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Lisa Welsh
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By Lisa D. Welsh
www.CHEERMaD.com
Sometimes it’s fun to look back to gain perspective which is what this Cheer Mom did. Here’s one from Aug. 11, 2011 after CHEERMaD launched on June 19, 2011 and soon became the No. 1 site for cheer moms and cheer dads.
Rachel’s quest to get her tuck continues. During tumble class tonight, she threw her back-handspring-almost-into-a-tuck, 10 to 15 times in a row. Then she’d move on to the core and arm conditioning centers, lean backwards onto the three-foot, heavily padded, tubular thingy and loop back and take her place again next to Coach Paul, and 10 to 15 more tries.
During a quick break for water during the hour session Rachel said, pointing to the left side of her head “This side of my brain tells me I can do it.” Pointing to the right side of her head she says “but this side of my brain tells me I can’t. Talk into this ear and say ‘Rachel can do this.’”
I oblige and lean down, repeating “Rachel can do this” several times at her insistence. Then she smiles, takes a big drink of water and walks back into gym for another round of near misses and “almosts.”
Rachel has told me before about this internal dialogue between the “two sides” of her head which fight amongst themselves for her attention. Both sides are trying to control the outcome on the tumble mat. She said last year, the two sides fought over her back-handspring and she told me she overcame the naysayer, the one on the right, by pretending that her coach was still spotting her and “just threw it.”
Debbie Love's "For the Love of Tumbling" summer camps are very popular. Next week she'll be at Haydens All Star Twisters
In an interview with Debbie Love (left) we talked about her research in mental blocks. Coach Love of the Kentucky All Stars is a 2010 Hall of Fame recipient for coaching excellence and for service to the US All Star Federation, she serves on the boards of The National All Star Cheerleading Coaches Congress and USASF’s National Advisory Board, and is a credentialing instructor staff member. She was a level 10 gymnastics instructor and USA Gymnastics chief safety certifier for the state of Kentucky. She is a professional member of USASF and USAG.
I don’t think Rachel is having a mental block, rather, she is still in the process of mastering her tuck. As I understand it, a mental block happens after a skill has been mastered and then is “lost.”
From Debbie’s paper on Mental Blocks: Blocks are created by many factors. Sometimes a child who is young and has learned very quickly with no fear will realize, “Hey, I can get hurt.” When this happens, they will block. My youngest child learned up to a double full by the time she was six. When she was nine, she hurt her knee and it made her fearful until she realized that by conditioning specific areas, she was building up her body. Once she realized this, the fear of injury became less.
Sometimes fear is caused by lack of progression. In cheerleading it is imperative that we master every step of every skill before moving on to the next skill. Doing so will create consistency in our performance. If the skill is inconsistent, the athlete does not feel the skill the same each time, allowing fear to set in.
At other times, the athlete will fall, become nervous, and block.
For several weeks this summer, Rachel’s tumbling instructor has been spotting her and lately from where I stand (some 500 feet away in the gym‘s viewing area behind a glass door), she looks like she’s throwing her tuck without much, if any, assistance from him.
Watching the closed-circuit flat screen TV beam the action from the mat tonight, it looked like Coach Paul is only lightly touching her back. Rachel’s face is red and her entire body is sweaty after 50 minutes of this but I can feel her determination when he talks to her briefly before moving just far enough out of reach. She throws it again, for probably the 50th time tonight, and lands it on her feet!~ before falling forward.
But she’s clearly done a tuck without a spotter and that realization has me jumping up and down inside but I don’t let on, or at least I don’t think I do. Two months of determination and hard work~ the trumpets of victory aren’t exactly blaring but we’re close. And then she throws it again, the same way, almost-but-not-quite-landing-it, four more times.
This is a crucial time for a CHEERMaD: act too happy, the kids feel like you’ve secretly been pining for them to master the skill; don’t act happy enough, kids won’t think you care; Make a big deal about it and it embarrasses them but don’t say anything and they may feel all their hard work is for nothing.
No matter what I do, it’s usually the wrong thing as far as my kids are concerned. Tonight, I greet Rachel at the end of her session with a big smile, because to me, this is a big victory, and I can tell she thinks so too.
“Now that she’s throwing it on her own, she sees that she can do it,” Paul says. “It’s just her confidence that she has to work on.”
The support of a great team and coaches goes a long way.
For a long time, I thought most Allstar skills, especially in tumbling, were achieved when the body was strong enough. Strength and conditioning are definitely necessary to throw one’s body in the air and maneuver it against gravity some 200 feet across the floor, but the power of the mind is just as, if not more, responsible for executing a skill. Believing in oneself is paramount to lifting 100 pounds.
She’s going to have to remind her right side of the brain about that.
Postscript:
FAST FORWARD TO THE END OF THE SEASON, MAY 2012: Not only has Rachel mastered her back-handspring-tuck but also her standing-tuck and full. She also was the center point in this season’s dance segment.
More from Debbie Love’s system “Breaking Free.”
1) Admit that it is acceptable to have a mental block and commit yourself to a system for unlocking this imprisonment of your mind.
2) Remove all negative input and learn to understand the difference between tense and relaxed tone in your body. You may need to develop a ritual to do before your skills. Practice a relaxation technique by tightening and releasing each body part.
3) Commit to a conditioning program at least three times a week. It must be a complete fitness program for all areas of the body: Cardio/Plyometric, Balance/Stability, Upper Body, Lower Body, and Core.
4) Script each skill or series of skills using short action verbs to tell your body what to do. This trains your mind to focus on the skills, not on your fears.
5) You need to do 10-20 repetitions of every skill you are blocking on three times a week. Stopping is not allowed. Complete each series whether connected or not. Otherwise, you will train yourself to stop. Make sure technique is good on each skill. You may spot, or if the athlete will do the skill somewhere by herself with good technique, that is fine also.
6) Visualize 10-20 times a night the skills you are blocking on before falling asleep using the words from your scripting. Do this each night.
7) Journaling- You should get a notebook and record your goals (1 or 2 weeks at a time) and a plan on how to reach these goals. In addition to your goals, you should keep a record of your conditioning and daily thoughts. Depending on how severe the block is you could even set a daily goal. Make all goals reasonable, such as: Perform a skill 3 times without stopping.
8) Put a box somewhere that you pass frequently. Put paper and pen beside the box. Every time you pass the box you should write something positive about your tumbling and about yourself. This has even improved school work in several cases.
9) The coach, parent and athlete need to agree on a focus word like “stop” so that when the athlete hears the word he/she knows to bring his/her mind back into focus. This can be used at school, home, practice, or competition. You can also have some focal thoughts to pull your mind back into focus like “Relax,” “I am able to do this,” “No big deal, let’s go.” When you are able to control your emotions, your mind is able to direct.
In celebration of CHEERMaD’s one year anniversary on June 19, we’re posting fan favorite blogs like this one. Original post date was Aug. 11, 2011.
By Lisa D. Welsh
www.CHEERMaD.com
Sometimes it’s fun to look back to gain perspective which is what this Cheer Mom did. Here’s one from Aug. 11, 2011 after CHEERMaD launched on June 19, 2011 and soon became the No. 1 site for cheer moms and cheer dads.
Rachel’s quest to get her tuck continues. During tumble class tonight, she threw her back-handspring-almost-into-a-tuck, 10 to 15 times in a row. Then she’d move on to the core and arm conditioning centers, lean backwards onto the three-foot, heavily padded, tubular thingy and loop back and take her place again next to Coach Paul, and 10 to 15 more tries.
During a quick break for water during the hour session Rachel said, pointing to the left side of her head “This side of my brain tells me I can do it.” Pointing to the right side of her head she says “but this side of my brain tells me I can’t. Talk into this ear and say ‘Rachel can do this.’”
I oblige and lean down, repeating “Rachel can do this” several times at her insistence. Then she smiles, takes a big drink of water and walks back into gym for another round of near misses and “almosts.”
Rachel has told me before about this internal dialogue between the “two sides” of her head which fight amongst themselves for her attention. Both sides are trying to control the outcome on the tumble mat. She said last year, the two sides fought over her back-handspring and she told me she overcame the naysayer, the one on the right, by pretending that her coach was still spotting her and “just threw it.”
Debbie Love's "For the Love of Tumbling" summer camps are very popular. Next week she'll be at Haydens All Star Twisters
In an interview with Debbie Love (left) we talked about her research in mental blocks. Coach Love of the Kentucky All Stars is a 2010 Hall of Fame recipient for coaching excellence and for service to the US All Star Federation, she serves on the boards of The National All Star Cheerleading Coaches Congress and USASF’s National Advisory Board, and is a credentialing instructor staff member. She was a level 10 gymnastics instructor and USA Gymnastics chief safety certifier for the state of Kentucky. She is a professional member of USASF and USAG.
I don’t think Rachel is having a mental block, rather, she is still in the process of mastering her tuck. As I understand it, a mental block happens after a skill has been mastered and then is “lost.”
From Debbie’s paper on Mental Blocks: Blocks are created by many factors. Sometimes a child who is young and has learned very quickly with no fear will realize, “Hey, I can get hurt.” When this happens, they will block. My youngest child learned up to a double full by the time she was six. When she was nine, she hurt her knee and it made her fearful until she realized that by conditioning specific areas, she was building up her body. Once she realized this, the fear of injury became less.
Sometimes fear is caused by lack of progression. In cheerleading it is imperative that we master every step of every skill before moving on to the next skill. Doing so will create consistency in our performance. If the skill is inconsistent, the athlete does not feel the skill the same each time, allowing fear to set in.
At other times, the athlete will fall, become nervous, and block.
For several weeks this summer, Rachel’s tumbling instructor has been spotting her and lately from where I stand (some 500 feet away in the gym‘s viewing area behind a glass door), she looks like she’s throwing her tuck without much, if any, assistance from him.
Watching the closed-circuit flat screen TV beam the action from the mat tonight, it looked like Coach Paul is only lightly touching her back. Rachel’s face is red and her entire body is sweaty after 50 minutes of this but I can feel her determination when he talks to her briefly before moving just far enough out of reach. She throws it again, for probably the 50th time tonight, and lands it on her feet!~ before falling forward.
But she’s clearly done a tuck without a spotter and that realization has me jumping up and down inside but I don’t let on, or at least I don’t think I do. Two months of determination and hard work~ the trumpets of victory aren’t exactly blaring but we’re close. And then she throws it again, the same way, almost-but-not-quite-landing-it, four more times.
This is a crucial time for a CHEERMaD: act too happy, the kids feel like you’ve secretly been pining for them to master the skill; don’t act happy enough, kids won’t think you care; Make a big deal about it and it embarrasses them but don’t say anything and they may feel all their hard work is for nothing.
No matter what I do, it’s usually the wrong thing as far as my kids are concerned. Tonight, I greet Rachel at the end of her session with a big smile, because to me, this is a big victory, and I can tell she thinks so too.
“Now that she’s throwing it on her own, she sees that she can do it,” Paul says. “It’s just her confidence that she has to work on.”
The support of a great team and coaches goes a long way.
For a long time, I thought most Allstar skills, especially in tumbling, were achieved when the body was strong enough. Strength and conditioning are definitely necessary to throw one’s body in the air and maneuver it against gravity some 200 feet across the floor, but the power of the mind is just as, if not more, responsible for executing a skill. Believing in oneself is paramount to lifting 100 pounds.
She’s going to have to remind her right side of the brain about that.
Postscript:
FAST FORWARD TO THE END OF THE SEASON, MAY 2012: Not only has Rachel mastered her back-handspring-tuck but also her standing-tuck and full. She also was the center point in this season’s dance segment.
More from Debbie Love’s system “Breaking Free.”
1) Admit that it is acceptable to have a mental block and commit yourself to a system for unlocking this imprisonment of your mind.
2) Remove all negative input and learn to understand the difference between tense and relaxed tone in your body. You may need to develop a ritual to do before your skills. Practice a relaxation technique by tightening and releasing each body part.
3) Commit to a conditioning program at least three times a week. It must be a complete fitness program for all areas of the body: Cardio/Plyometric, Balance/Stability, Upper Body, Lower Body, and Core.
4) Script each skill or series of skills using short action verbs to tell your body what to do. This trains your mind to focus on the skills, not on your fears.
5) You need to do 10-20 repetitions of every skill you are blocking on three times a week. Stopping is not allowed. Complete each series whether connected or not. Otherwise, you will train yourself to stop. Make sure technique is good on each skill. You may spot, or if the athlete will do the skill somewhere by herself with good technique, that is fine also.
6) Visualize 10-20 times a night the skills you are blocking on before falling asleep using the words from your scripting. Do this each night.
7) Journaling- You should get a notebook and record your goals (1 or 2 weeks at a time) and a plan on how to reach these goals. In addition to your goals, you should keep a record of your conditioning and daily thoughts. Depending on how severe the block is you could even set a daily goal. Make all goals reasonable, such as: Perform a skill 3 times without stopping.
8) Put a box somewhere that you pass frequently. Put paper and pen beside the box. Every time you pass the box you should write something positive about your tumbling and about yourself. This has even improved school work in several cases.
9) The coach, parent and athlete need to agree on a focus word like “stop” so that when the athlete hears the word he/she knows to bring his/her mind back into focus. This can be used at school, home, practice, or competition. You can also have some focal thoughts to pull your mind back into focus like “Relax,” “I am able to do this,” “No big deal, let’s go.” When you are able to control your emotions, your mind is able to direct.
In celebration of CHEERMaD’s one year anniversary on June 19, we’re posting fan favorite blogs like this one. Original post date was Aug. 11, 2011.
She is so great and so insightful!! 
