Gymnastics is the basic sport, popularly acclaimed to be the ‘Mother of all Sports’. Gymnastics provides all around development, since it utilizes and builds all the muscles of the body as opposed to other sports which mostly mobilize only specific muscle groups. Gymnastics is one of the world’s oldest sports that tests strength, balance, flexibility and coordination. It is widely used for improving the hand eye co-ordination of toddlers and young children. That is the basic reason why this sport is made mandatory in most schools all over the world.

At PTKS, Vile Parle (E), have been in the field of Gymnastics for the last 10 years now, conducting gymnastic classes for all age groups from 2 to 18 years. We started at a time when gymnastics was not promoted in many institutions. Dr. Ramesh Prabhoo, the President, extended his full support for this sport giving space and buying gymnastics equipments, in this complex. We started off with 10 children and today, about 200 children are learning gymnastics across all age groups every day. We implement a planned developmental program which ensures and tracks the progress of each child right from age 4 to 10 years. We have a set of 10 dedicated and enthusiastic coaches who are trained specifically to coach as per the development program, thus ensuring proper implementation of the same.

Coaching Methods in gymnastics

• Every child joins Regular gymnastics classes in PTKS
• All the children are grouped based on their age and a coach designated to each group. Typically each batch has about 6 groups (10-13 children per group).
• After 3 months (could vary based on individuals), if the child is loving gymnastics and doing well and we would want him/her to go in for advanced coaching, senior coaches along with the current coach talks to the child’s parents. In that session, the parents are explained exactly what is advanced gymnastics, how we go about coaching children, what is the expectation from the parents and children. Mainly we make it clear that the children will need to spare more time for gymnastics (extra classes), attend classes regularly and also will need to pay additional fees for the same. Only after the parents agree, the children are selected for advanced coaching.
• We in PTKS follow age appropriate developmental level program designed to ensure that all the abilities of a child are developed by the time he/she is 10 years old, which has a defined syllabus for every age.

USPs of Gymnastics coaching

• 12 trained coaches teaching gymnastics at the beginner and Intermediate level
• Affiliated to Andheri Taluka Gymnastics Association and Bombay District Gymnastics Association
• Planned timetable, curriculum for all batches
• Tracking progress of all beginner as well as advanced gymnasts.
• Fitness assessments for all batches as per their age groups. We also generate report cards for each student
• Regular ongoing training of all coaches ensuring that all coaching is correct
• Innovative methods for coaching youngsters with age appropriate focus on development of health and skill related fitness components
• Use of innovative equipments like bean bags, hula hoops, Frisbee and scarves for building hand eye co-ordination