Gymnastics
Is your head holding you back in the gym?
Fear and blocks are common for gymnasts. How you handle them determines how fast you’ll move through them!
For almost every gymnast, fear and the sudden and “mysterious” inability to do skills that were once “easy” are a normal and regular part of your gymnastics career. Fear can be triggered by learning new skills, experiencing a scary close call, fall, or an injury, or by seeing one of your teammates fall and get hurt. Fear is often one of the biggest mental challenges facing the gymnast, their coach, and the parents.
Becoming a mentally tough gymnast means that you need to learn how to change your relationship with fear in the gym. It doesn’t mean there is something wrong with you or that you’re mentally weak! It’s not the enemy! In fact, fear keeps you safe in the gym and is frequently a signal to your brain that your body may not yet be ready to safely attempt a skill. (Perhaps you lack the flexibility, spatial awareness, or timing to accomplish it). Fear is also a positive indication that you’re moving up to the next level in this sport. Every time you attempt a new skill or otherwise step outside of your comfort zone, fear will be there to greet you.
However, fear will almost always pop up after anything scary happens and when it does, it can temporarily knock your trained performance skills offline. So what do you do about this or any kind of fear in the gym? Most coaches, parents, and even gymnasts believe that the athlete must push themselves towards their fear in order to overcome it. Let me let you in on a slightly obvious secret here! This is far easier said than done!
Strategies for overcoming fears and regaining lost skills
- Understand that fears are normal. There is nothing wrong with you for being too scared to go.
- How YOU respond to your fears and lost skills will determine how fast or slow you move through them.
- Understand that you’ve lost your skills because you feel unsafe inside (even if you don’t feel afraid!) and your nervous system is instinctively protecting you by freezing.
- Be patient and forgiving when you can’t get yourself to go.
- Take steps to help yourself feel safer as you work on the lost skill: Get a spot, pile mats up, do lead-up skills, etc.
- Don’t put time deadlines on yourself. They will only increase your fear and make your block worse.
Often many performance fears and blocks in the gym are fed by past physically and/or emotionally upsetting events.
What causes the gymnast to lose skills? All too often, gymnasts who mysteriously lose their skills can’t simply get themselves to “just go for it!” They tell me, “No matter what I try, I can’t get myself to go!” or “Something in the back of my mind is stopping me!”
You get lost in the middle of a skill, get the wind knocked out of you, and scare yourself badly and when that happens, your nervous system and body automatically memorize everything about this upsetting event and this memory will stay with you (mostly out of awareness) for months or more, long after the upsetting event has been forgotten. You may not see a block right away, but at some point, there’s a “trigger event.” The gymnast has another scary fall or is in some way reminded of the past upset. And it’s these old past upsets that ultimately end up leaving the gymnast feeling unsafe inside and instinctively triggering the freeze response: The gymnast can’t get him/herself to go for it!
The good news here is that with a little training and practice, you can learn to systematically recognize and work through your fears, regain your skills and develop mental toughness.
This is the process that I teach gymnasts, along with how to develop the other mental toughness skills which will help them take their performance to the next level.
Remember, your physical skills and talents as a gymnast are always limited by your mental skills and ability to deal with the fear. Don’t leave this all-important part of your training to chance.
As a sports performance consultant, Dr. G works with gymnasts from around the world, from Olympians on down, specializing in helping them overcome fears and blocks and perform to their potential. Dr. G is a USA Gymnastics National Congress Clinician and presents at clubs around the US, training parents, gymnasts and their coaches. He is the co-author of This Is Your Brain On Sports: Beating Blocks, Slumps and Performance Anxiety For Good! His audio mental training program, Gymnastics With The Competitive Edge. is specifically-designed to help gymnasts overcome performance fears & blocks.
Resources
HOW SOME GYMNASTICS COACHES BADLY MISHANDLE THEIR ATHLETES’ FEARS She was afraid of her back handspring on beam and so kept balking, unable to get herself to go for the skill. First the coach responded with impatience and disgust, as if this 10-year-old was deliberately being oppositional. When that didn…
OVERCOMING PERFORMANCE FEARS AND BLOCKS Are you struggling with a seemingly mysterious performance problem? Have you or your athlete suddenly lost BASIC abilities? FINALLY understand where this FRUSTRATING problem comes from and what you can do about it!
THE MENTAL SIDE OF ATHLETIC INJURIES The mental pain caused by your injury and the temporary or permanent loss of your sport can be far more devastating than the strained or torn ligaments, pulled muscles, ripped cartilage or broken bones. Unless this type of pain is directly addressed and “treated”, your overall recovery will be slow and incomplete.
