It’s time for another behind-the-scenes look at a day in the life of a college gymnast! Last month I wrote about summer practices, moving in, and training for the first time in your new college gym. This time I’m going to walk you through preseason skills testing and official practices.
At this point in the school year, a couple of weeks have passed, you’ve experienced your first football game, and you’ve made it through syllabus week! In the gym, you have had a few weeks to adjust to the equipment and get into the routine of a different style of training.
Before diving into what official practices look like, I’m going to share some quick facts to make sense of what’s coming. Per NCAA rules, in the offseason there are only eight countable hours, which means only eight hours per week can be required by the program. These hours can be practices, lifts, team meetings, etc. Regardless of how these eight hours are broken up, the mandatory training can’t go past this time limit. The key word here is mandatory; many times things would be titled as ‘voluntary’ or ‘captain’s practice’ to comply with the rules, and usually it was expected for you to attend, unless you had, for instance, class at that time. Now that we have made it through a few weeks and…
