It’s been a busy time for our Aspire gymnasts in Barron Valley.  From Control Testing to Working Bees and Sports Psychology Workshops, to the BV Invitational and Jnr State Championships preparation - it's all action for our MAG & WAG gymnasts. See what we have been up to below:

CONTROL TEST

We have just completed control testing for our level 4 to 6 WAG members in preparation for this year’s Junior State Championships. All our girls received great feedback forms from our coaches which will help them set some further goals, and inspire them to keep working hard. We were able to get some awesome team photos at the control test and will be sending a copy to each of our families!  We are looking forward to showing the rest of QLD what we’ve got at Jnr State Championships in the school holidays! Our MAG Control Test and Regional Team training is coming up soon!  We are pleased to be hosting this event again this year at Barron Valley!  The boys will surely benefit from the expertise of Sergei, Kelly and Nick to help support their preparation for this year’s Jnr State Championships in Brisbane!

SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY WORKSHOP

Our Senior WAG girls recently attended their first sports psychology workshop, which was fantastic and positive experience for our gymnasts.  The workshop focused on how important it is for competitive athletes to use tools and strategies in their training routines, the same way we include strength and flexibility in our every day training. We looked at how psychology is affected directly by brain activity and what happens to our heart rate and brain activity when we are nervous (even just thinking about our least confident apparatus).  We used some very cool technology to measure this and could see changes in brain activity as they occurred (switching from right to left and lateral) during certain exercised.  We learned the right side of the brain processes the most information and discussed overcoming fear and using visualisation techniques to assist with this.  We also discussed examples of how visualization can help with injured athletes. Our sports psychology workshop was a positive experience.  It has exposed the girls to something new, that has been untapped, and could really help them with their training.  The girls were surprised by how much calmer they felt with just 5 minute breathing activity.  We have committed to a breathing task of 5 minutes per training session for the next month to see what the outcome is.

GO RHIANNON!

Rhiannon Pace is off to compete at the Delta Classic in Brisbane on 9^th-10^th September.  It is Rhiannon’s goal to pass level 10 at this event.  Go For It Rhi!  Your entire gymnastics family is supporting you!

WORKING BEE

Wow BV team!  Great work this month at our working bee. We definitely made a good dent in our list of jobs! The pit clean up was a massive job – what a great swarm of worker bees we saw in amongst it all!  Thank you gymnasts, Mum’s & Dad’s and coaches for taking part and helping out! It really has made a big difference, and we appreciate it greatly!

COMPETITION HAIR

Don’t forget to check out the tutorial for how to do our girl’s hair for competition.  Our BV ribbons for Jnr State Championships will be handed out to each team members prior to us leaving for Brisbane!   Keep up the great work - go Team BV!