Mental Block!

[Hayley]

Hi. I am having trouble psyching myself up for backwards skills. I know what to do but when I try to do a backwards skill on the beam I freeze. The more I stress over it the worse it seems to get. Does anyone have any tips to help me push past this? I want to do it and am wasting too much time standing there thinking about it. If I can't do this back walkover soon I am in big trouble! Thanks!

 

[GymnasChic915]

say positive things ex. I already have it, stick the landing and try to just go for it, you will know what to do. maybe try thinking as if you are on the floor and you can't go crooked. I know when I was learning on the low beam if i said these things i wouldn't have as much of a problem.

 

[nastialuikinfan]

i know what you mean. that happens to me from time to time. what normallly happens to me is well i start from the floor on a line, then i go to a chicken beam, and then ill go the beam. and what startles me when i go to the beam is when my coach makes me go to the beam with a bad lead up. and maybey thats whats happening to you. my advice to you is to go back to the floor and work your way back up and dont go back to the beam unless you end on a good one and your feeling confident with them. and maybey one day when there not good at all on floor maybey, just go to your coach and tell him/her that there not good today, so you can work on something else. another thing that may be a problem is that your shoulder flexibility is not the best. thats the worst with me cause its a big factor whether you think about it or not . so yeah ! hope it helps!

 

[jenniffir]

Oh don't you just love mental blocks? they are like brick walls that you have to run into and hope that you are strong enough to push through!
I have struggled with about 2 million little terrifying things (most recent landing on my FACE in a backhandspring 2 weeks befor my fisrt competition) and the best trick i can think of is just thinking about what your afriad of; if you are afraid to miss your hands just know you have control over that and keep your arm straight and together when you preparing to go, i you are afraid to split the beam know that its really hard to split on a backwalkover and it will heal (i just did that too but i jumped back up and nailed a good rutine).
Last of all gymnastics is scary but do you want the skill more than your scared of it? I'm sure you do.