Women mental blocks on beam

[charsgymnastics]

i started gymnastics late, i mean LATE. not 7 or 8 or anything like that. I started at 13, more like restarted because I was a level 3 when I was 6.5/7 years old. Im having a horrible time on beam and I need to get my stuff together. I have NO acro for beam. I cant handstand and last year I competed a forward roll but only made 2 routines of all my meets i went to. I had a cartwheel over the summer but had a scary fall where I split and then fell on my head which scared me out of doing the skill. Now its October and I need to get this skill back so I dont have to compete a forward roll again. I have the skill, I just cant get my mind to go through with it and my coaches wont help me by changing the height of the beam to lower it so I can work my way up so I have to move it to high beam right away. Any advice truly helps

 

[sauce]

I’m really sorry your coaches won’t let you try a few on the low beam, but you CAN do this!! Put a cheese mat against the beam and practice your cartwheel stomach facing the cheese. You may need to stack up some mats for the cheese to be tall enough. This really helps with building confidence and emphasizing open shoulders and hips. Another tip is to watch that first foot land, then pull up really tight to that mountain climber to land steadily. You could also see if your coach would spot you.
Some other acro options (but I really encourage that cartwheel as it will help you progress with connections later!!) are headstands (hits vertical), and backward rolls (can hit vertical if you do a back shoulder-stand roll).
If the regular handstand doesn’t work, you could try a handstand-straddle down (kind of like those back handspring-straddle down to stomach things), the handstand-straddle down can also be connected to a backward roll.
You’ve got this!!