Lausanne, Jan 22, 2013: Indonesia hosted and completed the first FIG coach education event of 2013 from January 14-18 in the city of Jakarta. It was the fourth of a series of Age Group Programme Camps that are being offered by the FIG to those countries that had indicated an interest and willingness to adopt and implement the FIG Age Group Programme.
The enthusiastic participation of this relatively unknown gymnastics country was beyond any expectations. A total of 54 coaches from every part of the country attended and those coaches were equally split between Men’s and Women’s Artistic Gymnastics – 27 of each. In addition, dozens of demonstrator gymnasts of all levels were present throughout the camp bringing the total number of participants to over 80 – a record for any such camp or academy. The quality of the gymnasts and their future potential was surprisingly high. It bodes well or a very successful gymnastics future for Indonesia. The FIG Age Group Programme is expected to help in that process.
The FIG expert and course leader for this camp was Jeff Thomson, the former Men’s Programme Director of Canada and Education Director of New Zealand. He was joined by one of the Academy Programme’s most active experts, Lilia Ortiz-Lòpez of Mexico.
These camps are intended to expose as many coaches as possible from the host country to the FIG Age Group Programme so that it will be implemented and understood uniformly.
The Age Group Programme includes a testing and monitoring programme for MAG and WAG physical abilities and technical skills as well as a complete competition programme with modified optional rules for age-group gymnasts and compulsory exercises for all ages. It also includes a variety of additional information related to developing a systematic gymnastics programme that can lead to high performance. The programme was developed by Hardy Fink (CAN) for the competition programme, Dieter Hofmann (GER) for the testing programme and Carol-Angela Orchard (CAN) for the dance and choreographic content. The just completed second edition of the published programme and manual was used at this camp.
The five-day camp focused primarily on practical work in the gymnasium with coaches and their gymnasts on the various technical and physical tests, the compulsory exercises and the modified optional rules. Some theory background was provided to promote the FIG philosophy of protecting gymnasts during the growth years.
Thank you to the President Dr. Waluyo of the Indonesia Gymnastics Federation and his staff of workers and volunteers for making this first FIG coach education event of 2013 such a huge success.
On the same day as the Age Group Camp began in Jakarta, an FIG Academy for Rhythmic Gymnastics got underway in Baku, Azerbaijan. Additional such Age Group camps will be held before the end of January in Singapore, Jordan and Malaysia. —- FIG
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