Confronting Harmful Coaching Practices in Gymnastics Head On With Thomas Elder

The SHIFT Show

Today on the podcast I’m very excited to share another thought-provoking and important conversation about cultural change, morals, and ethics of coaching with Tom Elder. With 13 years of experience coaching, he also has an extensive education in Philosophy with his research focused on child autonomy in abuse in youth sports, which is obviously a very important topic that we're dealing with right now in gymnastics. Once again he had my brain turning talking about gymnastics culture, the things that we have grown to accept in our sport, philosophies, coaching techniques. We explored the negative impact these can have on athletes if we allow some of these things to continue.

This might be a tough episode to listen to if you're someone who's going through this yourself, or has a history with someone who maybe has, unfortunately, experienced harmful behaviors.

“I hope that if I could achieve one thing from this podcast, I can get one person who's struggling with this, to feel like and realize they're not alone. And they have the whole backing of the community. We're all supporting them. But there's going to be some tough roads for people to go down if the sports really going to get better. And we need brave and courageous people who are willing to lead the way and are willing to take that for themselves so that the community itself gets a little bit stronger.” Tom Elder

You can contact Thomas via [e-mail]

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