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!

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.

Great athletes learn how to control their thinking because they know it affects their performance. Cheerleaders can benefit from this strategy especially in preparation for competitions. 

My last blog outlined the importance of categorizing thoughts as good for you or bad for you.  Also, I suggested noting where your time-focus was: past, present, or future. 

Good performance depends on a present focus and positive thinking. 

Once you have identified and categorized your thoughts, the next steps are: 

1. Change the time-focus first by telling yourself, “I am here now; I am present in the here and now.”

2. Change the harmful thoughts to another thought using any of the following:

a. simply choose to focus on something positive in the moment (there is almost always a positive aspect to any situation; it’s your job to find it!)

b. ask  yourself if the negative thought you are having represents the truth or is it a distortion (such as, “I’m terrible at this…I’ll never be a good cheerleader…everyone thinks I stink at this.”) 

1. if it’s a distortion, change it into a more realistic thought. And you can tell it’s a distortion if you’re using absolute terms like “never” or “always.”

c. if the thought reflects reality and is not a distortion, identify the problem and discover a solution. 

Here are some examples of how this system works: 

Let’s say that a recent practice didn’t go well…nothing seemed to work.  What were your thoughts? 

Perhaps you thought, “Coach will kick me off the squad…no one thinks I deserve to be on the team…I’m the worst one in the group.” 

Okay, it’s obvious that these thoughts are not good for you and there’s a bit of future-focus negative predicting going on (“Coach will kick me off the squad.”) 

So, first bring yourself into the present and remind yourself that no one can predict the future and it’s a waste of time to worry about something that hasn’t and probably won’t happen anyway! 

Now ask if your beliefs are true or a distortion.  They are at least exaggerated.  So now look for the problem tht needs to be solved.  And that is, you had a less than stellar practice.  Ok.  Not the end of the world, right? 

But you have still identified a problem that needs fizing.  But you have now opened up the possibility of a solution rather than limiting yourself to feeling miserable. 

What might some solutions be?  You could ask Coach or your captain for extra help.  You could try a different approach.  Perhaps you need to find a different way of focusing.  Maybe you could review some videos.  See?  You’re a problem solver now rather than a whiner! 

So, if you detect that your thinking is negative and limiting, ask yourself how you can open up your thinking…how can you change it from destructive to constructive.  And constructive thinking always opens up the possibility of a solution, of a constructive action.

If you want to improve your cheerleading performance at competitions, try changing the way you think!  Successful Olympic athletes recognize that their performances are affected by the way they think and they work hard to manage their thought processes. 

We are always engaging in silent conversations with ourselves but usually this process is so automatic that we’re not aware of it and yet these internal conversations have a powerful impact on the way you feel and the way you perform. 

Remember you are what you think – so, if your thoughts are negative, how do you imagine this will affect your performance?  

So right now, in this moment, where are your thoughts? Are they negative? Are they positive?  Are they neutral? 

The other thing is to consider the time-focus: are your thoughts focused on something that happened in the past?  Or are you worrying about the future?  Or are you focused on the present moment.  Good performance requires focus in the present, in the here and now.

There are so many ways your thinking can be affected at competitions. You might see another team who really nails a complex routine and get jealous or nervous. You might end up comparing your self to that team. Or maybe you and your stunting partner aren’t getting along lately. Maybe you you’re feeling under the weather a bit. Who knows? But if you’re not careful this line of thinking can undermine your performance. 

What to do? Well, here’s a quick and simple technique to try: 

1. Recognize the thoughts you are having.

2. Categorize them quickly as either good for you or bad for you or having no effect – neutral.

3. Then categorize them in terms of time-focus: past, present, or future.

4. Ask yourself if these thoughts help you to perform better.

5. If not, decide to change the harmful thoughts to another thought (this is hard at first!) 

At first I’d recommend just getting into the habit of noticing  and categorizing your thoughts.  So periodically throughout the day, ask yourself, “What am I thinking?”  Remember to put them into a category of positive, negative, or neutral. 

Winners believe in the old adage – “Know thyself,” and this is a first step in the right direction. 

In future posts I will tell you how to change your negative thoughts into ones that are positive or neutral, but for now, focus on identifying how you think!