Once something terrifying happens to you, and you get hurt. That feeling will haunt you forever. When you go back to your gym, that fear follows you around, it doesn't leave you alone. It spread from bars to floor and from floor to beam. Gymnasts are left balking on skills that they used to easily do before the accident. Most nights gymnasts come home from gym miserable and in tears. They can't get the fear out of the back of their mind. No matter how hard they try, they are unable to just go for it. 

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Coaches and parents believe that you overcome fear by doing the thing that you fear the most, over and over again. Unfortunately, for the more resistant fears, the ones that are fed by these past upsetting events, this strategy doesn't often work. All too often, coaches internally measure their value and self-worth based on how well their gymnasts perform. When a gymnast gets bogged down on a particular skill because of fear, some coaches, after exhausting their repertoire of coaching interventions, will become impatient and demeaning. Why? Because they see the gymnast's inability to move beyond his/her fears as a critical failing on their own part. They inaccurately reason that if they were a better coach, they could get the athlete unstuck.  A coach's frustration, anger and impatience directed towards the struggling gymnast does NOT help her get unstuck. The gymnast's worry about disappointing the coach and falling from grace in the coach's mind, only serve to get her more afraid and stuck. Most gymnasts need understanding and patience when they're struggling.

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