8-year-old MMA fighter

[Royal Dragon]

Hmm, maybe I should not have deleted that part of the post...if figured no one would be interested.

Here you go:

She got interested in ice skateing and was on the road to competeing in that this year, BUT she has issues with doing homework and failed a class last 1/4, so I grounded her untill she can show me good grades again.

It sux, because she is so talented, and surely would do well in the ice skateing arena, but she needs to realise her homework is more vital.

She still works out constantly, so from my stand point we are good.

With gymnasics, I think she is haveing some problems being coached by main stream coaches. In all honesty, she DOES know better than them by vertue of who trained her, so there are many dissagreements. Shes as hard headed as I am, and I don't think she will do well under anyone who's not the Romanian coach who raised her since she was 3. Unfortunetly that coach is at a different gym now, and over an hour from where we live. It's just not possible to do the 2-1/2 hour round trip, train 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, AND get homework and all that done. We would need to move to that area, and that is just not pssible.

We tried putting her in the higschool program and it ended in disaster. My daughter DOES NOT LOSE, and refuses to do anything that takes her from her best performance. The high school coaches really didn't have a clue as how to produce winners, and that caused a lot of argueing, Melissa blatently refusing to follow thier advice and just continueing to practice the system her Romanian coach taught her...which is vastly different that what the highschool coaches do.

It got so bad that she actually taught her team Jibberish, and began coaching her team mates use the language to keep the coaches from knowing what she was saying... she effectively took controll of the team away from the coaches.

What she did, was wait until the coahces gave everyone thier training assignments, and then she used jibberish to communiicate totally different assignments to her team mates. The entire team stoped doing anything the coaches said, and completely followed Melissa's lesson plans.

This resulted in marked improvments in thier scores. As thier scores went up and up, the team ignored the coaches more and more, and more.

This resulted in a lot of inmature actions by the coaches, like demoting her from being team captian, and putting a realtivly unskilled 2 year gymnast in her place as well as a number of other things.

Melissa was also bumping heads with them on safety issues. She felt the coaches were pushing the gymnasts too hard and putting them at risk for injury by pressureing them to do skills they were not ready for, for flash reasons and glazeing over fundementals. She felt that they did not care for the gymnasts safety, and were under pressure to get big skills for more points at the comps. She actually got into some rather vocal arguments with them...at one point she told them they were "Highschool" coaches because they could not cut it in the clubs....

That was shortly before she quit. The incedent that made her quit was because they were at a meet, she got FIRST place on bars (as allways), and the coach started yelling at her for making some trivial mistake (she had ignored some previous advice, and did what it took to win). I actually backed her decison to quit because of all the stuff going on. It had gotten to where she was just comming home angry and resentful all the time.

[golden arhat]

dude ur daughter sounds fukin cool lol

[Becca]

All little kids get into school yard fights. A kid with this much talent isn't going to give bloody noses and fat lips like the rest, he's going to accidentally break a jaw, and send his classmates to the hospitol.

... or he's going to see the trouble comming and just avoid it... I agree with seven* on this. My kid has never gotten into trouble for fighting. And only got bullied once. after the bully got freeked out with a choked...

[GunnedDownAtrocity]

Hmm, maybe I should not have deleted that part of the post...if figured no one would be interested.

.....
That was shortly before she quit. The incedent that made her quit was because they were at a meet, she got FIRST place on bars (as allways), and the coach started yelling at her for making some trivial mistake (she had ignored some previous advice, and did what it took to win). I actually backed her decison to quit because of all the stuff going on. It had gotten to where she was just comming home angry and resentful all the time.

man ... thats a b1tch.

[Royal Dragon]

Yeah, it was. It's hard, because I'm *Supposed* to tell her to listen to her coaches..I mean that is what a Father is supposed to do right?

But in this case, she was so far above her coaches in skill, talent and training, how could I tell her to just do what she knew was wrong? It was a tough spot for all of them I am sure. I don't think the coaches thought it was much fun having a 16 yearold take over thier class either.

But then, thier drive to push the girls to do the big skills before they were ready is down right dangerous. They really were not competant, didn't know how to teach, train or coach....all they knew how to do was push, push, push....

The High school judges differently than the clubs too. They award more for big skills, where as the clubs award more for precision. In the clubs, you will get more points for a lower level skill done to perfection, than a high level skill done sloppy. This not only produces much higher skilled gymnasts, but keeps the pressure down so the gymnasts are not being pushed to do skills beyond thier ability.

What happenes in the highschools, is the gyms are also underfunded, so they don't have pits to practice thier landings in untill they are ready for the floor. Becasue of this, they do hundreds, and hundreds of bad landings before they get them right, which causes all sorts of injuries and long term damage.

The clubs completly eliminate that danger with the 8 foot deep foam pits. By the time they get to the floor, they have mastered thier landings in the pits, so injury risk has been pretty much removed...short of some kind of freak occurance.

I remeber the first highschool meet, there were girls all over, walking around with braces, casts, crutches, and all sorts of signs of injury. My daughter had been a club gymnast all her life, and in all that time, I don't think I saw more than a small hand full of injuries (One was a teammate of her's, it happened at the park playing wiht her little sister, and not in the gym). There were more injured gymnasts in the one highschool meet, than 12 years of meets in Club gymnastics.

So to keep this story short, I think she is out of gymnastics until college at least. We will see how it goes then. In the mean time, she goes back to her old gym now to work out and keep in shape...I am hoping to see her get a job coaching there over the summer.

[Black Jack II]

But in this case, she was so far above her coaches in skill, talent and training, how could I tell her to just do what she knew was wrong

?

You really think a 16 year kid has more knowledge than her much older and much more experianced coaches?? That sounds highly not likely.

Sounds like a father just backing his daughter from this perspective.

[Royal Dragon]

She grew up at the Illinois Gymnastics Institute, which at the time was one of the top gyms in the country. She was later a priviate student of thier TOP coach when she left for another gym when IGI decided to go mainstream.

She was not only coached and trained, she was taught her coach's system, and methods for buidling champions. She spent roughly 11 years under her coach, starting when she was 3 years old.

So yes, with a pedigree like that, she is by far a more qualified coach than most out there...including many other club coaches...especially when the coaches at her highschool could not possibly have had more than 5 years experiance, were not medal winning champions themselves, and defenetly were not from IGI or had any experiance with that caliber of gymnastics in anyway, shape or form...compared to my daugter who spent her entire life being trained at the region's top gym under that gym's top coach.

Who was the much more experianced now?

[Black Jack II]

She was not only coached and trained, she was taught her coach's system, and methods for buidling champions

.

You make it sound like it was martial art grandmaster passing down his secrets to a adopted pupil.

All I am saying is that from reading your posts it seems that some of the fault of your daughter having a hard time in the open format enviroment of this high schools gymnastics program may be her own doing to a small degree.

This only being taken from how you say she acts in terms of inherited stubborness, attitude and so on, this in your own words. I was in gymnastics all throughout highschool and one year of college, so the enviroment is not new to me and I also have a daughter so I can also understand how dads can view things.

Plus well teenagers can sometimes act like what they are....teenagers. Who has not met a teenager who did not think they have all the answers to everything.

[Royal Dragon]

All I am saying is that from reading your posts it seems that some of the fault of your daughter having a hard time in the open format enviroment of this high schools gymnastics program may be her own doing to a small degree.

Reply]
Agreed...she gets that from my side of the Gene pool...

You make it sound like it was martial art grandmaster passing down his secrets to a adopted pupil

Reply]
That is not exactly how it happened, but Melissa was coaching minded, and when she followed her to the new gym, she was the only gymnast for a while, and when they started getting new ones, Melissa started assisting coaching. Also, the new gym was opened by another coach from the same original gym, who for all practical purposes was the Romanian's understudy. We both spent many hours discussin training methods with the understudy, and reasons for how things were being done, and why her gymnasts allways won, or did very well, so consistantly.

It's not common to have one of the best so accessible, and I learned as much as I could while the oppertunity existed as did my daughter. The first season that gym was open, Melissa was the only xexperianced gymnast there, so she was getting what was basically priviate training,4 hours a day, 4 days a week for an entire season.

You have to remember, she was under these two coaches since she was 3, they were like surrogat parent figures to her, and they shared thier methods with her. The same can be said for almost any high level gymnast that came form that era, under that coach though. So it wasn't like a Grandmaster who shared only with the chosen few, ALL of her gymnasts learned the system...it's just most were not born coaches, where as my daughter is.