INTODUCTION TO CHINESE GYMNASTICS SYSTEM.. Part 1

Tweet

Gymnastics, like all other sports in China,
operates under the “whole nation” regime. The
hierarchy of the gymnastics can be simply divided
into national and provincial levels.
The National Team and Provincial Teams

The national team is oriented toward sports
elitism, whereas the main goal for provincial
teams is to produce more medals and champions
in national competitions, especially the National
Games held every four years and one year after
the Olympics.
Provincial teams will send some of their best
athletes - mostly juniors - to the national training
center selection camp, usually on a yearly basis.
The gymnasts with great potential will be selected
into national teams for training. Those gymnasts
remain members of their home provincial teams,
and their results will be counted toward their
home teams in the national competitions. There
are 2 annual national gymnastics competitions.

The championship held in late May is the meet for
gymnasts to unveil their new skills gained last
winter - the winter training is traditionally the
most important period for the national team to
upgrade their difficulty levels. The nationals, held
in late August, partially serves as the pre World
Championship selection.
As the national team has the best training
resources, the training and the opportunity to
enlist the national team thereafter are the first
steps for a gymnast to fulfill her Olympics dream,
and pretty much a guarantee to bring out the full
play of her potential. From a different
perspective, one of the provincial team’s main
goals is to train the gymnasts for the national
team. Gymnasts not selected by the national
team continue to train with provincial teams and
participate in the national competitions till
retirement.
The criteria for the Chinese national team, like in
many other countries, cover aspects from
physical structure, body form, coordination,
strength, to fundamental skills. But the actual
levels of selected gymnasts vary. When He Kexin
was first selected into the national team, she
could only perform tkachev on the UB; she was
selected for her good forms on bars. In Tan Sixin
and Zeng Siqi’s cases, however, they were both
capable of a decent beam routine. Overall, the
national team prefers the gymnasts with solid
fundamental skills and good forms over difficulty
of skills. As head coach Lu Shanzhen mentioned in
more than one interviews that the difficult skills
and varieties are easy to pick up once one has
solid fundamentals. Although the coaching style
and philosophy can be somehow different
between the national team and provincial teams,
the motto of the Chinese gymnastics training can
pretty much be summarized in three words -
“forms forms forms”. As explained in my previous
blog entry, there are 4 coach teams, plus one
special coach team on Vault in the national WAG

team.