What the Commonwealth Games Taught Us About Raising Confident Kids

Last week, one of our JuniorGym-nasts spent their exploration time trying to recreate "the bars girl's routine" before I'd even had a chance to start class. I didn't have the heart to tell them Kate McDonald has probably trained more hours than they've been alive!

That's the thing about watching gymnastics at the top level: it doesn't look like work, it looks like magic.

For a few weeks every couple of years, every kid who's ever done a cartwheel in the backyard suddenly wants a piece of it.

Like most of our families, I watched as much of the Commonwealth Games gymnastics as I could get to. Partly because it's the sport I've spent my life in and partly because - I'll admit it - I love seeing these gymnasts I've watched grow up at national events perform on the world stage. But the bits that stuck with me this time had almost nothing to do with the scores. They were about the stuff we actually try to build here at Westside, every single week.

Confidence isn't the absence of a setback. It's what happens after one.

Georgia Godwin led the Australian women's team to gold in Glasgow - our country's first team title since 2010.

That's the headline.

The part that actually got me was the backstory: Godwin (who I've gotten to know over the years and is the most incredible young person) ruptured her Achilles about two years ago; an injury bad enough to end most careers and one that ruled her out of a second Olympics in Paris. She came back anyway. When the team crossed the line for gold, she was in tears and when someone asked how she'd got back, she didn't talk about training blocks. She said it had taken "an absolute village"

That's the version of confidence I actually want for the kids in our gym. Not the kind that never wobbles (every gymnast wobbles and every kid wobbles!) but the kind that gets back up because there are people around them who expect them to and who'll help them do it. That's not talent. It's something we build on purpose.

The moment you actually see is the least interesting part of it.

The rotation that put Australia ahead early was a huge score from Kate McDonald on uneven bars - about 30 seconds of art disguised as sport, which looked effortless. What you don't see is the thousands of reps behind it, most of them nowhere near that clean, most of them not filmed, most of them genuinely boring.

We say a version of this to parents all the time, especially in JuniorGym: the unglamorous stuff (the tenth go at a forward roll, the banana shaped handstand against the wall, the cartwheel that's really just a fast sideways splat) isn't the warm up to the good part. It is the good part. The confidence doesn't show up in the moment it finally clicks. It's already been built by then, in all the attempts before it that didn't.

Nobody gets there alone, no matter how it looks on the scoreboard.

The team that won gold had 19 year old Ruby Pass making her first Games appearance, standing next to teammates on their third. Different stages, same line-up, same result: the newer athlete lifted by the experienced ones and the experienced ones sharpened by having someone new alongside them.

It's the same thing that happens on our gym floor, just at a smaller scale. Although we've only existed for 18 months, a five-year-old in their first term of EduGym Foundation practices in the same gym as kids in the Westside Squad who've been doing gymnastics since they could walk. Nobody's there because they're the best. They're there because they're part of something.

That something turns out to matter more than talent does, especially early on.

Why I actually watch this stuff

I'll be honest; I watch elite gymnastics for the same reason I do this job and why I started Westside. I don't think it's really about the medals. I think it's because this sport teaches you, really early, that falling down isn't the end of the routine.

You get back up and you finish.

The next time? You go a bit further.

That's what our team is actually trying to build at Westside. Whether it's a kid in their first term of JuniorGym or if they end up on a podium somewhere down the track.

If you've got a little one who's been doing beam routines along the gutter since the Games wrapped up, we'd love to have them try it properly.

Book a free trial class and come see what we mean!