Scottish Gymnastics has created a set of talent principles to help shape our performance activity and positively influence the development of coaches and gymnasts on a performance pathway.
These principles are evidence-based and have been developed with a talent scientist, along with input from coaches, parents, and gymnasts.
One of these key principles is "all skills and behaviours can be developed and require a consistent approach from gymnasts, coaches and parents throughout the pathway”.
We know young gymnasts will face a range of different challenges as they progress, and we recognise the role of the supportive parent is vital.
We have a guide to support parents and carers in helping gymnasts to reach their potential. This includes our talent principles, how to understand the development process with useful questions you can ask in supporting your child. You can watch a video further down this page where parents talk about their experiences supporting their child.
> Scottish Gymnastics Parent's Guide
We provide more information to gymnasts, parents and coaches on the performance pathway during inductions and through related resources and workshops.
Top artistic gymnasts Frank Baines and Dan Purvis take us through the Scottish Gymnastics talent principles, sharing their experience of competing at the highest level.
Athlete-driven profiling
Scottish Gymnastics has designed a set of athlete-driven profiling templates which have been made age appropriate for gymnasts at club, performance pathway, and national performance programme levels, for our clubs and coaches to use in their own training environments.
These profiles have been specifically designed to help gymnasts understand how taking more responsibility for their own development will improve both training and competition performance.
The documents for the athletes to complete are below, along with our athlete profiling video.
If you want any further information on the tools or how to implement them, please contact the performance team on performance@scottishgymnastics.org
> Athlete-driven profiling template for club gymnasts
> Athlete-driven profiling template for performance pathway programme (PPP) gymnasts
> Athlete-driven profiling template for national performance programme (NPP) gymnasts
> Athlete-driven profiling template for performance groups and partnerships
Watch sportscotland's "How can a pen and paper make you a better athlete?"
We know young gymnasts will face a range of different challenges as they progress in the sport and we recognise your role as a supportive parent is vital in this process. Understanding what to say and when to say it can have a huge impact on the gymnast’s development.
