5 Steps to Prepare for your State Gymnastics Meet

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You’ve gone through regular season meets and now it’s time to prepare for your state meet. While not that big of a difference, often times gymnasts are more nervous for state meets than regular meets. We get it! We’ve put together some helpful tips to get you prepared for your state meet to get those jitters out so you can perform at the best of your ability!

Tip 1: Pack For Your State Meet

Pack your gym bag with everything you’ll need – before your meet, during your meet and after your meet. Being organized with all of the things you will need for your meet ahead of time will give you the mental capacity to focus on the things you really need to focus on.

We suggest packing a bag for before your meet (especially if you’re traveling):

Meet day bag:

After your meet:

Tip 2: Mental Routines

Take some time to sit and mentally visualize each of your routines in your mind. Close your eyes and go see yourself completing each of your routines. This should take the same amount of time as your routines; you want to imagine you’re competing them. Visualize yourself executing a 10.0 routine; perfect form and execution of all skills! Make sure to think of key words to say to yourself as you’re going through your routines, particularly if there is a skill that you are a little worried about hitting. Things like, “I’ve got this”, “remember to count”, “I’m doing my best”, etc.

Tip 3: Set Goals

It’s important to set realistic expectations and goals for each of your meets, but now that you have your regular season under your belt, you should have a pretty good idea of goals you’d like to achieve at your state meet. Setting SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound) goals is a great thing to practice. You don’t want to just say, “I will score a 9.5 on floor”. For it to be a SMART goal, you’ll want to put some steps that you will accomplish your goal. A better goal might be, “I will practice my back handspring until I hit 5 good back handsprings so that will improve my score on floor at my state meet”.

Tip 4: Ask Your Coach What You Can Do At Home

If you have a few weeks before your state meet, you can ask your coach what you can work on at home. Whether this be timing for your floor routine, strengthening exercises to improve your rebound for tumbling and vault, practicing a specific skill or running through your routines, ask your coach what you’d benefit from doing a little extra of at home.

If your state meet is coming up soon, we suggest asking your coach what is one thing that you should remember to do during each of your routines.

Tip 5: Check GymnasticsHQ’s Blog and YouTube Channel For Helpful Information

As the #1 resource for all things gymnastics, we have everything from how to’s, gymnastics gear, workout videos, etc on all of our platforms to help gymnasts be the best they can be. We have tips, tricks and guides to help you through your gymnastics journey, so be sure to check us out on all of our different platforms!

Here are a few resources we recommend:

GymnasticsHQ’s Youtube Channel

Free Downloadable Mantras to Take With You to Your Meet

5 Things to Do After your Meet to Help you Improve in the Future (with free Downloadable Post Meet Review)

 

Bonus Tip: YOU GOT THIS, just do your best and most of all, HAVE FUN!

Join SkillTrakker to Improve Your Gymnastics Skills (and Score!) Today!

 

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5 comments… add one
  • Mirarani Das March 19, 2023, 8:03 am

    Very useful for the gymnast to achieve their goals

    Reply
    • gymnasticshq March 20, 2023, 12:58 pm

      Thanks!

      Reply
  • Anonymous March 19, 2023, 10:53 pm

    Hey fellow gymnast here. I have been competing for 7 seasons worth of state meets and here is what I recommend also doing on top of these things. First off, the night before the meet I usually try to talk with my coaches beforehand about what skills/routines I am competing that weekend (mostly for Xcel and Optional gymnasts). I do this because I want to make sure that the things I am warming up at practice are what I am actually going to compete and if I have skills as “backups” I warm those up and do the “backup” routine as well. Just like GymnasticsHQ says, I also have a goal book that I write down my goals in the night before. I also visualize routines the night before, and I also visualize them right before I compete a couple times. A tip for when you are visualizing is to not think about the “what ifs” and to only think that this is going to be the best routine you are ever going to do. For new gymnasts and gymnasts who have been competing for a while, state can be a nerve racking thing but the most important thing is to think positively and have fun! Good luck to everyone! 🙂

    Reply
    • gymnasticshq March 20, 2023, 12:58 pm

      Yes, love it!

      Reply
      • Armani Walters March 26, 2023, 8:28 pm

        I am great at gymnastics but I never had someone to teach me I would all ways teach myself And I know how to a lot of things that some people can’t do

        Reply

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