ISU gymnastics coach Jay Ronayne hired the perfect assistant coach. This coach remembers and sees everything, literally never leaves the gym, never lies and never has arguments with the gymnasts.

You could almost say he or she was the best assistant coach Ronayne has ever have hired, except this coach wasn’t hired – it was installed.

Meet coach TiVo.

When Ronayne arrived at Iowa State prior to the 2007 season, he brought with him a system, also used by the U.S. swimming and diving team, that is helping to revolutionize training for the ISU gymnasts.

The system is set up so four cameras record different apparatuses in Iowa State’s gymnastics training room in Beyer Hall. The cameras record constantly, and run footage to four different TV’s where TiVo shows its true value.

After the gymnasts are done with a routine, they can run over to the monitor and use TiVo with Ronayne to rewind, pause and watch what they just performed.

“I know I am a visual learner as well as some of the other girls on the team,” said junior Jasmine Thompson. “It just makes the correction more realistic because we can actually understand what they’re talking about and see the position that we are doing wrong, instead of just hearing it and having to make the correction on our own.”

The system not only allows for Ronayne to work with the athletes, but it also gives him peace of mind when he is busy working with another gymnast. Cue coach TiVo.

“It’s like having an extra coach in the gym, and a coach that never has their back to anybody,” Ronayne said. “I can have an athlete working on something and there’s a camera on them and it’s recording 100 percent of the time. That’s an important thing for us, because I can go back and review with the athlete technique and body position while the camera is still recording another athlete. So there is never any down time and nothing is missed.”

One of the biggest benefits of having the TiVo system is that the athletes become comfortable with what they look like while they are performing, and get used to performing for an audience. The time spent in front of the camera is beneficial when it comes time for the gymnasts to perform in competition.

“The camera is essentially judging them all the time,” Ronayne said. “An athlete can go to the monitor and see themselves from the point of view of a judge or a coach, and look at it as an outside observer and say that person there is doing it wrong.”

A coach either has trust with their athletes or doesn’t. Coach TiVo is helping Ronayne establish that trust with the ISU gymnasts.

“I think [TiVo] helps us understand what the correction that they are giving us is, because we can actually see what the coaches are seeing,” said freshman Megan Barnes. “It helps us trust what they are telling us and helps us to be able to know that what they are telling us is right because we see also.”

Before TiVo, it was often the gymnast’s belief against the coach’s. Thompson, who was around in the pre-TiVo era, said she would sometimes question what the coaches were saying because they didn’t have hard evidence to back up what they saw as wrong in a routine.

“Sometimes you feel like you’re making the correction when you’re really not, because it is really hard to tell body position and stuff when you’re in the air, flying,” Thompson said. “Seeing it on the TiVo makes you really think about it and makes you over-do what you think you are already doing.”

Ronayne came to an ISU gymnastics program seeking the trust of a gymnastics squad that had just lost the coach who took them to the NCAA “Super Six,” K.J. Kindler.

After one season, TiVo seems to have helped ease the transition for both Ronayne and the gymnasts.

“It really does help our relationship, especially with him being a brand new coach last year,” Thompson said. “He did really well. It was a learning experience between us and him, and that really did help because it let us know that he did know what he was talking about.”