Skatergirl and the Double Axel

“That’s it,” Skatergirl said. “There’s no way that I’m ever going to get my stupid double axel. I quit.”

Skatergirl slumped into the passenger seat of her car and put her head in her hands. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run away and never set foot in an ice rink again.

“Why can’t I do it? It’s just a little more rotation than a double lutz.”

Skatergirl was fed up. She’d been plugging away at her double axel for the past two years without success.

At times she’d been close, even fully rotating it a handful of times. However, no matter how hard she tried, the double axel remained stubbornly out of reach.

Skatergirl wasn’t a pessimist. Everyday, when she went into the rink, she told herself that this was the day she would land it. But, no matter how many repetitions she tried, it never seemed to happen.

Days stretched into weeks, then months, and finally two years had gone by. With each day that passed, Skatergirl became more and more frustrated.

She and Skatercoach tried everything. They worked on the harness. They did extra off ice training. They even went to another state and worked with an axel specialist for a week. But, nothing they did seemed to help.

The most frustrating part was that on the outside nothing appeared to be wrong with Skatergirl’s double axel. Her technique was alright, she just couldn’t complete the rotation to save her life.

“I’m going to quit,” Skatergirl said. “I’ve been working on my double axel for two years and haven’t made any progress. I can’t do this anymore.”

It wasn’t that Skatergirl hated skating, in fact she loved it. However, the lack of progress on her double axel was driving her crazy.

Skatergirl had landed her first axel a couple of months after she started working on it, and it hadn’t taken her very long to land any of her double jumps either. The double axel was the first real roadblock she’d come across.

“What would you say if I told you that your frustration about being unable to do a double axel is what is keeping you from doing the jump?” Mentalgamecoach asked.

“If you go into the rink each day with your focus on landing a double axel, you have a feeling of impatience.

“Say this sentence out loud, I need to land my double axel today. How does that make you feel? I feel tense in my body, but also defeated.

“Now say this one out loud, I am going to work on my double axel today. How does that make you feel? Hmm, I don’t feel stressed, nothing much actually.

“How about this, let’s change up your approach. Instead of checking whether you’ve made progress on your double axel every single day, give yourself six months.

“During those six months, you will suspend all judgment about your double axel. It doesn’t matter if you fall on every single attempt. All you have to do is show up at practice and put in the reps.

“After six months, we’ll take a look at your double axel again and see how much progress you’ve made.”

Skatergirl set out to suspend judgment on her double axel for six months. Some days were harder than others. She often found herself subconsciously evaluating her progress or lack thereof, but whenever that happened she refocused herself on the present, and before she knew it six months had past.

“It’s been six months, how has your double axel been going?” Mentalgamecoach asked.

“I started rotating them several weeks ago, but they’re still two footed.”

“No buts,” Mentalgamecoach said. “You’re rotating them, and that’s great.”

“Yeah. I can’t believe I made so much progress. Why does suspending judgment work?”

“The learning process is full of ups and downs. One day you might make a lot of progress, while the next day you might take several steps backwards. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just the way learning works.

“Now, if you drew a line on a graph of the progress you make over the course of a week you’d see a bunch of peaks and valleys. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to see an overall trend. In fact, at the end of the week, instead of making progress, you might even end up below where you started, and feel frustrated

“But if you zoom out and look at the graph over a longer period of time, say several months, you’ll be able to see an overall trend, going upwards.

“For example, take your skating career up to this point. Even with all of the ups and downs, would you say you’ve made progress?”

Skatergirl nods.

“Remember, you will get a more realistic measure of your progress when you look back over a long period of time like a year than you would over a short period of time like a month or a day.

Suspending judgment for 6 months is a good way to learn how to stop worrying about an outcome or a result, and keep you focused on doing your work so that you can get better.

If this sounds like you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. If you want to learn more check out my Confidence eBook.