Perhaps the most frustrating thing in a gymnastics gym are weird mental blocks.
Every coach has a dozen stories about inexplicable aversions.
Balking on skills can start at a young age. But it’s more often a problem with older gymnasts.
Most often on backwards skills: backward handspring, flyaway, backward tumbling on beam.
eHow posted an article with a few ideas: How to Deal with Gymnastics Mental Blocks
It’s worth clicking through. Each mental block is different. We handle them each individually.
Leave a comment if you have any strategies that work more often than not.
One odd thing … mental blocks are very rare for male gymnasts. Very common for female. I’ve never understood why.
20 comments ↓
Rick, I assume you don’t accept the answer that male gymnasts don’t want to be embarrassed or perceived as chicken for not throwing a skill (and still impliedly taught not to show as much emotion as girls, so don’t speak up when there is a mental block), in general are more aggressive, are a little more fearless because they know an injury that puts them out for 3 months isn’t as career affecting as it is for women, and learn from day 1 how to be less dependent on coaching because male coaching doesn’t typically break down skills in the same hyper-specific way that really good women’s coaching does (which sometimes leads to girls expecting their coach to fix the problem instead of fixing it themselves)?
This is definitely one of the most interesting topic in gymnastics i think. At the moment i am coaching a girl that has developed a permanent fear of backward tumbling, its absolutely insane,because physically she has all the attributes needed for a great RO-BHS and yet she won’t do it, however she can do a standing flic, and the other day clowning around she did was doing gainers. I don’t understand how she developed the fear. I will in honestly admit that i have become extremely frustrated with her, to the point were i think my coaching has been really poor with her in that respect.
It was good to read that site because it is important to be reminded to about a few concepts.
If any one here has any good advice please share cause i would be very interested in knowing, and believe me when i say that all the general and standard solutions have been approached, so do get creative with your recommendations.
She does have 1 really bad character flaw, and that is that she gets into these negative moods and becomes absolutely useless to work with. Its really strange.
Very fascinating how these things work. I know what the psychological recommendations are to overcome such fears, but unless she is willing to spend extra time outside of gym work on some things i can’t implement them.. the big problem with sport psychology at the novice level, its virtually impractical.
Valentin:
(Assuming you’ve gone through all the good and proper steps, sufficiently drilled the shapes and conditioning, and built up to the skill without skipping progressions or steps…I don’t know you, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you have…)
I’m just brainstorming here, so I have no idea if these are worthwhile suggestions or good/bad things. But, the general rule is there’s no criticizing in brain storming, and you asked for creative suggestions:
1. Coach her into an intentional mistake:
Tell her, in a positive manner, what kind of mistake you want her to make. You know and she knows a great RO BHS isn’t going to happen. But maybe there’s an acceptable mistake you’d like to see. Maybe this will make her feel like she’s succeeding at something you’ve asked, even if it is ultimately still not the desired result. But the idea is, she’s back on track with doing the thing you’ve asked her to do, instead of failing at the thing you’ve asked her to do. IF this starts showing progress, keep it up and ease it into the successful actual skill through a series of closer and closer mistakes.
2. Try moving to a related but different skill
Maybe toy around with RO whips on tramp. Maybe her fear is in her arms or should angle (though she couldn’t articulate this) and doing a skill that doesn’t involve that in the same way might help trick her brain into doing something, and once she gets comfortable with that she’ll realize she had no reason to worry in the first place.
3. Reverse coaching?
This is a long shot, but who knows. Maybe start at the back end of the skill and work it forward. This might help isolate the specific moment of fear. Have her do bounders on the tramp, trying to visualize the bounder action as a reverse BHS. Maybe seeing it in her brain in rewind will make it less scary.
4. Give it up for a while?
Gym will likely become a burden if she knows every day she’s going to go in and be tortured by this thing that’s eating her. Maybe, if there’s time, you can just forget it for a few weeks. Let her learn some other stuff, get it out of her mind, and then after some time return to it and see if her muscle memory kicks in but her actual memory forgets what was scaring her.
I don’t know if any of those will work. They may all be crap. But if you’re desperate, who knows. And if all the traditional advice really hasn’t been successful, who knows. I don’t know the kid. It’s also possible, sad as it is to say, that maybe she’s just not right for gym.
You are correct, JAO.
What you say is true. But even accounting for that … boys have no tendency to balk on skills for no good reason.
Your 4 suggestions are creative and excellent, JAO.
The problem is irrational. The solution may also be illogical. Try everything.
Just follow coach Allison’s advice: http://www.gymnastike.org/videos/speaker/1494-alison-arnold/73441-doc-ali-coaching-through-fear-part-1
there are 7 more videos.
What I generally do is partially reverse-psychology and partially an honest straightforward attempt to remove the percieved pressure.
Girls tend to (and I’m not sure why) be pressured more by their parents. They also tend to put a lot more pressure on themselves, which means they get much more stressed out when they run into a fear issue. Which of course makes it worse.
When one of my girls runs into a fear issue, I essentially tell her to tell me how to coach her. That is, I’ll ask her what drills she feels comfortable with and set those drills up. I tell her she can remain at that step for as long as she wishes, and whenever she’s ready she can move ahead.
Suppose I have a girl right now who is struggling with fear issues on her BHS.
Each lesson, I start off by grabbing the thickest and softest mat in the gym and have her work a standing BHS on it. I keep thinner and stiffer mats handy for whenever she’s ready, but I tell her that she can move to the next mat whenever she’s ready, and that I have no problem with her staying on the soft and squishy mat for the entire practice.
Once she realizes that it really is up to her, and that I’m not going to push her ahead until she’s ready, she stops stressing about having to push ahead and is able to calmly focus on the skill at hand. It’s less scary, because if she doesn’t feel comfortable with it yet, that’s fine; she can keep going on that same drill until she’s no longer afraid.
I almost always find that this is much faster than trying to push them to the next step.
At our gym there is one particular girl who had fear issues with a back tuck on floor for FOUR YEARS. WOuld not do it without a coach standing there. One day, I was working with this group on floor routines. They were the only group left in the gym, so it was mostly empty (ie no audience pressure). The girl asked if she had to do her back tuck in her routine, and I said no, she didn’t. But she could if she felt like it.
She then proceeded to, for the first time in FOUR YEARS, throw a back tuck on floor without a coach standing ready to spot.
In my opinion, from studies done before relating to brain activity, the part that assesses risk doesn’t develop as early in males as it does in females, which is apparently the part of the reasoning behind why male car insurance fees are higher than females ( I don’t know if thats the same in America / Canada but in UK/ Ireland it is). Apparently it develops in males around 23/24 and a few years earlier in girls. So my point being that maybe, the ins and outs of what could/might go wrong doesn’t block the male brain as much as it would in females. I do agree with Geoffrey though, that girls tend to put more pressure on themselves and then when fear sets it, it can just turn into a big mess.
Personally I do think that a lot of it is down to psychology, something I would really love to learn more about. In fact at training tonight, i’m going to ask one of my fellow coaches, she has a Masters in Sports Psychology, see what her take is on it.
I was one of the many struck with such a fear…starting at about twelve, just when I was “tapped” to start really training high performance (beyond straight provincial), I became scared to tumble, but it was the transition from ro to bhs that totally freaked me out….my front tumbling improved exponentially and if I could have figure out a way to tumble from bhs alone I would have been set. “Luckily” an injury forced me out of the sport for a whole year and gave me a chance to mellow out, and once I came back, it still took some time and very patient coaches, but I got over it and continued on in the sport for another few years all on a good note and with confidence.
The young boys in my gym are fearless. It’s the 13yr olds and up that have started to show some fear.
Coach S is right; my younger boys (and to a lesser extent my younger girls) will try anything I ask them to (and sometimes decide to chuck skills I haven’t asked them to do yet), but the older ones are more timid.
What is it with back tucks? It was fear of back tumbling (flics no probs, but saltos were a BIG issue) that drove my eldest to quit WAG 5 weeks ago. Coach was extremely frustrated with her and daughter got to the point where she wouldn’t even do a roundoff at practice.
I agree that girls are much more sensitive to parent/ coach/ self pressure, and much larger self-esteem issues. Girls with low self esteem won’t do things, while boys with low self esteem will. Girls don’t want to find out they can’t, boys like to prove they can.
When I was 11, I had a complete mental block when it came to flyaways off high bar. I must have learned the skill and then lost it due to fear at least three times. Each time what I needed to do was stop training or thinking about it altogether. Many gymnasts do not have time to do this, but taking a month or two to just work on other things (and I don’t mean drills) and then coming back refreshed can do wonders for a gymnasts psyche.
That also may explain the difference between males and females in terms of learning styles. Girls seem more likely to hold to a specific accident or mistake and let it dominate their thinking, whereas boys may be more willing to let it go and come back fresh.
as a teenage gymnast, i have had to deal with a mental block towards bhs for the past 2 years. one day i just couldnt pull it, and my inexperienced coach didnt know what to do, so i was punished and forced to condition. that was possibly the worst thing that could have been done, and for the rest of that season and the last meet i never pulled it. the following year i had a new coach, however i still struggled but not as heavily, doing it at all my meets. this year i struggled all year and never once did it at a meet. this is so hard for me, because it forced me to stay down a level and it has also started showing up in other skills for example my flyaway. i just dont know what to do, and i feel stuck where i am. i know its such a simple skill, one that i acquired as a child but i still cant do it. i can do standing backhandsprings; the thing that i am scared of is the connection.
thanks.
It’s so weird that you bring this up right now. I am having severe issues with my rudi just this week. It started a week ago and last night was the worst yet. I’m 26, female, and I train and compete trampolining and DMT. So here it is from a competitor’s (and coach’s sort of) point of view!
Last week I was warming up off the DMT and ran up to do a rudi dismount. On the arm set I suddenly didn’t remember how to do it. I did a straight barani instead and attempted the rudi on my next go. I still didn’t remember how to do it but having coached kids with similar fear problems about the take off I figured that once I had initiated the skill muscle memory would take over and I’d be fine and get over it. Muscle memory didn’t take over and I spun around with no vision or idea where I was and landed in a heap.
I got right up and went over to the tramp where I did a few straight away no probs. It took me a while longer to get them confident again off and DMT but by the end of the session I was fine.
Next session it took me a while to build up the confidence to take off for them but once I took off I was fine. I knew what I was doing and how to do it so the take off wasn’t scary anymore. I worked through all my passes, including the pass with the rudi, then spent a good hour working rudi dismounts just to build them back up and deal with the problem once and for all.
The very next day (yesterday) I went into training feeling positive about them because of all the work I’d done last session. Ran up for my first pass which is supposed to have a rudi dismount, did the spotter skill, and stopped dead. I have no idea how to do a rudi anymore. I did some on the tramp again no problem, but take it to the DMT and I cannot for the life of me take off. I have not got the foggiest what I have to do on take off. The coach in me knows what to do but I cannot make my body do it. I took off for one which landed in a heap because I had no idea where I was. It did sort of have one and a half twists but no actual landing!
I’m not sure how to get over this because I can still do the skill on the trampoline, I can still do all the progressions but I just don’t remember what to do when it comes to the actual rudi dismount!
MissEducated, your problem is very unusual.
A forward skill, not backwards.
And one you can do on one apparatus, not the other.
Can you simply replace the Rudi with Barani on DMT for a while? See if the problem goes away after a while?
My daughter developed a real fear of front giants due to extreme pressure from coach. She wasn’t allowed to do anything else until she’d done 5 bar routines. She changed gyms, they didn’t ask her to do them for three months and now she is absolutely fine. Also helped that she does them the other way around in her bar routine now, from along upstart mount.
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Well I’m a cheerleader and I round off tumble all the time until last week . I have had some trouble throwing my roundoff tuck but I have been able to throw it eventually then at practice on spring floor I went to warm up with one and I didn’t go over likely body refused my coach tried to get me to throw one but nothing would come . Then he had me so my layout and I was fine . Well next practice I went for my layout and that wouldn’t go over either it was like nothing I can do would go over. It was like I completely forgot how to do it and I need this skill . Well I went to the tumble track and tricked myself into doing it and it would go over but the I tried to floor and nothing comes I need a coaches help because I need this skill back
im a level 6 and i kepp balking on my front handspring on vault so one coach made me sit out then another coach started to have me vault over a table trianer i did that fine and am now vaulting on 0 with a short run ,
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