Open Tumbling Frustration

As if there weren't enough things on my to do list, my new assignment from my Sports psychologist is to write before and after every practice. I had tumbling last night and have obviously dropped the ball already (oops). So while at work once again (yeah sports psychology assignments are more fun than cleaning) I'm catching up on other tasks. Ok so tumbling last night. I really didn't know what to expect. I thought I was going to have a private but for some reason I had a feeling I was wrong. I was feeling pretty good about going to Integrity to work with Mike. Then I walked in. This gym is a multi million dollar intimidation machine. There were people everywhere! Once I found Mike Igot comfortable realy quick. There was anothr girl working with me who has a pageant coming up and wanted to start tumbling again. I was so relievd to find out she was working on the same things as me. I met Chad, who is in charge of all of Integrity's cheer program and he helped us out too. We did some strength work to war up and started working hand stands, cartwheels, power round offs and cartwheel handstands just to warm up. It was open gym so there were tons of little kids there and when they scattered to play on the equipment and work on skills if they were gymnasts and cheerleaders, all hell broke loose. The four of us working together went to one floor with a few other girls working their own skills. I spent the next hour and a half working my basic skills like cartwheels and round offs and getting spotted on my standing handspring by mike. At one point chad had me doing a drill of lunges to my knee and cartwheeling out of it. I started to get so frustrated because the girls I see doing that are usually under the age of 10. I felt stupid and inadequate. I started stressing thinking "damn, I'm screwed." Mike noticed how stressed I was getting and he just looked at me and said "stop stressing. You'r going to be fine." It was so hard to believe him. I felt like having any sort of tumbling by may was impossible. I finished the night having accomplished a bunch of standing handsprings with mike, countless round offs in to the pit, a few drills. 1 round off handspring in the pit and a ton of round off prep for handspring in to the pit. There was plenty more strength work at the end, some time after 9:00. Before I left Mike gave me a big hug and told me to stop stressing. He told me I would be ok and that I had made a lot of progress just in that hour and 45 minutes. I had pushed all my frustration to the back of my mind but it hit me when I got in the car and I just kept thinking about how hopeless the process felt. I know that beating myself up about it can't help and won't help and I also know that Mike wouldn't put so much extra time and effort in to helping me if he didn't think I could do it. I just feel like tumbling is this shadow looming over me and it gets really overwhelming sometimes. Last night was one of those times and I'm working at getting over it. Luckily I'm not on the schedule for work all of february so I'll have ample time to tumble. It's taking all my effort to remind myself to take things one day at a time but that's what I'm going to do.

There is HOPE!

So my new tumbling coach, Mike, told me today flat out that my tumbling sucks. The good part is that he followed it up by telling me that if i do what he says and work hard "you will be tumbling by tryouts. " That's exactly what I wanted to hear! I can take that I suck now but I can feel myself getting better already. The workout killed me but I loved it. You know, a year ago I would have dreaded something like what I'm doing with him but now I thrive on it. It's an hour of ass kicking conditioning and intense concentration. My warm up was 3 sets of suicides with a set of 50 jump rope in between each set. There were plenty of mountain climbers and push ups mixed in when I screwed up. He pushes me to the limit and i love it. I stunted with Gordon last night and I TWISTED!!!! Sometimes I just wish my tumbling would progress like my stunting, but I have faith that everything will work out in the end. Tomorrow is going to be a crazy long day. I have another tumbling session with Mike plus practice after that and i'm fairly certain it won't be a cake walk. Tomorrow will be a caffeine fueled day for sure! Speaking of which, apparently the reason I've ben tired lately is because I'm not eating enough. I officially love having people tell me to eat more!! It'll be tough but i'm going to give it a shot. I'm using this my diet application on facebook and i love it because it shows me exactly how much I need of carbs fat and protein for each day. It's fabulous. Well I'm about to get off work (yes i'm blogginh at work...what a rebel!) so hopefully the rest of this week goes as well as monday started it off.

Hello again. Let's start over.

Hello Again. It's been awhile since I posted. I guess in all of the stress of chasing this dream of cheering at Marshall and trying to enjoy my senior year and finally getting over my first love, I got caught up and stopped concentrating on what really matters. I realized if I can't be happy with myself now, I won't be happy with myself a year from now. So a lot has happened since we lost touch but first I want to make a public apology. I want to apologize to Joe. I thought that hurting him like I was hurting would make me feel better but it didn't. So although I can't take it back and probably will not have a chance to make up for it, I want to apologize. I am happy to know he is happy. So if you read this, know that there are no hard feelings and I hope you are doing well. I've come a long way since October. I'm stunting ans tumbling better than ever although I still have a lot of work to do on tumbling. I've battled a lot of inner demons that were bringing me down in my performance with the help of a sprosts psychologist. And no more crazy dieting! No more no carbs no fat no this no that. It's all about balance. I started a medication called metformin because we think I have PCOS. I cut my hair super short up to above my shoulders. So much is changing and although that would normally scare the hell out of me, I'm loving it. I'm getting used to not being in control of everything and learning that I can't control what happens the weekend of May 1st (try-outs). All I can do is live in today and that is what I intend to do. So here's to a new start in the home stretch of this year long race.