Beam Nerves

[BarCoach]

Any ideas or practice techniques for overcoming nervousness on beam during meets? Girls that have beautiful beam routines in practice and can hit every time sometimes fall apart in meets. I don't know how to teach confidence under pressure.

 

[Mustanggal99]

One thing I've done is hold mock meets where you do the judging and have the parents there and act like they would in a meet and have a prize for the winner... something they'll work for but give them slight pressure like they'll have at a real meet. Our prize used to be a leotard...

 

[gymnut29]

Pressure Sets....All the girls do their routines for the rest of the their work out group. During this time I also like to give the girls watching the job of picking out one or two thing the gymnast performing needs to fix. They get their corrections, once they are all done they have to go back and fix the things they were told needed work, ex bent legs in a backwalkover do 5 straight leg backwalkovers last one needs to be passed by the coach.

Scored Routines either during regular practice or during a mock meet.

During meets we also dont always let our girls watch eachother. Our team on beam seems to have a dominoe effect! So we will have everyone put their backs to the beam. Then they wont know if someone else fell or did really well. We like the doing really well dominoes but not the falling ones. We had one meet where every girl fell off beam, did the backs to the beam the next meet not a single one fell, so it seems to ease some of the nerves.

For a lot of kids it just takes practice though to get used to being up there in front of the judges.

 

[tumblebug921]

i bring my ipod with me to the meet and listen to an inspirational song before my routine. like i listen to fanatics by lecrae before floor and usually amazing grace (my chains are gone) by chris tomlin before beam.

 

[coachmolly]

I competed for 7 years and never got the hang of competing in front of judges. My coaches tried everything- a certain number of stuck routines or skills in a row if I fell on one I would have to start over, going back to basics and drilling them relentlessly, having coaches and teammates watch, every trick they could think of. When I got to meets, my routines were always hesitant and super shaky, my legs shook from the mount to the dismount of my beam routine. Sometimes I would make the big skills and fall on simple ones, have big pauses between connections, or even hit a routine where I looked visibly terrified. I managed a 9.0 on beam once in my entire 7 years of competing. It wasn't unusual for me to score in the 7s for a routine with no falls. I worked with coaches at 3 different gyms and none of them could help me put it together.
So there really is no "one size fits all" remedy for this problem. Some kids will learn to pull it together with a few pressure sets in practice, others will take much more work and a heck of a lot of patience. For the girls who just can't seem to pull themselves together at meets, just offer lots of encouragement, positive reinforcement, and patience. When they are falling apart, just try to calm them down and help them put things in perspective. Remind them of what they know they can do. Reward them for confident attempts, even if they do fall. Also do a ton of the things mentioned above, you never know when it might click. Try having the whole team (not just their level) watch their routines. I know when I was a compulsory level gymnast I was really intimidated by the older optional girls and their coaches and having them watch would have been as bad as a judge!
Having experienced beam anxiety in front of judges to the extreme, I can tell you it's so frustrating to deal with and if not taken care of, can lead to some girls quitting because they feel so dejected about the whole situation. Good luck!

 

[frazzled_gymanst]

I think faking it really helps. By this I mean looking as confident as I possibly can- chin up, determined facial expression, ect. And by pretending I'm confident I gradually start to feel confident too.

 

[Pineapple_Lump]

Lots of 'competition' routines judged in practice. For younger gymnasts often I talk them through the routine so much in practice, they can often 'hear' me while competing and can focus on that. They claim it really helps them focus. I guess this is similar to the mental choreography Doctor Alison Arnold talks about.

 

[brittaney]

Beam was always a tricky event for me. I think that the hype of everyone watching is what really freaked me out.. I always would bring my iPod to meets and close my eyes and visualize my routine before I would compete. If you watch other girls who go before you and they fall off or make a mistake then you are more likely to fall off or make a mistake yourself.. You could also try having the whole team watch the girl on beam during practice so she get used to having eyes on her..

 

[nevertooold]

Add things to their beam workout that are not in their routine to help them gain general comfort and confidence on the beam..
push-up walks, lunge walks, long jumps, releve runs, etc...

visual cues for skills

key words for the entire routine

just spend more time ON the beam, not hopping up and down after each turn, working 2 or 3 on a beam and staying up there but out of each others way, just to increase their comfort through familiarity

 

[AGM78910]

Any ideas or practice techniques for overcoming nervousness on beam during meets? Girls that have beautiful beam routines in practice and can hit every time sometimes fall apart in meets. I don't know how to teach confidence under pressure.

My DD's coach used to collect all the parents waiting for their kids and bring them onto the area near the beam where we could watch safely (usually a few beams away) and have the gymnasts go through their routines with us watching. We were allowed to encourage the girls as they went along. She usually did this before competitions. It worked like a charm to calm down the most nervous gymnast. She did this for all events and usually had the highest placing gymnasts at the meets. The parents really enjoyed being able to watch from a close vantage point. (You would need to check with your gym owners to make sure their insurance would allow that. In our case as long as the parents were with the coach it was ok.)

 

[bookworm]

Repetition, repetition, repetition...my daughter does so many beam routines a day (7-10) that she is just so used to staying on the beam that when she gets to a meet, she says it's no different. She also says she doesn't watch others at a meet until she is done...

 

[Midget's Dad]

Ok I am going to pull this together from multiple things I have done. For background I was a musician for the first part of my professional life so learned how to perform in front of people (and there is lots of competition in music, not just American Idol) but also played Junior hockey and was a state champion high jumper. Since then I have coached both junior hockey and high school basketball and these are things I use with my guys.

Your mileage may very, because really it comes down to the gymnasts themselves. But I used to get really nerve wracked.

First is doing focus exercises: it is all about getting that game face on. as a singer I tended to focus out above the crowd, because the moment I made eye contact with anyone (including family members) I would forget things and mess up. this also lets you block out everything around you, which is how I would use it as high jumper. There are no judges, there is no audience, it is just you and what you are doing.

Second is doing visualization exercises. Have them sit down and run through their routines in their heads. One trick is to have them close their eyes while they do it and just move their arms as they step through the perfect routine. for every jump I would do in high jump I visualized making it over the bar at least 20 times. Have them do it standing on the beam too. Just standing, no moving, just visualize it.

Finally, talk through it all. Do a debrief with each gymnast after each meet and get their feel. This is not a time to tell them all that you saw, this is when they tell you how it felt up there. What was going on with them, what they noticed, etc. They should also be asked if anything stood out as a distraction. this will get you some coaching points for just prior to the next meet for each of them.

Just my thoughts.

 

[flips123]

Well I have one suggestion

My coach had us do "pressure routines".For example we well be doing a routine and she would come on say the beam and jump up,make "funny" faces,mock us in our routines,tell us jokes or start a convorsation.This may sound odd and mean but we got a kick out of it and it's hard not to giggle,but it helped us durring the meet's cause we learned to only focus on the event and no one else.She is no longer my coach but my team still does "pressure" routines with my new coach.Hope this helps!!

 

[MissBear]

Practise routine under all sorts of situations. Turn on optional music loudly half way through. Wait until someone else is really close to an important skill and the whole gym is cheering for them, then require a beam routine. Practise the warm up, then hanging around for a bit, then a 'cold' routine. Practise whatever you want them to work on on floor while they are waiting. Practise keeping an eye on judges (can be coaches, older gymnasts, whoever) to know when they can go. Practise the situaltion where they stand on the springboard still for 5 minutes, then have to go. Think of anything and everything you can to vary the situation. Practise warming up on one beam, then a pressure routine on a different one to get used to an unfamiliar beam.

All these things will help, but it is also important to remember that it will come with more experience of performing under pressure.