🔄Rotations (& athletes)
Learn what a rotations are and what they’re used for.
Last updated
Learn what a rotations are and what they’re used for.
Last updated
Rotations are groups of athletes within a session. Each rotation represents an ordered group of athletes that will compete on each apparatus. When specifying rotations within a session, you are specifying the initial apparatus and the starting order of the athletes. In other words, when a session begins, the athletes and their coaches begin at the rotation's apparatus. Once everyone is done competing everyone will move over to the next apparatus and compete there.
In Gym Art Meets contains intrinsic information. This guide will act as an overview of the concepts and tools necessary to create your rotations in the best way possible. Here we cover:
Here's a visual, interactive guide to help understand how rotations work:
Rotations are groups of athletes within a session that will travel around the different apparatus together to present their routines. The group of athletes that is assigned to a rotation in a session's Rotations page is assigned to start at the apparatus of that rotation in the competition.
A rotation also has a specific order of competition for athletes. The order in the rotation's tile is the initial order and will change as they move to the next rotation. Each changing of apparatus shifts the athletes forward (moves first to last, second to first etc) based on the Rotation Bump Number set in the Session's settings.
For example, if athletes in Group A are assigned to the Vault rotation, they will have their competition there. Once everyone in the venue has competed, Group A moves to Uneven Bars. From there, the athlete who competes first on the Vault will now compete last, and the athlete who competed second will compete first...
To view and modify the rotations of a session,
From the Schedules page of your meet, click Edit Session
navigate to the Rotations section of the session.
The athletes assigned to a rotation represent a group that will be competing alongside one another on each apparatus. They will begin on the apparatus of the rotation, and then progress to other apparatus to complete their other routines.
Generally, organizers prefer to keep the competition time of rotations around 20 minutes long, so they won't add any more than 7 or 8 athletes to a rotation.
The athletes in a rotation do not have to be from the same category or the same team. For example, we may have three athletes from the High Flyer team in Level 2 and five athletes from the Pointed Toes team in Level 3.
The order of the athletes is the initial order in which they will compete at the first apparatus. Subsequent apparatus the same group compete on will change their order by 'bumping'.
For example, when at apparatus two, the second will compete first, the third will compete second, and the first athlete will compete last. Similarly, on the third apparatus, the third athlete will compete first, the fourth second, the first second-last and the second last.
The number of places each athlete is shifted is determined by the session's Rotation Bump Number. It defaults to 1 but can be changed to whatever you like. If you set it to two, for example, the athlete in first will compete 2nd to last on the next apparatus.
One of the major tasks of an organizer is deciding how to divide the athletes from a session's competitions evenly and equitably into the rotations. Not only do we not want coaches to be running around to different apparatus and not properly tending to their athletes but we also want to reduce the amount of rule changes judges have to go through from athlete to athlete. Finally, how can we do this while dividing 23 athletes into 6 rotations?
This problem is non-trivial and poses a great challenge to someone new to scheduling. We have created a tool that will automatically assign the athletes rotations in a matter of seconds. Not only is it fast, but the optimality of the athletes', coaches', and judges' experience is mathematically grounded.
To add athletes to your rotation, you must
Add subdivisions to your session.
Add athletes to your rotations by:
Using our auto-assignment tool
Manually selecting athletes
We have a dedicated guide on how to add athletes to sessions and rotations here:
We also have a guide on how to use the automatic assignment tool, as well as how to optimally assign athletes across rotations.
Each rotation specifies an apparatus. This apparatus represents two things:
The initial starting place for the group athletes
An apparatus that is to be completed by all other athlete groups
Each rotation represents the initial starting place, but also a future destination of the athletes in the session. This means that if you want to have an all-around competition on six apparatus but only have three rotations, you need to keep the three empty apparatus in the session's rotation list.
You can also optionally add break apparatus to your list of apparatus. Learn more about dealing with the apparatus-rotation dynamic in this guide:
Since a rotation represents the starting place for athletes, we also include a future apparatus order they will follow under the details section of the tile. This list represents the order in which the athletes will compete on the apparatus, starting with the apparatus in the top left corner.
Consider the first session from our ongoing World Championships ~ WAG Senior example. In this session, we will need four rotations, each with five athletes (for simplicity). However, to spice up this example, we can imagine that we have 23 athletes instead of 20, meaning we can't divide them into groups of five across the apparatus. Furthermore, the three extra athletes are from the same team.
In this approach, we use the pre-generated four rotations for the four apparatus in Women's Gymnastics. With the athlete assignment tool, we automatically assign the athletes across the rotations. This results in the teams being grouped as much as possible, and the athletes being in groups of sizes 6, 6, 6, and 5.
However, in this case, we'll necessarily have to divide some teams up. This means if we don't use the assignment tool we'll have to play around with the various ways to combine the teams that produce the least amount of headache for the coaches.
Instead of using only four apparatus, we can create a break apparatus so that the extra 3 athletes (from the same team) can all be together. All-in-all this creates five rotations, each with a group of athletes of sizes 5, 5, 5, 5, and 3.
