If you have been with us long enough in our Badge & Stars, NinjaGym, Tumbling or Club Badges programs, you will have noticed coaches handing out posters with stickers. Your child may have one (or more!) at home. Your child may have gone through skills testing already, and if they haven’t yet they will soon. We do testing twice a year to track progress and move kids through our colour level programs (each program has different colours to represent progression). I’d like to take some time to dig a bit deeper into how those colour levels are designed, and the purpose of each.
We use different colours to represent different levels. Each level has about 15-18 skills in it across different apparatus’. For example, Badge & Stars focus is on the Olympic events (vault, bars, beam, and floor), whereas our NinjaGym focuses on parkour events such as wall, vaults, and rolls. All of our programs have a trampoline and body preparation component to ensure every member is building strength and spatial awareness along the way.
Placing kids in colour levels allows coaches to monitor kids progress, and provide safe and challenging progressions based on the lesson plan for that specific level. The skills get harder as the levels go on, and each level has progressions and drills to achieve the final skill – whatever that may be!
For example, let’s take a look at the most important skill in gymnastics – the handstand! In Aqua (level 1) we start with the basic progressions of a bunny jump, and a tuck handstand held on a box. In Purple (level 2) we move to a scorpion kick and a pike handstand on the box. The progressions continue until we start to see handstands on the beam, the bar, and over the vault table! Handstands are also an important fundamental skill for round-offs, walkovers and handsprings.
We have designed our beginner levels to include the most important fundamental movements/skills to allow for the most fun and challenging skills to be achieved later on once the gymnast reaches the intermediate/advanced levels – this is true for our Badge & Stars, NinjaGym, Tumbling and Club Badges programs.
Beginner
Gymnasts/ninjas are learning fundamental skills and movement patterns. Things like getting comfortable going upside down, bearing weight on their hands, and landing safely from a range of skills are the main focus of beginner levels.
Intermediate
This is where we start to take the fundamental skills and progress them to more difficult skills. This is where you will start to see things like cartwheels, swings, and drills for more advanced skills such as handsprings and saults
Advanced
Our advanced levels are where we begin to move from drills for skills, to the skills themselves. Handsprings, saults, skills connections and more, we begin to see skills that take a lot more strength, body awareness and mobility.
Skills in the beginner levels are expected to be achieved at a much faster rate than those in intermediate/advanced. This is because as soon as you add speed, height or flight (being completely in the air) to a skill, it requires much more body awareness and strength to achieve it. It is completely normal and expected that gymnasts may take more than one year to complete bronze advanced and higher (and for some lower levels may take a bit longer to complete, and that is okay!). What’s important is that our gymnasts are having fun, and trying something new each time they come into the gym. It doesn’t have to be the biggest skill, it just has to be an accomplishment for them. A few days ago I had a gymnast stand up on the beam by herself for the first time and she was so excited, and I was so proud! Sometimes it may not look like much, but those little accomplishments are happening every day at Twisters, and it’s why we love what we do.
Regardless of level or program, gymnasts and ninjas are building their strength, body awareness, mobility, and skill progressions simultaneously. Twisters gyms are designed differently from any other gym I have ever coached in. Rather than just a set of beams, you have zones with beams and bars in them. Monkey bars, rings, ropes, trampolines, air tracks, and lots of other little equipment that allows our lesson plans to change every fortnight and gives our members a chance to practise and build a range of skills.
This year I have moved on to be the Education Coordinator at Twisters, but as the former Badge & Stars Coordinator who was in charge of lesson planning and testing I can tell you that each drill, for each zone, each fortnight, is carefully put there for a specific reason. We want to see our members succeed and progress safely while having fun, and our carefully crafted colour levels allow us to do just that!
If you want more information on the skills your child is working towards, you can find all of the skills listed for each level on the board in the foyer at Northcote and Showgrounds, or you can also have a look at the skill section of your child account on the Parent Portal.
