Training through Fear
Gymnastics is a funny sport. Like most sports your training time struggle is finding a balance of endurance training, strength training, mental training, and actual skill building. It’s the vicious cycle of getting strong enough to do the skills, having enough endurance to maintain those skills, while making sure you are mentally prepared to attempt those skills and if any of those don’t align, there is a good chance that you will not be successful. One of the biggest obstacles we face as gymnastics coaches is helping the athlete that is afraid, let’s face it gymnastics is a scary sport and definitely not for the faint of heart. Fear comes from all sorts of places, sometimes the athlete has been pushed too soon, sometimes it’s due to an injury that occurred or they have fear of a new skill, and every now and then fear just shows up for what seems like no reason at all, even in skills that the gymnast has done hundreds of times previously. ...