It will be happening soon! 

My new CD and workbook will be released very soon and I’m very excited.  The Mental Game of Cheerleading: Training for Competitions will be a 2-CD set accompanied by a nice thick workbook filled with tips, techniques, work-sheets, and questionnaires – all designed to help you get ready for competitions.

As you know, if you’ve been following this blog, sports psychologists have helped many athletes improve their performances and I think cheerleading deserves to learn what other athletes have learned and used.

So…stay tuned!

This video demonstrates how to do a back handspring. Viewing it has been helpful to some cheerleaders. Here’s a technique from sports psychology to make it even more helpful! (But please…if you’ve never done this before, be safe and work with a coach and a spotter!)

Step 1: As you watch the video, observe the cheerleader intensely and begin to imagine how her body feels as she moves through the routine. Also, imagine how she feels emotionally and how focused she is. Notice every detail. Repeat this several times.

Step 2: View the video again and this time, as you observe the cheerleader carefully, imagine that you are feeling what the cheerleader is feeling (body and mind). Repeat several times.

Step 3: Now, with your mind’s eye, see yourself and feel yourself performing the back handspring. Really feel every detail.

Step 4: Making sure you are using a mat, get in position to begin the back handspring. Take a moment, exhale slowly to get focused and with your mind’s eye, see yourself performing the back handspring perfectly. Now you’re ready to do it!

By doing the above you will have enhanced the learning process by creating connections in your brain. Yep, that’s right. Your brain doesn’t know the difference between visualizing a routine and actually performing it! To your brain, it is one and the same therefore; you can begin to build those important brain maps just by visualizing whatever new stunt or routine you want to learn!

How…you might be wondering? Well, think of all the tension and excitement surrounding Nationals or any cheerleading competition where it is easy to get distracted by extraneous thoughts and feelings that interfere with your performance. Meditation is a great technique to train yourself to let go of extraneous thoughts and feelings and focus on what is most relevant – your performance!

Now you might think you don’t have time to meditate. Well okay, but if you have a big competition coming up you may want to think twice about this.

Meditation is simple and hard; teachers of meditation say it is the simplest hard thing you can do! Why? Well, take about 10 minutes and try it – at least once.

There are many different “types” of meditation but what they have in common is a focus on the breath. So, what I recommend is this:

Find a nice quiet place and sit up with your eyes closed. Now just notice the rise and fall of your breathing and don’t try to “do” anything. Meditation is more about “being” than “doing.”

Just notice how your breath rises and falls, comes in and out. Just notice it and as you do so, when thoughts appear, simply notice those and let them go, without staying focused on the thoughts, without deepening them. Just notice these thoughts as distractions but don’t judge them or become attached to them. You’re going to practice not reacting to new thoughts. You’re just going to acknowledge their existence and let them go.

Okay, if you’re like most people you realized you have many, many thoughts of all kinds and you probably noticed that it’s not easy to just sit there and focus on your breathing! (It’s the letting go of all these thoughts that prompt people to say meditation can be hard.)

When I meditate, I start thinking about such things as: that person I need to call; an email I must respond to; a birthday I forgot; what to cook for dinner tonight; something I forgot to tell my husband; and lots of other stuff. Each time that happens, I notice it and let it go…and again – I notice it and let it go…over and over. You might be thinking – so what!? Well, each time I go through this process I am training my brain to let go and refocus, let go and refocus, let go and refocus. I am also training myself not to react impulsively but rather to observe with a somewhat detached interest.

Now, isn’t that important for performing? Consider how useful it would be to have that skill of letting go of irrelevant thoughts and feelings which can undermine your productivity and your performance and being able to refocus on what is most important – your performance in the moment!

You also must be able to let go of any little mistakes that you make because if you dwell on those mistakes you won’t be able to pay attention to what you need to do next. Meditation can help you with that. You can learn to stay focused on your performance instead of getting caught up in distractions.

Although it’s recommended that you spend 20minutes a day on meditation, you can also incorporate mini-meditations of a few minutes throughout the day. A few moments here and there can also train your brain to let go and refocus.