Acrobatic Training Philosophies: Modern and Traditional Approach
by Flosha, 16.04.2025
Among professional acro coaches there are different training philosophies. I want to shed some light on two philosophies in particular by highlighting their differences. Please notice that in many regards I will exaggerate the two positions in order to simplify and highlight their difference, while in reality many coaches may of course work and think in a more vague and less distinct mixture of the two.
All coaches have in common, when doing it well, that the athletes are constantly taught to become more and more independent and take responsibility. A good coach manages to reduce his need, he doesn’t just give orders, but teaches his athletes and steps away to let them practice independently and feel safe on their own as soon as they are ready. Making them ready is their craft. But other then that we can identify two approaches based on two very different premises and assumptions about training:
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The “modern” and more “western” approach puts more focus on the individual; it deems it very relevant what the individual feels and designs the training around it, it puts the individual first and considers training to be something that “serves” the individual. To the athletes their coach is like a service provider and they even may see themselves as such; they may admire him for his knowledge, professionalism or kindness, even consider him a friend, but he remains a service provider in the context of modern society, in which he considers his job as a coach as his “career” and as somewhat prestigious, embellishing himself with sportive success to gain more clients and funding, like in a business. It is the athletes dreams that the coach makes his own and tries helping them to achieve, like some kind of salesmen seeing (or producing) a demand and trying to fulfill the need; the modern coach may also often be paid by the athletes or their parents.
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The traditional and more “eastern” approach puts more focus on the work itself and the work in sports is the “training”. The individual doesn’t play much of a role, the work is in focus and the individual transcends in the work, transcends in training. The coach is not as much committed to the athletes as to the work or, in a more traditional understanding, to the “art”, to use a more “poetical” language. In this ideal traditional understanding they may see themselves and are seen by others as preservers of an art, like respected master craftsmen in medieval society. To this coach the athletes should strive to become ideal embodiments of the work or “art” and the coach is transforming them into these embodiments like a craftsmen; to the athletes the coach is like a master working on the material of their body and they devote themselves to the work that the coach wants to express “through them” or wants them to express. It is the coaches plan and vision that the athletes make their own and act out. Traditionally these coaches are not paid by the athletes or their parents but are provided for in other ways (such as by a lord or by the state or by some other donors).
The modern coach, focused on the individual, approaches training somewhat like this:
“I train everyone. You and/or your parents have specific goals and we agree on them like in a contract. My job is to help you achieve them. You work as hard as your body can manage. We have to make sure that you won’t do too much in order to prevent injury and I will adjust my training around these needs of yours. If my athletes don’t train hard enough it is my failure that I couldn’t motivate them enough. If I cannot lead them to success I haven’t fulfilled my side of the contract. But as much as I may love the sports and success, the well-being of my athletes comes first and I have to make the training fit into their lifes. While I have to push them to some degree in order to make progress, it is inacceptable to train them through tears.”
Some coaches following this approach have tremendous success. But there are also many coaches inclined to this approach who are never leading their athletes to any higher skills, as they cannot manage to motivate them enough to train as regularly and as hard as it is inebitably necessary.
The traditional coach on the other hand is rigorous about the work and his approach could be summarised like this:
“The work has to be done. If it can’t be done you must work harder. Other men have done it before, so you can do it too. You won’t injure your body if we balance out this strenuous work with enough additional work of “regenerative” nature, to remain healthy. It is not my job to motivate you. If you can’t stand this training you can go home, as you don’t have the spirit to become an Acrobat. There is no sense in training you then. I train you and give you my all, if you’re willing to put in the work and give everything. No more, no less. Organise your life around the training, I won’t organise my training around your life. I will not promise you to give you success in sports and I am not doing this for you or for your parents. It’s about the work, the practice of the art, that both me and you are (or ought to be) commited to; success is a result of this commitment, not the goal. If you have this commitment to it there is joy and passion in the work inspite of any hardship and tears.”
Some coaches who fall more or less into this category are also having a lot of success and bring forth healthy, high level athletes. At the down-side of this approach there are coaches who, while imitating the discipline of the masters in the craft, playing hard, are not themselves skilled enough in the craft to prevent injury and to adapt to individual needs, resulting in a training that is a mere grind. These coaches are filtering out athletes radically not by inner disposition and will, as the masters would, but merely by the inability of most to sustain the almost schematical un-differentiated training programme applied to everyone without discernment. They waste even their best athletes in that they do not care about their health past their sports career, resulting in athletes being regularly broken down before even reaching adulthood, while the coaches do not care, as they are already be replaced by the next generation. The approach of these coaches, that I consider as negative examples of the above summarised tendency (there are very different, positive examples too), can be compared to the educational system of Sparta. Whoever doesn’t make it is simply left behind.
This is not the approach of the reasonable coaches falling into this category. They may not train everyone, as not everyone is able to do the work, but they are able to bring everyone who is willing to commit to a high level of skills according to their own abilities, even if that means that some athlete may take ten times as long to learn something as someone else. No one is given up who has the will and commitment to continue.
How Soviet Work Society defined the Acrobatic Training System
To really understand this difference, we have to dive a bit deeper into the cultural roots of acrobatic gymnastics, as it evolved in the Soviet Union. The soviets promoted a very particular philosophy of labour and developed a labour culture, in which the labour or “work” was given the utmost importance. The revolution was grounded in the idea to overcome and put an end to the exploitation of labour. Obviously in reality due to the authoritarian and violent nature of the state (compared to anarchist approaches to socialism) the revolution just led to a different form of exploitation. Nonetheless there was this general notion that you are working not for your survival or for your own profit and also not for a “nation” so much, but for a higher cause, for an ideal and a dream of international brotherhood. Work was considered sacred.
To quote the last version of the constitution:
It is the duty, as well as the honor, for every able-bodied citizen in the USSR to work conscientously in his chosen, socially useful activity, and strictly to observe labour discipline. Evading socially useful work is incompatible with the principles of socialist society.
Thus, the idea was: You consider it your duty and honor to work in some form that is socially useful. Read socially useful, not profitable (two attributes that people in capitalist societies easily confuse, while they have little to do with each other). They are choosing a socially useful activity, ideally one that is in accordance with ones own abilities, tendencies, inclinations, enabling one to express one self and serve society the best by following ones own profession. Then you work on that choosen profession with strict discipline. While the USSR is no more, this philosophy which generations have been educated in and this discipline that has still been the norm for several coaches that were born and brought up in the soviet system, is still very much alive in the training systems of these coaches and is shaping the life and philosophy of the athletes training in these systems. This fact does not change by the horrors and all the new exploitation that the soviet system has also brought about in different areas.
But how does this soviet ideal of labour translate to training and to training acrobatic gymnastics in particular?
The idea is rather simple: The harder you work, the better you become. If you work hard it is an honour, it reflects your work ethic and your commitment to the ideal (this doesn’t have to be the ideal of a socialist society, it can as well be the ideal of acrobatics, to become the embodiment of an excellent acrobat). If you do not constantly work, if you aren’t working hard but only do the necessary or if you need constant outside motivation, you just aren’t taken serious and won’t be respected much because you don’t take the work serious yourself and don’t respect the discipline.
But if you do, if you work hard to the best of your ability, taking the work serious and respecting the discipline, you are taken serious and will be respected. Working doesn’t mean constantly showing how hard you’re working. It means working consistently in silence until the results speak for themselves.
Resuts here are not profit and fame, the result is acrobatic skill and success in the sport or the art you have chosen, by just living that life as a sportsman or sportsgirl and doing the deed.
In order to illustrate this point by an example. If I remember correctly, the very first direct interaction that I ever had with a well known champion in the sport was that she was telling me, after she hadn’t known me and I hadn’t been of any relevance to her before, that she ‘now thinks differently about me and respects me’ because she sees that I work hard and how much I love acrobatics. This was the very first thing I remember her telling me and she was still a child at the time. This anecdote may show well enough how athletes brought up with this approach share and were educated in this very same philosophy of work.
Now, in capitalist society the idea of working hard is well known too. But it is working hard in order to succeed, whereas success here is equated with profit. In difference to socialist society (speaking in principial ways) you are not respected much for working hard in and out of itself, you are respected most for the profit you gain, even if you gain that profit without working hard at all, while hard-working labourers are used in capitalism in no less exploitative ways for maximising profit in the hands of the few. But this is not the place for any social or socio-economic critique.