Mindset Tips for Intermediate Gymnastics

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Jordan Dahl. We're talking about intermediate floor gymnastics, and the first thing I wanted to talk about was the mindset of intermediate tumbling. I cannot stress how important your, how big of a role your mind plays in your tumbling. The biggest problem I see with intermediate tumblers is they'll throw something even when they're scared of it. And this can be really dangerous, with injuries. You need to make sure that if something is so terrifying to you that you don't throw it. You need to step away and to go through in your mind and find out what it is exactly that you're scared of and then go with your coach and work on every part of it until you're not scared of that anymore. But that does not mean to not throw something just because you're scared of it and not, not progress onwards. So you need to find that balance of not being too scared where you can't throw something and being able to conquer that fear so that you can progress onward. Just a personal experience I've had with this, I was learning some of my more complex tumbling passes and if you throw it when you're scared, your body doesn't let you complete the pass and it'll freeze up and you'll end up hurting yourself more. So you need to, you can go aside with your coach. He can spot you very slowly on every part of it until you find out which part you are specifically scared of throwing and then you can drill that part over and over again until you're so comfortable with it that you aren't afraid of throwing that pass anymore. Now before I start any complex tumbling combination, I take a deep breath and I just take a moment to kind of block everything else out which can be really difficult sometimes depending on your gym. If there's other, other teammates playing around, messing around. Or music, or whatever else is going on, you need to take the time to kind of push it all aside and really focus on what it is you're doing, visualizing every part of it. Now I've got into the habit of seeing it before I do it. I can't throw the pass without thinking about it. I go into what I call my "tunnel vision", where all I can see is the stretch of floor right in front of me. I can't see or hear anything else. So as you practice, seeing it in your mind, you can get into this kind of "tunnel vision" where that's all you'll be able to see and focus on. Now there's a visualization that goes on in your mind. It can sound like it takes a really long time, but it really happens in a split second. So you're starting off, you go into that kind of "tunnel vision", you see where you're going to tumble and you visualize in your mind what skill you're going to perform and then you come back and you throw your tumbling pass."