You hear your coach screaming from across the room “Be
Confident” and you look at him/her and think, well I’m smiling… am I not being
confident? Confidence is a hard skill to master and being able to show your
confidence when you perform can be even harder. I’m here to help teach you how you can become a more
confident cheerleader with the 3 R’s to self-confidence.
Lets first get a good understanding of what self-confidence
really is. Confidence is the
relationship you have between what you think and what you do. Your confidence in yourself will impact
your performance 100% so its important to understand what your self-confidence
is made up of. You need to
practice hard and feel prepared to compete. The person who practices hard will no doubt be more
prepared. Also, you need to
believe and trust in your abilities and all the practicing and preparing you
have done up until this point.
When working at practice to improving your confidence it is
best to follow the 3 R’s.
- REPEAT- Start by picking a few of your personal cheerleading strengths and repeat them to yourself a few times in a row.
- RATIONALIZE- Many thoughts run through our heads, some positive and some negative. Any thoughts that you have will need to be rationalized. For example, if you start to think “my jumps are awful” you need to breakdown why you are thinking this (rationalize your thought). Maybe you do not think your jumps are the best because you could stretch more at home or you need to focus on pointing your toes. Instead of losing confidence in yourself because of your jumps you now have concrete skills to work on to make your jumps better.
- REPLACE- Replace any negative thought or statement with a positive one. Just because a situation you are in is not ideal does not mean that it is negative. Every situation that presents itself as harder then what you expected is a challenge for you to work on and overcome. Always look for the positive in a negative.
Building up your confidence can be difficult but just like
any other skill, you need to work on it daily and you will slowly have and show
more confidence. Start working on
the 3 R’s now in the off-season to help make yourself a more confident cheerleader by the time
tryouts are upon you! Show the
judges and your coach that you believe in yourself and your skills.
Kristen Perri is Cheer360’s Co-Founder and Director of
Mental Fitness. She holds a masters degree in Sport Psychology, is a certified Mental Game Coach, Sport Hypnotist and Personal
Trainer. With over 8 years of cheer coaching experience, Kristen has coached all skill levels including middle school and junior varsity. Currently, Kristen is the Head Varsity Coach of a major Long Island Cheerleading Program.
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