When it comes to mental performance, mindset and overcoming mental blocks the most common question is how do I build confidence as a gymnast! One of the core concepts I teach as a performance coach is that words matter! And far too often athletes, coaches and parents toss around words without defining them. Confidence is definitely one of those words!
Let me explain…In sports there is a long list of words that get used daily without giving any context to them. Many of those words include culture, belief, confidence, mindset, leadership, focus, commitment, passion, priority and the list goes on!
Honestly this is not your fault because I fell into this bucket early on in my coaching/mentorship career when talking to athletes. I was very well meaning telling them
“We just have to strengthen your mindset”
“Let’s start building belief in yourself”
“Once you get confidence you’re going to skyrocket”
And athletes would nod in agreement, thinking to themselves, YES once I find those answers everything else in my performance is going to take a quantum leap!
Then as I began to develop and master my craft of coaching athletes, I started to get curious and wondered if someone was to ask me to define these things what would I say to them…
The truth is at the time I had extremely vague answers!
I immediately knew I had a problem that I needed to solve and it was going to be a game changer as gymnasts wanted to develop and grow their own confidence.
As I began to study words and develop meaningful definitions for them, I started this journey of becoming obsessed with words. Now that might sound strange but what I learned was that words create an emotion within us and that emotion triggers us to give things meaning!
This was an “Oh shit” moment because I realized how often people just plug words into sentences with very little intention about what they’re doing. And at the time I was as guilty as every other coach out there speaking and coaching athletes.
The Confidence Test
As I started speaking at gymnastics camps across the country and working with college gymnasts on mental performance, I put this theory to the test…
Having sat in the room with hundreds if not thousands of gymnasts across the nation I have asked nearly every single gymnasts:
“What’s the number one non-physical thing that would improve your performance the most?”
5 years later at the time of writing this BY FAR the number one answer is Confidence!!
So that leads me to my next question…
“What’s your definition of confidence?”
And it quickly everyone has this confused look on their face! You can see the wheels spinning trying to find a specific answer…answer 5 seconds of awkward silence they start tossing out a few more buzzwords like trust or belief…
I follow up with ok so are confidence, trust and belief all have the same meaning? Because raise your hand if a coach right before a routine has said just trust yourself. Then how many times has a coach said if you just had more confidence in yourself everything would explode for you…
They all raise their hands. And I ask them how many of you are even more confused and even lead to frustration because deep in your core you have no idea what these words actually mean!
My analogy is that’s like your parents sending you to the grocery store with apples on the list and you have no idea what apples are! MASSIVE PROBLEM!
Gymnasts have been wandering around looking, searching and waiting for this fantom word confidence to fall outta the sky. Like it’s a magic fairy dust they need to sprinkle on themselves so that they can achieve their dreams!
Giving Confidence Meaning
Let’s make life simple for gymnasts and actually teach them how to build confidence for themselves and that starts with actually defining the word. So what’s the definition…
Confidence = Having Undeniable Proof You Are Who You Say You Are!
This is something that you can actually measure and has become extremely useful for hundreds of gymnasts leading them to extreme improvements in their own performance.
If you have studied or are inside the Gym Plus Mental Performance program our framework makes even more sense because our framework is Mission → Identity → Proof/Evidence…
Before you can stack any proof and evidence you must have a clear direction about who you are as a person and competitor. The problem is most people have no idea about who they are. How do you know that Ryan, because it’s one of the first questions I ask every single gymnast because that is your starting point and the foundation we must build on.
We as human beings are so good and stacking proof against ourselves. We are really good about knowing exactly who we DON’T want to be. Yet have either no picture of the person we desire to become or it’s extremely vague…
Then when asked what parts of our personality we don’t like we tend to know all of those really clear…
Well what you focus on is what you attract and you’re constantly focused on and giving your attention the parts of you that you don’t like, what do you think keeps showing up?
The parts that we don’t like or want to!
It’s no wonder when gymnasts get to competitions and search for confidence they struggle because that voice inside their brain is telling them “This is No Who You Are” and you fight against it trying to positively think yourself to happiness and confidence…
Yet struggle to come up with little or any proof that you are actually as good as you want to believe!
This cycle continues for years constantly trying to throw things against the wall to find that confidence in yourself. Let’s give gymnasts a clear actionable path to build their confidence to improve their performance AND allow them to show up powerful, valuable and worthy for the rest of their lives!
Action Steps
Where to start is often the most common question and I will give you 3 quick steps that your gymnast can start today!
- Know what you want – What’s your 1 dream outcome for this season, next 6 months or 12 months. If you could only have 1 outcome what would it be?
- Build Identity – Define your personality now. That’s how you think, act and feel. Then create your 2.0 identity, the upgraded version. You don’t get want you want, you get who you are.
- Stack Proof: Confidence is having undeniable proof you are who you say you are. Create sticky notes on your mirror, document your proof in a journal and constantly go back and review your proof.
Because it sounds so simple is one of the main reasons people don’t take action. The basics win in mental performance just like the basics win in gymnastics. Complexity is not better. It tends to lead to frustration.
Make a decision and take action today! Your gymnast deserves to show up with confidence, feeling powerful and worthy to achieve all their dreams!
Read more in our blog: https://gymnasticsplus.org/gymnastics-plus-recruiting-meets-empowered/
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