Looking for a coach or mentor

Hi, I’m very interested in developing into a gymnast. I am 40 years old. I’m pretty sure I cannot jump right in and do the workout of the days. I also have a more than full time job and 3 young kids, so I can not invest the time into learning all that this forum has to offer. I’d like to find a coach or mentor to help me figure out a custom program for myself. What is the best way to go about this? Is there somebody here that may be interested?

On a similar note, do you have a gym or coach in the Southern California / Orange County region you can share that with me.

Honestly, you dont need to hire a coach or mentor, as the info on the forum wont be too hard too find The first thing youll want to do are the prerequisite holds, which can be found in the respective topic in this forum. If you havent already, get a copy of building the gymnastic body. And really, someone of almost any fitness level could scale the wods down to their abilities as long as they have the book

Hi

i think you can do everything at home at your own.

That saves alt ot time and money :-)

It would be helpfull to know your fittness and your goals.

What exercises do you want to learn?

write 2 or 3 on a paper.

Than write down the exercises you can do to learn the end goal.

igm503 said:

you dont need to hire a coach or mentor, as the info on the forum wont be too hard too find (...)

haui said:

i think you can do everything at home at your own.

That saves alt ot time and money (...)

Of course you can always do everything on your own, every beginner knows that; I also "knew" that for a long time!

but at some moment, a coach is necessary.

Finding information is easy, making it actionable knowledge is another story; it is not laziness: it is efficiency, feedback and calibration...

Finding the info to get started is very easy, thanks to the forums & Coach Sommer essays & book, putting together a routine of FSPs on an SSC + WOD or custom FBE + joint prep, mobilization & stretching is made quite simple too by the availability of these high quality resources. I have 200 pages of notes from systematically reading threads on the forum; they add to many other sources of information. Does that make me able to coach myself? Yes to some extent, no in many dimensions... Following a good routine is not coaching! If anything, these notes and acquired information make me much more receptive and able to get to a high level of communication & understanding with a coach.

Self coaching is one of the most difficult things to do; why would CEOs, people in high positions of power, top sales persons, or elite athletes need a coach? surely they know what they are doing!

Why do professional coaches hire their peers to guide them and help them towards their goals?

We all have blind spots that an external eye will uncover and help with.

It all depends on what the goals are, but IMHO, anything beyond beginner requires guidance, feedback, calibration, and proper perspective. Having a coach is certainly not to give up on learning, it is freeing up your mind of uncertainty, worry, doubt; it is attaching the services of a professional to go the way together; it is affording the focus of getting the job done!

FYI, I am close to 50 & have very specific goals that do require specific coaching; I have a coach that I call Sensei for the martial arts part of my training; Sensei is not my every day instructor, he is not living nearby, but communications are so easy now; When I need to see him, I haul myself to the airport and fly over to train under his direct supervision, stay with the family, etc... This is a high value relationship to both of us.

I have started a gymnastics bodies specific training after realizing that in the last 3 years, parts of my training have been counter productive to my progress - I certainly made progress, but was hindered by injury, setbacks and ..... excess information that I proved unable to process for myself! (it might have been easier to use it with a third party, but as I said, self coaching is really, really hard!)

I too am looking forward to hire a coach for strength, GPP, conditioning & to keep me safe. I am sure the right person is on these forums; Please PM me if you think you could help.

Thank you for reading

Fred

haui said:

Hi

i think you can do everything at home at your own.

That saves alt ot time and money :-)

It would be helpfull to know your fittness and your goals.

What exercises do you want to learn?

write 2 or 3 on a paper.

Than write down the exercises you can do to learn the end goal.

I used to be really active on this forum, but it's had to take a backseat to other life endeavors. Though, that said, my progression through the gymnastics program has been slow and steady since. I'm still very much in the "beginner" stage, but I've learned a lot about progression, pacing, injury prevention, etc. along the way.

I've been self-coaching for the last two years of this with much improvement and many lessons learned the hard way. Depending on where you are in your relationships with time and money, your values will differ as one becomes more scarce and the other becomes more abundant.

For the OP, in his 50s, I imagine that time may be much more valuable than money in comparison to that of a 25-year old. For myself, I would've gladly paid $100/mo. to make sure that I was getting started in the right way and save myself a lot of time and error. When my time schedule lightens up, getting to a seminar is one of my high priorities. Hopefully in 2013. FredinChina, assuming that he is -- in fact -- in China, has more logistical hurdles to overcome to make that a reality.

I hope you find a coach who can give you expertise and save you from unnecessary time and error. And as much as I've enjoyed (and still enjoy) devouring information in the forums, I can understand why you would be anxious to have someone with expertise to get you off to the right start. In the last year or so, one of my biggest shifts has been a more intimate understanding of the value of time. With some extremely overwhelming demands on both my personal and professional life, it's been necessary to squeeze every moment out of every day in order to accomplish my objectives. If you find someone, PM me. Perhaps we could split the hourly cost and do coaching calls with a 2:1 student/coach ratio.

JM

Daniel Nowell said:

Have you considered attending a GB seminar? Just a thought.

Not sure if you were asking me, but yes.

When my time schedule lightens up, getting to a seminar is one of my high priorities. Hopefully in 2013. FredinChina, assuming that he is -- in fact -- in China, has more logistical hurdles to overcome to make that a reality.

I agree that you can avoid some trainings mistakes and will be better in a shorter time when you have the RIGHT coach,

and the Time to go to the choach.

I found no choach here in my area so i have to learn it by my own.

I only do it for myself and not for competition so it does not matter to me if i need 3 or 6 month to learn a skill.

Sometimes i find it frustrating to find the correct way of doing a skill by myself and whish i had a coach, sometimes i find it interessting because i learn through my mistakes

There is no question if you have someone who knows what they are doing you can occasionally work with it is enormously helpful.

The sad thing is it seems to be pretty hard to find such people and even harder if you are an adult.

Whether we realize it or not, what Coach Sommer is doing with the GB program is basically non-existant outside of GB. Most personal trainers don't know anything about this type of training particularly when it comes to the details. And gymnastic coaches don't deal with adults or if they do it's only skills. If you were to find a gymnastic club that had classes for adults chances are the strength aspect would be relegated to part of the warm up.

I attend classes through a gymnastic trampoline club where the coaching is abysmal, and at a circus school where the coaching is pretty good, still I've yet to see the fundamentals be emphasized as they are here. This will always be a problem with adult level group classes. Groups are mixed and people want to move forward quickly. I think my yoga strength class may be the only adult level class in my area that really works the basics to the point that people can progress through them correctly, and still I know I have to make some compromises for the sake of the group.

That all said, it really is worth seeking out what's available in your area, giving things a try etc, you just don't know what hidden gems are out there or it may be you just make a new friend, which isn't so bad either.

I'm beginning to conclude for the person who can a weekly or twice weekly outside class plus 3-4 day/week GB strength is a very hard combination to beat.

I totally agree Cole Dano; the resource & community that Coach Sommer has created is unique and invaluable!

My own experience with Martial Arts is also of very poor instruction regarding strength, structural integrity, injury prevention, prehab or rehab! It sometimes feel like MAs are some sort of gigantic Darwinian enterprise where only the very lucky from the deep end of the gene pool survive!

Not even talking of getting older!

I went out of my way to find an extraordinary instructor, and I found one; he has become one of my closest friends in the process... but it is a little bit the opposite of the cliche stereotype: a young master with a grey haired student! I am very fortunate, even if he is in the US and I am mostly in China; I have the possibility to travel and spend long periods of time with him and learn and train.

I am hoping the same will happen for the coach I am seeking for other aspects of my training (strength, GPP, nutrition, etc...)...

Thank you for beaming the flashlight on your own experience Cole Dano

Fred