Success Saturday — Meet Jitters

The new issue of the Gym Rats Magazine is coming out on Sunday! GRM is a quarterly digital magazine for the Everyday Gymnast. This week, I’ll share with you some of the great articles and features that GRM has to offer. (A subscription is just $20 per year! Subscribe now and get your free copy!)

One of my favorite features of the Gym Rats Magazine is “Success Saturday.” Success Saturday is something that I implemented in my gym for my gymnasts a few years back that helps them to focus on the mental side of the sport. It can help with motivation, goal-setting, visualization, a positive attitude and mindset, and much more. The Success Saturday article in the upcoming issue is all about meet jitters and the five ways I have learned to calm them.

Butterflies, sweaty palms and feet, the feeling that everyone is watching… all these are signs of meet jitters. And this is completely normal for gymnasts.

I was sitting with my team waiting to compete beam. All of a sudden, I got a huge stomachache. I really thought I was going to throw up. Should I tell my coach? But I’m almost up. Maybe it’s gas? I don’t know! My face got hot and my stomach just hurt. I was fighting against the wave of nausea that was creeping up through my torso and into my throat.

“Mary, you’re up!” I heard my coach say. I did my timed warm-up. I’m not sure how it went. I just went through the motions, hoping I wouldn’t throw up on the beam. I did my dismount and went to sit down. I drank a little water. My stomachache wouldn’t go away!

My teammate before me was up. I just keep taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly, trying to make my nausea go away. Nothing worked.

Then I was up. I worked my way through my beam routine… dance, pose, back handspring… stick! That’s cool, I just stuck my back handspring. Dance, pose, leap, full turn… I kept going. This wasn’t such a bad routine! Handstand, back walkover…floor. Yeah, I fell on my back walkover, but that was normal. I got back up and did my dismount. Stick! That wasn’t a bad routine at all! One fall was good for me.

When I got back to the floor with my team, I sat down again to watch the rest perform their routines. Then I noticed something. My stomachache was gone. It left as mysteriously as it showed up. I chalked it up to meet (or more like “beam”) jitters.

In the magazine, the article shares the five strategies I used to deal with meet jitters, so I never felt that way again. Be sure to subscribe now!