Jumping Over Mental Blocks

Hey! I've had an amazing weekend, filled with gymnastics.There was an annual Varsity competition yesterday, that means a match between Oxford and Cambridge, and I was a part of A team. Although I have competed many times before in Slovenia, this was the most fun competition I had ever done, and I am super excited to do it again next year! (Hopefully)

I’ve been training artistic gymnastics since I was nine and it is a sport that defines me, as literally all my friends have seen me doing splits and handstands all over the place (I just love it!). It always makes me a bit sad how little people know about gymnastics and how unpopular it is, although (that may be biased, cannot deny it) it is one of the most difficult sports. It already requires so much from your body, yet definitely more than 50% of everything in gymnastics comes from your mind! Especially women’s gymnastics is often considered to be some form of dancing, when the reality is so different – yes, we do some dancing besides the acrobatics on floor, but what about bars, requiring so much physical strength and always ripping our hands? But let’s leave all the strength, stamina, balance, flexibility and precise body coordination by side for now, as even less recognition is given to our minds.

Gymnastics is a dangerous sport and everyone should acknowledge that – injuries are common, and people have died doing it. One of my friends, not even a professional gymnast, for example, broke her spine. So, how do we deal with this danger on 10 cm wide beam? We get scared. If you don’t get scared, you must be stupid or just too young for it, especially when doing something new. I think this fear can be a great obstacle for many gymnasts and not being able to deal with it means you cannot really succeed in the sport. Honestly, I am scared of so many elements, even some very easy ones, because of previous bad experience, and this is not just me being a chicken. This summer I was doing some adrenaline sports, wasn’t scared of anything for even a single second. I think that’s because the problem is not the fear itself, but also the fact that you cannot just turn your brain off and ignore it in this way. If you did that, you wouldn’t be able to do the thing well and would end up hurting yourself. So basically, you have to deal with the fear properly, with your mind turned on, acknowledging it but still going fully for the thing. Despite knowing that anything could happen, especially when you’re doing something for the first time.

It can get even worse than that, a simple fear can develop into a mental block. That’s basically an unmovable obstacle in your mind that prevents you from doing a certain element without any good reason. It’s like a wall into which you have to run head-first a million times to perhaps be able to break it then, if you’re lucky. Crushing with your head in the wall doesn’t sound great, does it? Neither does a mental block.

I have such a block on vault. Recently, a friend asked me what my biggest failure in life was, and without hesitation I named vault. Even its shape is surprisingly similar to the wall I was describing before. And crushing into the vault, running towards it and then changing my mind the last moment to bump into it, is what I have been doing for the last couple of years (whenever I even dare to try). The worst part is, I don’t think I’m even scared of vault. I am just scared of failing again and feeling like a weird and dumb loser every time when I don’t jump. That’s why I don’t even want to try anymore. The funniest thing is that I know that physically, I could easily do it – I can do it over a mat just slightly lower than vault, and I always greatly enjoy it as well! But the last time I tried doing proper vault (that was at the beginning of this term) it ended with crying in the bathroom.

How to get over this? I think there are ways to do anything in this world, the question is just whether you really want it and if the conditions are good. I once almost got over it, but then my coach made me compete on it without even telling me, which threw me back to the beginning. I know of a prospective very good gymnast who quit because of it. I think with a lot of support and understanding from all around, including the coach, family and friends, where one would feel normal and accepted even with that, it would be possible to get over it with a lot of persistence. Hopefully, I will also manage that one day, so that the largest failure of my life turns into the largest victory.

I think that if anywhere, gymnastics is the thing where you have to always believe in yourself, trust and be in touch with yourself and your body and the people around you and be able to control both your mind and your body perfectly. Only in this way you can progress and also manage your fears more easily. At the same time these are the values that we are always striving to reach in real life and that help make one successful and happy. There is more in gymnastics than it seems.