Both of my boys, Jake who is now 15 and Gus who is 12 have been doing gymnastics since they could walk. Like most boys, they have tried a multitude of other sports; cricket, football and soccer which they enjoyed, but when made to choose have never wavered from their commitment to gymnastics. They love it.
When we started at FCGC 10 years ago, there was an amazing group of young men who were training at a senior level and also coaching the little boys. I am not sure if these boys realised at the time what a huge influence they had on the younger gymnasts. These older boys were idolised by the little boys. They were probably unaware that the boys would watch them performing amazing skills and just want to be able to do them too.
Through their entire time at FCGC, the boys have been surrounded by inspiring older boys that have acted as positive role models and mentors even if they didn’t realise it at the time. I have always found this to be a very special part of being part of FCGC and you don’t tend to see it in other sports where the main influencers are high profile, elite sports-people (who aren’t always positive role models!).
Over the Christmas holidays, my boys attended a BIG training session where they were working on their skills with Thomas. When they were finished, a few little girls from the holiday program presented them with this note:
“You’re good at what you are doing”
When they showed me the note I was very proud of them, but it dawned on me that my boys are getting to the age where they are now becoming the role models, particularly Jake who is doing the leadership program and training to be a coach. They have the eyes of a whole lot of little gymnasts on them, watching and learning from them.
And that in itself is an amazing thing because it means that they will learn a completely different skill….the responsibility of being a role model and coach and understand that they can have the same positive influence on the younger gymnasts that they were blessed with when they started gymnastics so long ago!

​I first started coaching gymnastics in 2016 at a gym that wasn’t FCGC (I still coach there, as well as at FCGC, today). My friend was a coach at that gym and she encouraged me to apply for a coaching position there. But here’s the most interesting part: I had never done gymnastics before that in my life. I didn’t start doing gymnastics until shortly after I came to FCGC in 2017. I knew due to my lack of gymnastics experience that coaching would be a learning curveball but since I started coaching at that gym, and since coming to FCGC as well, my skills and knowledge have only continued to grow, along with my passion for this sport and what I do as a coach.
 
Since becoming a gymnastics coach, my view on the sport has changed completely. I used to think of it as a purely competitive sport, but now I realise that it can also be just for fun and fitness (and that competing can be fun too!). I also used to think that you had to start it as a child, and now I see gymnastics as a sport for all, which it truly is, and it’s never too late to start. In only two years of coaching I’ve been able to work with such a wide range of people in gymnastics, including school-aged children, preschoolers as young as a year old, and even adults with disabilities, and I truly value this experience for helping me to appreciate this sport so much more and opening my eyes to its wide variety of benefits. To tell you the truth, I used to not know how to even define gymnastics, but now I know that it’s simply about learning how to control your body. This can range from anything like walking across a beam to performing twists and somersaults, and it also means that gymnastics has something for everyone.
 
In the short amount of time I’ve been at FCGC, I’ve realized that there is nothing short of the truth in our saying that gymnastics helps with finding confidence and growing in character. Gymnastics teaches so much more than cool flips and tricks. It teaches you to give things a go even though they seem really scary. It teaches you to keep persevering with things even when you struggle, and to work hard to achieve what you want. It teaches you to trust yourself and be confident in your abilities and potential. In short, it teaches skills for life. Not only do I see these things happen in the gym, but I’ve experienced them myself. Being a gymnast and a coach has made me so much more sure of my character, and has shown me that I can make a difference and do great things. This increase in confidence and self-belief is something I didn’t even realise I needed until I got to the point where I could say all these things with conviction. And I think because I’ve experienced what it’s like to find confidence and grow in character through gymnastics, I’m now more equipped to help others do the same thing. At the end of the day, that’s what FCGC Gymnastics is all about, and it’s one of the things I love about being here. 

No one has ever questioned my decision to choose coaching as my career but people find it hard to understand the long hours we work as coaches, or the extra work we put in over weekends for competitions, displays and other events, the time we spend at home planning for classes and dancing around the kitchen making up routines. To me it is very simple, I have made a decision to dedicate my life to helping others succeed, and I am luckily enough to be able to do it via the best sport in the world!

“Success” in gymnastics could easily be associated with competition based awards, but for me and FCGC, there is so much more to it than that. Being able to teach someone to do a back-flip is an achievement that I celebrate, but more so what I am truly celebrating is the dedication that is took for a gymnast to achieve that skill. The perseverance that was required to do the lead up drills hundreds of times before attempting the back-flip. The courage it took for that gymnast to trust in themselves, and me as their coach, to perform a back- flip for the first time. The positive mindset that the gymnast must have had to say to them self  “Hey, I can do this!” These are the things I celebrate and these are the things I teach.

Someone recently said to me that I must be really good at gymnastics to be able to demonstrate all the activities my to gymnasts. With great pride I was able to tell them NO WAY!! She was very taken a back and couldn’t work out why I didn’t want to be better than my athletes. I remember being so excited the first time I was able to teach a skill to a gymnast that I was never able to do. That was one of my first tastes of “success” for both the gymnast and I. They were able to learn something new and I was able to teach something that I wouldn’t have previously been able to do. “Success” to me as a coach is being able to help gymnasts to develop to be the best athletes and people they can be and if that means they can perform harder skills than me then I have done my job well.

Being a coach I am constantly challenged with situations where I need to evolve and learn more to help those around me. I am always trying to learn about knew drills to help teach gymnastics, read up on new tactics to help encourage a growth mindset and find out new ways to work with different age groups. Through my continual education and development I am able to push my knowledge forwards and then pass this onto gymnasts, to hopefully inspire them to also have a life long love for learning. I like to be challenged by my gymnasts and asked “Why?”. This my seem like a strange thing to like about my job, but to me it shows that these gymnasts are developing self thought and not just blinding following what they are asked to do. It also means I have to stay on my toes and really understand what and why I am teaching.
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Coaching is not just something I have do because I need money to live. It is something I would choose to do, and do choose to do every day. Sometimes to the dismay of my family and friends because I don’t think I ever really stop thinking or talking about it. But I strongly believe that if we don’t push our limits and try to improve ourselves as people we become stagnant. By helping others find confidence and grown in character I am always challenged. I have not just chosen coaching gymnastics as a career but also as a lifestyle because it challenges me to succeed. Helping others learn and grow makes me learn and grow, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Positive thinking creates positive actions, and negative thinking creates negative actions.”
“Positive thinking, Positive outcome”
“How you see your future is much more important than what has happened in your past”
“A positive mind finds a way it can be done”


There are hundreds and thousands of sayings about having a positive mind set. Telling someone to think positive is very easy, but how can we break it down to a particle level to help them really apply it to what they are doing? How can we make them take it in and help them truly change the thoughts they are thinking?
You may think you cannot change what goes in in your brain, but there are strategies we can use to not only help ourselves, but also those around us, to have a brighter outlook on the task which is at hand.

• Be open and trust in others
  • Trying new things can be hard. But, especially gymnastics, trusting in the process (of skill development) and those around you (coaches) is a key factor to being able to achieve new things. People want you to succeed. The advice and help they offer you is to assist you through continual growth and development. Believe in yourself and those around you when trying new things.
• Observe your thoughts
  • Are you focusing on the positive or the negative? You should be focusing on what you want to happen. Negative thoughts will create negative outcomes. “I’m going to fall off the beam, I’ll wobble and then fall off” This thought process will more often than not result in a fall, even when the skill could have easily stayed on the beam, because the mind will attract to it the thoughts it is having. Instead think “I have done this skill before, I will pull tall in the landing and stay on the beam.” This is more likely to create a positive outcome.
• Create a turn around
  • The turn-around is the way we can turn our negative thoughts into positive ones. There are many different turn-around methods and different ways will work for different people. But here is one of my favorite ones. It’s called the S-B-V-GO! method.
    • STOP – the first moment that you notice a negative thought stop!
    • BREATH – breathing can bring you back to the present. Take a breath and focus on it, this will draw your thoughts away from being stuck in past or future fears. After staying STOP inside your head, take a deep breath.
    • VISUALISE – After your breath, change your negative thoughts to either positive or motivating thoughts and visualise your desired outcome.
    • GO! – Once you have finished the visualization, say GO! in your head. This may either be a direct instruction, telling yourself to do a skill, or a more indirect one which is telling you to move on and forward with your positive thought process. At times GO! may bring you in a full circle and take you back to STOP! so that you can move through the turn-around again.

It is important to remember that a positive thought pattern and activities like the S-B-V-GO! are learnt skills and they take practice. The more time you spend working on a positive mind set the easier and more natural it will become.


It is possible to change your mindset.
Choose to be happy.

Thank you.
I might have known you for six years, I may have known you for ten minutes. But if you are standing here in my class, thank you for giving me the opportunity to teach you. Thank you for trusting me to guide you through your development, for telling me the skills that you are afraid of, for asking for help when you need it, for listening to me and for letting me help you to learn. Thank you for bringing your unique set of experiences to my classes, for telling me your stories, for allowing me to get to you know during our time together. Sometimes, thank you for challenging me. I may not always have all the answers, but when I don’t, you push me to look for new ways of doing things and push me to be a better coach.
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry for the times that gymnastics is hard and you’re not achieving the skills that you would like to. I’m sorry when you’re frustrated with your progress, when you don’t feel like you’re learning things as fast as you should be. I’m sorry that sometimes I explain things in a way you don’t understand or when I don’t take the time to listen. I may be your coach but I’m also human and I make mistakes. But mistakes help us learn and ultimately make us both better coaches and better humans. So, forgive me for any mistakes I make and let me learn from them.
I’m proud of you.
No matter what your level of ability, so long as you’re trying, I’m proud of you. For that first time you walked across the beam on your own, I’m proud of you. For that first handstand, first chin-up, first pullover, first rope climb, I’m proud of you. For those times you let me spot you through a skill you were afraid of, I’m proud of you. For those moments when you’re tired and you don’t want to train but you do your best to work hard anyway, I’m proud of you. More importantly, I want you to be proud of yourself. Please take the time to be proud of yourself. Gymnastics may well be fun, but some of the things that we ask you to do are hard, and you might not learn them straight away. So take the time to acknowledge your achievements, both big and small. Holding that handstand for a second longer. Standing up on the high beam by yourself for the first time. Achieving your back flip. Coming back after an injury. Be proud of yourself for your achievements and be proud of yourself for the effort you put into them.
You are unique – and that’s a good thing!
You will not always be the strongest or the fastest, you will not always get new skills first, but you will always be you. Try not to compare yourself to the gymnasts around you. Gymnastics is a unique sport and there are so many different aspects to it, and different people will be good at different things. You will find skills and parts of the sport that are special to you. And if you don’t, that’s okay too – gymnastics can help you prepare for practically any other sport you might like to try! Remember, I am here to guide you and teach you, so if you don’t feel like you’re learning, that’s ok – tell me so we can make a positive change. If you do feel like you’re learning, fantastic – tell me so we can keep going down the same path.


Believe in yourself, because I believe in you.