Personal Narrative: Falling Down And Getting Back Up

Falling Down (Literally) and Getting Back Up
Junior said he “realized that hard work- the act of finishing, of completing, of accomplishing a task- is joyous”. I completely agree with junior’s statement. Some of the most hard work i’ve done in my life had been in cheer. I have never been naturally flexible or able to do tumbling; I had to put in work to get those skills, even work outside of practice.
I can definitely say the hardest part of cheer is tumbling. Throwing your body in unnatural positions is something many people don’t want to do; but somehow, I took on the challenge to learn how to do it. I think it was the beginning of eighth grade, after TWO YEARS of cheer, when I finally got my back walkover. It was one of the most accomplishing things ever! The thing about tumbling though, is you're never done, there is always a new skill to move on to. So onto learning back handsprings !I was scared, but I now had the experience of throwing myself backwards- so that helped. I worked on my back handspring in practice with spots, at Jon practice, and I even took tumbling classes at Power In Motion
But what I didn’t know was that once I met my goal, that doesn’t mean I accomplished my goal for good. The difference between tumbling at Power in Motion compared to cheer practice, was the spring floor. Gymnasts get to use spring floors and unfortunately, cheerleaders do not. Tumbling on spring floor was a lot easier than regular mats, so it made sense that I got my back handspring first at Power in Motion. I took baby steps to get my back handspring. I started with a double spot, to a single spot, to doing it on my own on a wedge mat, and finally having the confidence to do it on the floor on my own. The first time i threw the skill, felt AMAZING! The hard work was worth it. But when I got to practice, it was all different. I had a mental block and I still wasn’t