without pushing off an object? Simple. They can achieve this by changing their Centre of Mass from the axis of rotation. The Angular Momentum can be increased or decreased by compressing or expanding the distance between the Mass and the Axis of Rotation.

What I am REALLY saying is, the tighter the gymnast tucks… the faster they will rotate.
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It might all seem a bit much and daunting, but that's ok! Our bodies are wonderful machines that can learn, adapt and apply these physics almost instantaneously.
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Here is an informative video by Stephanie McGregor who is a Bio-engineering Major as well as a College Gymnast.

​It is a fun video to watch, that will help to explain things a little further while demonstrating some very impressive Gymnastics Skills:

Coach Jes here 👋🏻 - Finding confidence and growing character is what we aim to do here at FCGC and over the weekend our Victorian championship gymnasts proved this to everyone! Each of them had many memorable moments but here are my stand outs
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Karina - overcame some fears and mental blocks to confidently perform her round off on beam for the first time in competition 🙌🏻 Karina placed 5th on bars.

Tammy - trusted in her ability as a athlete to listen to her body and make appropriate decisions for her longevity in this sport, even if it meant not performing her hardest skills 👍🏻 Tammy placed 3rd on bars and 6th on vault.

Thomas - after falling twice on the same skill Thomas got back up on the bars and attempted the harder version of the skill (because why not?) and he nailed it!! The perfect example of confidence and character 💪🏻

As a coach I am beyond proud of these three and the amazing role models they are for everyone at our club 💜
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Have any questions about these athletes or the competition? Comment them below and I’ll get back to you soon
Jes

Our Son has always been an active kid, even as a baby.
We have introduced him to many different sports over the years, but none of them seemed to give him enjoyment or a sense of belonging.

Our daughter had been attending FCGC for about 6 months, when a skills session in the holidays sounded perfect for our son.  
It was amazing to see the excitement and joy in his face.  He talked about it for about 1 hour afterwards.  We spoke to him about maybe a trail lesson, explaining it would be quite different to the very fun skill session he just did.  He didn’t even think about it, it was a solid YES.

His trail lesson was brilliant, lots of encouragement from coaches, small class sizes, demonstrations and best of all fun.  He came upstairs with a new found bounce in his step and the first words he said to us was “Can I keep it?” That was almost 1.5 years ago, and he is still just as passionate about lessons now.

​During this time he has had both male and female coaches.  I personally love that FCGC has so many male role models in such a female dominated sport.  Our son has learnt more than just fitness, strength, and balance.  He has learnt team skills, social skills, responsibility and community spirit.