“If you keep going, you’ll get there. Consistency is the key to success.”
To be successful in life you must be consistent in your daily efforts. So often we forget that life is not easy and that everything we do takes consistent effort and time. Gymnastics is certainly a sport that requires consistent focused effort. Gymnasts put in a lot of time practicing and training their bodies how to do very difficult skills. This takes an immense amount of physical and the mental toughness, because certain skills may be scary to a gymnast or even physically challenging.
When I was a collegiate gymnast at the University of Nebraska I learned how to be a consistent dependable competitor. I taught myself to say the same key words on every single skill I did every single time I performed the skill. This helped me tremendously, because when I went to a competition all I had to do was exactly what I did in the gym. I said the same things to myself at a competition as I did during practices. I became a fierce competitor, because I had taught myself to train like I was competing and compete like I was training. It was that simple for me once I created a consistent pattern. Training and competing were one in the same.
“When you look at people who are successful, you will find that they aren’t the people who are motivated, but have consistency in their motivation.”[–]Arsene Wenger
As a parent, when you have a child involved in gymnastics, teach them that being consistent in their training is important. Attending practice regularly is a crucial part of being a consistent competitor, because the more times your body trains a skills and perfects it the easier it will become in competition. Practice makes perfect! It’s hard for a child to understand why they are doing the same skill over and over, or why their coach is constantly correcting them, because to a child repetition is boring. Sometimes children can’t see the end result of all their training and end up quitting. Some children have too much fear to continue past a certain level, because as you progress thru the levels the skills get harder and scarier and training demands most of your time.
For me personally my parents always allowed me to make the decisions when it came to my gymnastics. I was the one who wanted to train hard and be at the gym over 30 hours per week. I was the one who decided to train at the elite level. I was the one who decided to do collegiate gymnastics. I was the one who decided to go to the University of Nebraska. My parents were there to support me thru all my decisions. They wanted me to take ownership in my future. They pushed me to follow my dreams that I had set for myself. Training wasn’t always easy and I had a lot of days I felt defeated, but by having parents who were consistent in their support for me and my future I felt confident in my pursuit towards my dreams.
“Consistency for me is everything.“[–]Alexei Navalny
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