Everything Revolves Around Gymnastics: Athletes and Parents Make Sense of Elite Youth Sport

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While the participants in the study reviewed here are Dutch elite gymnasts, the experiences they represent are almost universal and will certainly resonate with many British gymnasts at almost all levels of the sport.

“‘Everything revolves around gymnastics’: athletes and parents make sense of elite youth sport” by Froukje Smits, Frank Jacobs, and Annelies Knoppers, examines how emotionally abusive coaching practices persist and become normalised in elite women’s gymnastics.

Commissioned by the Royal Dutch Gymnastics Association (NGA) following media disclosures by former gymnasts, the researchers interviewed 14 elite women gymnasts (ages 14–30) and 12 parents (ages 36–51) in the Netherlands. Using Karl Weick’s sense-making framework, the study explores how athletes and parents interpret ambiguous or abusive situations and why policy interventions often fail to disrupt this culture.

1. The Contextual Frame: Three Core Coaching Techniques

The study identifies three main techniques used by coaches to establish dominance and enforce obedience:

  • Isolation: Gymnasts train behind closed doors, are discouraged from maintaining outside friendships or non-sport activities, and are systematically kept at a distance from their parents.
  • Body Regulation: Strict monitoring of weight and body composition, efforts to delay puberty or physical growth, and forcing athletes to push past pain and manage injuries without proper rest.
  • Intimidation: Pervasive shouting, public humiliation, swearing, ignoring athletes, and threatening retribution if gymnasts or parents complain.

2. How Athletes and Parents Normalize Abuse (Sense-Making)

Using Weick’s seven properties of sense-making, the authors explain why athletes and parents tolerate and rationalize these harmful practices:

  • Identity Construction & Retrospection: Gymnasts construct their identity around being an “elite athlete” from a very young age. Because their self-worth and future revolve around gymnastics, questioning the coach feels dangerous to their identity.
  • Process of Enactment & “Good Attitude”: Enduring extreme pain, crying during practice, and total obedience are framed as having the “right mindset”. Athletes who express pain or assert themselves are labeled as “whiners” with a bad attitude.
  • The “Code of Silence”: When parents attempt to intervene or complain, coaches often punish the gymnast more severely in the gym. Over time, gymnasts learn to hide pain, emotional distress, and injuries from their parents to avoid extra punishment, creating an entrenched code of silence.
  • Social Activity & Family Sacrifice: Gymnastics dominates family schedules, diets, and finances (“everything revolves around gymnastics”). Parents feel heavily invested and defer entirely to the coach’s perceived expertise.
  • Superficial Shifts in Familiar Structures: Even after the NGA mandated “open gym” policies and positive coaching workshops, coaches maintained control by restricting viewing hours, taping over windows, or conveying weight demands through physiotherapists rather than directly.
  • Plausibility Over Accuracy: Athletes and parents accept extreme demands because it seems plausible that harsh control, staying small, and absolute compliance are the required price to reach international or Olympic success. [GymPal note – in our experience, the level of the goal doesn’t really matter, nor does the parent need to be personally invested, they juut need to believe that their child wants to achieve it]

3. Main Takeaways and Policy Implications

  • Micro-Level Interventions Are Insufficient: Isolated measures like workshops or signed agreements do not eliminate abusive practices if the broader organisational culture remains unchanged.
  • Systemic Contextual Change is Required: Meaningful reform requires addressing macro-level pressures (such as win-at-all-costs mentalities and early specialisation) alongside institutional structures.
  • Empowering Parent and Athlete Voices: Parents currently act primarily as facilitators rather than protective advocates because they lack collective platforms. Creating safe, independent channels for athletes and parents to voice critique without fear of retribution is essential for real cultural change.

Download the full chapter here https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781351271882-5/everything-revolves-around-gymnastics-athletes-parents-make-sense-elite-youth-sport-froukje-smits-frank-jacobs-annelies-knoppers

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