“Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.” [–] Norman Vincent Peale
When you have a child involved in gymnastics, it’s important to teach them to BELIEVE in themselves and in the process, because there will be times in a gymnast’s career when they will get discouraged with their progression. As a parent, you can explain to children that each individual child progresses at a different pace and to not be discouraged by the momentary accelerated progress of their fellow teammates. This is where the belief in oneself comes in to play. BELIEVING is succeeding.
“To be a champ you have to believe in yourself when no one else will.” [–] Sugar Ray Robinson
Gymnastics is a challenging sport filled with many ups and downs, and every day provides a different challenge for a gymnast to overcome. Successful coaches and parents find ways to keep the gymnast motivated and excited by praising them when they learn new skills, having fun days in the gym where they get a break from the daily routine and by encouraging them when they are having a rough day. A child needs their parents to be supportive and motivating through every obstacle faced in and out of the gym. Children look to their parents for strength and guidance and if their parents are encouraging them to push through those tough days in the gym and challenging days at school, children are more likely to persevere.
“We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.” [–] Hellen Keller
I had the opportunity to do a question and answer session with my dear friend and 2004 Olympic silver medalist Courtney Kupets. We discussed her experiences through her gymnastics career. Here are some of the answers from our Q & A session.
Q: When you were training for the Olympics was there ever a time you had to BELIEVE in your ability and push aside your fears?
A: I wouldn’t say I had to push aside fears, more like doubts. I tore my Achilles tendon just 11 months before the 2004 Olympics, and I knew I had to stay positive and stick with the plan, but at times it was frustrating, and I had to make sure whenever I would start doubting the time frame, I had to ignore those thoughts and stay positive.
Q: Did you ever have moments in your gymnastics career that you wanted to give up and move on? Can you explain how you moved past those experiences?
A: When I was younger I wanted to quit once, but that was a fleeting feeling. Then in 2003 after the World Championships I struggled with wanting to continue. It wasn’t because I didn’t love the sport, but all the joy seemed to be gone, it was just constant pain and hard work all the time. My parents really were the people to help me through it. They reminded me how much effort I had put into gymnastics and to realize no matter what happened did I really want to stop? Or was I just tired from the taxing experience of worlds? And I truly believe I was emotionally and physically exhausted. But it was nice to be taken seriously by my parents and let me make my own decisions.
Q: When you were competing at the Olympics I believe you had an injury no one knew about. Can you explain that injury and how you had to rely on all your training up until that point?
A: The week before we left for the Olympics, I started getting bad pain in my hip during certain leaps and jumps. The trainer would help me manage the pain and I could still do all my skills it would just hurt. The more we trained the more it started to hurt, but I was at the Olympics I wasn’t going to let it stop me. I didn’t want to find out what was wrong because if you find out its bad that can mess with your head, so we kept managing the pain as best we could, and I had to cut down on practices. The day before we competed I wasn’t doing full floor routines, I was doing dance though with jumping for my tumbling passes to simulate the endurance aspect. At this point we had done so much training I had to trust the training before hand and believe my body could do it.
Q: Can you touch on how your parents motivated, supported and believed in you? Especially when you were getting frustrated with yourself.
A: Being the parents of a gymnast is difficult. As a gymnast I was also so tough on myself to begin with. What really helped my relationship with my parents and a way for them to really help and support me, was just to listen. My mom and I called it venting. I would basically only talk about what I needed to and vent out what happened and what I thought and felt, and just doing that felt so much better. But the key was, I really wasn’t looking for an answer or for her to fix it, I just needed someone to listen and to understand what I was going through!
There is also a fine line between standing back and lightly pushing. When I wanted to quit and I was a World Champion, my parents didn’t say I had to keep going, they gently brought to my attention that I had already worked so hard and did I really just want to stop because I was tired…? And of course the obvious answer is no, but if they would have made me, I don’t think the outcome of my gymnastics career would have been the same. The most important thing is to learn. My parents were able to see when I just needed someone to talk to and when I needed some gentle guidance and pushing.
Thank you Courtney for taking the time to answer some questions. I greatly appreciate it.
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