A New Perspective

An old photo but one I like!

So my eyes have been opened! Doesn't life always feed us the unexpected! On Tuesday at gymnastics class Mickey was taken aside by another coach and was put through some skill testing exercises. Before the end of class this coach came out and told me that the club wanted to invite Mickey to join the advanced gymnastics program for 3 and 4 year olds. Not only would it mean more $$$ but it would require her to attend for 3 hours a week instead of the 1 hour she's been doing for the past year. I have no experience with competitive athletics so I asked everyone I could get a hold of to share their opinions. I got a variety of feedback. All of it was very much appreciated because as I said I had no idea what I was doing! Anyhow, we decided to try it out until the next session starts in April. Today was our first day. We're not interested in competitive sports but we like the opportunity for more physical activity (since we homeschool) and for more one-on-one skill building. For the record, Mickey had a say in this and when asked, gave a heartfelt YES!

The class was a little different than I expected. It definitely wasn't a play/fun time although Mickey was in her glory! She smiled for the whole hour and a half! There were a lot of conditioning exercises that I wasn't expecting. It was done in a fun, pressure-free way but everything was purpose driven. At the same time that Mickey's class was going on there were 8-10 school aged girls practicing on the floor. They were probably ages 7-12. I asked the other moms why they were there during school hours and how they were managing this (although I secretly hoped this was a group of homeschool kids I hadn't heard about!). Apparently these girls are at such a level that they take time out of school for practice. Sometimes their practice is 20 hours a week. A little EXTREME....but I won't say anymore! Watching these girls though and seeing what their bodies could do (shocking really) I realized that this is a sport which starts very young. You can not go into gymnastics at age 8 and hope that your body will do the moves. It takes years of conditioning. I get it now.

I don't know what the future holds. For now we're going to enjoy the next 8 weeks. Perhaps we won't get invited back to the competitive program. Perhaps Mickey won't keep smiling. We shall see. But for now the experience is FUN!