Outperform Under Pressure

In one gymnastic meet in September 2023, right before the floor routine, my 9-year-old daughter was warming up and practicing the key skills, with the back handspring being the most difficult.

Her first try was not good, her arm bent a bit, and she seemed to have hurt her wrist. The second attempt was worse, and I could tell from the panic on her face. I was shaking, too, because a back handspring is such a challenging skill that could potentially harm the gymnast. It seemed like her body had “forgotten” how to do it all of the sudden.

One coach hugged her and talked to her for quite some time, while another coach took her to a different area of the gym to practice the back handspring by breaking the skill down into parts.

This is not the first time I’ve seen athletes make a 180-degree turn at competitions. In the 2021 Summer Olympics, the acclaimed gymnast Simone Biles experienced the “twisties” (a phenomenon in gymnastics where a gymnast temporarily loses their sense of spatial awareness and body control, particularly during aerial maneuvers and twists) and decided to withdraw from the competition. Nyjah Houston, the professional skateboarder who had dominated all the SLS games over the years, failed to land all the tricks, leading him to leave the Olympic game without even reaching the podium.

What happened to these highly skilled athletes? I decided to take a closer look, understand more, and learn how to outperform in a situation like this.