Daniel E.

I have about 8 years experience coaching from 5 years old recreational classes to college level competitive gymnastics (girls and boy). At this moment, I am a gymnastics head coach at Livonia YMCA. It is a girls team and it is competitive. I go have a Certificate through USAG. I also possess a physical therapy aide diploma and have 5 years experience in the working field, I have I license in mental health/social work and have two years experience in that field. I also went to four year of college for psychology. Therefore, I am able to focus not only on the physical also on the mental and emotional.

I competed at Southfield Lathrup High school when they had gymnastics and went onto compete in college at Andrews University. After Andrews, I was taking training to be an Olympian. I was competing in one of the qualifying competitions until for the Olympics when I broke my ankle and that was it for me. This was years ago. Since then, I have been coaching gymnastics.

I usually start by running to get the heart rate up. Then, we stretch. I give them a broke if it is younger gymnasts. If it is older gymnasts, they bring their water bottle or they take breaks as needed. With the girls team That I am coaching now, I have a gym rotation on the wall of what we are going and I have my lesson plan of what is to be accomplished. Upon stretching, we work on flexibility and balance. In fact, our event today is floor, bar and vault. With floor I have then warm up, stretch their backs and ankles with back bands, back walk overs, and front walk over and then rack their backs out. This is to insure that no one gets back pain while tumbling. Then, we move onto tumbling. After that, we move on to dance skills in their routine that they need to work on and then at the end, they preform the routine while I we make adjustments. The general outline goes for the other events except that they are different events. I am the head coach. Therefore, it is my job to encourage them. I also coach boys team at Livonia YMCA. In fact, many of the gymnasts qualified for nationals.