FIG Artistic Gymnastics Age Group Programme
Dhaka (BAN), February 22 – 26, 2013

LAUSANNE (SUI), FIG Office, March 4, 2013: A few days after the FIG Age Group Camp completed a three-county tour in Central America it moved to Bangladesh. It was hosted by its federation in the National Sports Council Gymnasium in the city of Dhaka from February 22 – 26, 2013

Twenty coaches, all from Bangladesh, attended the camp. Fourteen of them were Men’s Artistic Gymnastics (MAG) coaches six were there for Women’s Artistic. 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 level of Gymnastics, especially Women’s Artistic Gymnastics (WAG) is very low and the need for such a developmental programme was very obvious and very much appreciated.

The camp was considered very important by the Bangladesh Gymnastics Federation but also the Bangladesh Sports Community with keen interest shown also by the Bangladesh Olympic Committee with acting President Md Iqbal Hossain and General Secretary Col (retd) M Wali Ullah and a variety of other sports officials.

The FIG leader and WAG expert for the camp was Chris Evans of Great Britain who is a British WAG coach and has been an FIG expert at sixteen FIG Academies and is an Osteopath by profession. The MAG expert was Jeff Thomson who is the former Men’s Programme Director of Canada and Education Director of New Zealand.

The FIG Age Group Programme includes a testing and monitoring program 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 Spanish edition of the published program 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.

Thanks go to the President of the Bangladesh Gymnastic Federation, Sheikh Bashir Ahmed and members of his executive committee and organisational staff for the exceptional effort made to bring this FIG camp successfully to Dhakar.
 
The introduction of the FIG Age Group Programme continues in the coming month with seven such five-day camps in seven African locations: Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Zimbabwe.