Women Level 7 Mental Block

[Gymnast10]

Hi there! I’m a level seven gymnast having a huge mental block on my handstand back- handspring series on beam. I’ve had it competition ready at the end of August, but for the past two months, I’ve been blocking. At first, it wasn’t so bad. I was able to do it on high- medium beams, but it has gotten to a point where I can’t do one on the low beams with mats. I come home crying every night because I can’t do it, and the stress of competition season is really getting to me. At my gym we do routines everyday and everybody already has their skills on high beams, without any mats. My coaches are not very understanding, and just yell at me when I don’t do it. Any tips or help? Thanks so much.

 

[Dahlialover]

You don’t deserve to be yelled at for being a normal person with a nervous system that is designed to avoid danger. Pressure like that only makes mental blocks worse! It doesn’t sound like this is a positive environment for your mental health. I’m sorry you are going through this.

My first instinct as a parent would be to get you away from those toxic coaches by changing gyms or switching to xcel, but it’s a bad time of year for that. Another option is mindset coaching. There is a gymnastics mindset coaching program offered by https://completeperformancecoaching.com/
That seems promising. We attended just the free webinar series the offer and it made a big difference for my child. You might really benefit from their program.

Good luck.

 

[Gymnast10]

Thank you so much. I will definitely check the link you posted out. I’ve always been a 38 or higher gymnast, and my coaches really like me, but they have really high standards for me. It is a little bit hard to watch everyone have their skills, when I can’t do a series with mats on a floor beam. Not that I’m jealous of them, but I just feel dissapoonted in myself.

 

[Dahlialover]

Thank you so much. I will definitely check the link you posted out. I’ve always been a 38 or higher gymnast, and my coaches really like me, but they have really high standards for me. It is a little bit hard to watch everyone have their skills, when I can’t do a series with mats on a floor beam. Not that I’m jealous of them, but I just feel dissapoonted in myself.

You are a normal human being having a completely normal nervous system reaction to a perceived danger. You are not failing and you should not be disappointed in yourself. You have encountered an obstacle and it will take time and persistence to get through it. This totally normal and it happens to everyone at some point. If your brain would let you do that series, then you’d be up there doing it! It’s not a choice, it more like an injury that happened through no fault of your own and requires recovery time. Recovery from mental blocks involves doing lots of reps of easier progressions until your brain decides that it’s safe to allow you to perform the skill you are blocked on. They key thing is to be patient with yourself and just take it step by step. The more pressure you put on yourself, the more unsafe your brain feels. Just focus on the baby steps and be really kind to yourself and you will get there.

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

There is a solution to mental blocks, but unfortunately it's extremely extremely difficult:

Stop stressing about it.

The systems in your brain that deal with identifying and reacting to survival threats have, for whatever reason, decided that series is a threat. And the more you worry about the skill, the more it reinforces in your brain that it is indeed a threat.

So as much as you can, try to breathe deep and let the stress go. I know, easier said than done, but do the best you can.

From a coaching perspective, I'd do two things. First, I'd replace the series with something else. A handstand backhandspring is, developmentally, one of the best options for L7 beam series; however, there are other options that can still fit the requirements as a stopgap while you work through the challenge of getting comfortable with the series.

Second, I'd break it down and take a step back. Experiment to find how much it needs to be broken down to stop feeling scary. Can you do it on floor? On a low beam? What about doing the backhandspring on it's own without the handstand; are you able to do that? If you can isolate the exact step in the process where it starts to become scary, and break that step step down into drills and progressions and whatever else makes it feel less threatening, then you can gradually work your way back up.

Beam is not my specialty, so there are probably other coaches here who know more than I do about how you might break down this particular challenge. But the overall idea with any gymnastics challenge, be it physical or mental, is essentially the same: break it down into components see which components are still challenging, break those down into even smaller components, etc. Then build back up.

Good luck!