Photo: Snapped! by Becca Clark
Athlete Mindset
Having the right mindset as an athlete can make or break your career. It can determine how fast you progress, what challenges you take on, how much effort you put in and more. Overall, the right kind of mindset will make you more resilient and allow you to achieve your goals more easily.
I’m sure you’ve been told before to have a positive mindset, but that’s too generic for cheerleading. What does a positive mindset mean for athletes? Do you have to think about everything in a good light? Are you supposed to enjoy the struggles of cheerleading?
Fixed Mindset or Growth Mindset?
Instead of trying to have a positive mindset, switch to thinking about whether you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A fixed mindset means you think you or others only have a certain amount of talent, ability or skill and that’s just natural and you’re unable to change that. Basically, if you’re not good at something, especially right away, you have this thought process where you think you’ll never be good at it and you’re just stuck at the point that you’re currently at.
On the other hand, a growth mindset means you believe that whatever abilities and skills you have can be developed or improved by putting in effort and hard work. As you can imagine, athletes who have a growth mindset are going to be the ones who progress more quickly, seem braver and get to a higher level in the end, even if they didn’t start out with a whole lot of natural talent.
If there’s a particular aspect of cheer that you struggle with and just want to give up on because nothing is natural and you’re having a hard time, try to switch your mindset to a growth one so you can look at things more positively and will want to continue to work on improving yourself. There are no negatives that can come with this, only positives, so you might as well give it a go.
It’s also important to know that mindset can be learnt, improved and developed. Just because you’ve been having a fixed mindset regarding something for a long time, it doesn’t mean you can’t switch over and change your perspective on things.
Here are a few examples of scenarios in cheerleading where you can shift your thinking and force yourself into having a growth mindset:
Example 1 – When your coach says “work on your toe touch.” Let’s say you’ve been cheering for years, your toe touch isn’t level or hyperextended yet and you’ve been trying for forever to get it higher but it’s just not there yet. You’ve been placed at the back for jumps and you don’t see any point in working more on it because you haven’t had results all these years.
To develop a growth mindset with this, you need to make it your first reaction to think “Yeah my coach is right, I’m going to work on this because it’s not where I want it to be,” rather than instantly thinking with a fixed mindset of “Ugh I’ve already tried working on getting it higher and I’m at the back in the routine so who cares.”
Example 2 – You’re the best flyer on your team, are in the centre stunt, you have all the advanced body positions like a perfect needle, bow and arrow, etc. and at practice your coach says all flyers on the team should attend the flyer stretching class every week. As the best one on the team and someone who’s already flexible, your first thought is probably going to be “I don’t need that. I already can do the skills in the routine and that class is for flyers who can barely do a heel stretch.” Instead of that, you should think “That sounds great. I’m already doing well with my flexibility and in order to hold my centre position in the routine and to potentially learn even more advanced body positions, that flyer stretching class would be good for me to attend.”
Monitoring Yourself
Most of the time, our initial reactions and thoughts are to defend our current abilities. We like to stay in our comfort zone and stick to what we’re good at… but if you’re looking to become an amazing cheerleader, cheer for many years, make a top team and even get a scholarship, then you need to train with a growth mindset.
Next practice, monitor your thoughts and see what your instant reaction is to each situation. You may be surprised at how often you’re thinking with a fixed mindset!
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