Mental blocks/Performance depression

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Jeremiah

Gymnast
This may be kind of long, so heads up. I'm 19 and male too, just FYI. So lately I've been having a lot of trouble with my tumbling. My little group of friends goes to our local gym all the time, we are on the acro team there, on which I am a base. I just tumble casually, I'm not a tumbler on the team, and I don't have coaches, I just try to learn with my friends. Lately I've hit a but of a serious slump. For awhile I was progressing fast, once I broke through the initial fear of back flipping I got other skills pretty fast, including fronts, front half, back half, back fulls (almost) and arabians, on the trampoline, and I learned back tucks on the ground. I kept progressing until I hit my peak so far, being able to do combos on the trampoline (back>back>back) , (front>back>barani>back) and I got my roundoff>tuck on the tumble tramp. Then suddenly, almost like overnight it was like I hit a wall, but not only that, I hit it and bounced off, not being able to do combos on the trampoline, and looking my round off tuck. That was about 3 months ago and now I feel like I'm even worse. I feel horrible, I've been trying so hard, but it's like nothing is working, and my blocks are stronger than ever. And on top of that my friends are all way better than me, like triple full passes on spring floor. And my friend that started at the same time as me is working on his double full passes. I feel horrible, like every time I go with them I just don't understand what's stopping me to be able to advance. I have to convince myself to even want to go to the gym, and when I do I'm pretty much all alone in my skill level. And the only advice I seem to get is "Just do it" which if it were just that simple I feel like I've been trying hard enough for that to work... Very long story short has anyone else felt the same way? Or gone through something similar? If so did you get through it and how? And what are good tips to break a block of doing backflips in a pass, or combo. I can standing back tuck easily and without hesitation just about anywhere, and they are clean, so I just don't know what's wrong. I apologise for the length, I hope you enjoyed my novel lol
 
Hi Jeremiah,
Something similar happened with me when I hurt my back after doing a back tuck. I was terrified of rotation full stop. Goodbye walkovers, handsprings, flic flacs, front tucks, baranis, arabians, everything apart from cartwheels and handstands basically.
As I got strong enough to once more do these skills I was freaked, and it still takes me a while to go into my flic flacs on floor. I coach gymnastics and one of the things we do with our kids if they hurt themselves by doing, say, a front tuck, is taking it back to the beginning and going in progressions. Stretch jump -> Tuck jump -> Forward roll -> Stretch jump, tuck jump, forward roll -> dive roll -> and so on until finally they felt safe doing a Front Tuck again.
I took this advice under my belt and started from scratch. Handstand -> Handstand to Bridge -> Bridge Kickover -> Handspring onto a LOT of soft mats -> etc. until finally I felt safe and confident about doing a flic flac on the floor again.
Some days, I even have to start off really slowly and really drill the basics before I can get onto Roundoff Flic Flacs on the floor.

Hope this helps!!! :)
 

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