The move has also done wonders for her mental health and confidence. Roberson admits that she used to have a lot of fear, particularly on bars and floor.
“Before I used to be so scared of everything, especially on floor and bars,” Roberson said. “But now Laurent really broke it down in a way where it wasn’t as scary for me anymore and I got to get past those boundaries that were keeping me back for so long.”
One of the biggest boundaries? The twisties. It’s a term the outside world became familiar with when Simone Biles withdrew from several finals at the Tokyo Olympics. Roberson has struggled with the same mental block throughout her career. The first time she struggled with a case of the twisties was when she was eight years-old. It’s been an on and off battle – the worst of the struggle coming right before the 2019 U.S. Classic. Being able to confide in Biles (“It made me feel like I wasn’t the only one that got the twisties,” she said.) as well as having her coaches break down her skills in a way that felt less daunting, has helped Roberson do things she once thought was impossible.
Prior to moving to WCC, Roberson had never done a full-in on floor. She tried a double double three times but would always wind up doing a double full instead. She gave up on trying the skill for the longest time.
“A big mental boost for me was getting over the mental block with the double double,” Roberson said. “It had been a mental block for years and years and I never thought I would ever do it, so it really weighed me down even though I was never doing it in competition. When I would go to practice and they would even mention me doing a double double, it would destroy my whole day because I was so scared of it.”
But now Roberson performs the skill with ease – debuting the skill for the first time in competition at the 2023 Winter Cup.The original plan was to debut it later this year at the U.S. Championships, but with a little bit of belief from her coach Laurent Landi, Roberson ended up warming up the laid out double double in podium training and going for it in competition.
It had only been seven months since she gave the skill a try in the gym. Now it’s how she opens her jam-packed floor routine. “I never thought in a million years I would ever compete that,” Roberson said. “It’s really a wild world.”
The move to WCC has also helped improve her bar work – the event that historically has been Roberson’s weakest. It’s still a work in progress, but Roberson is happy with the improvements she has made. In training these days she can not hit three bar routines in a row – something she said she couldn’t have imagined herself doing a year ago – but she is working on perfecting the details.
“We definitely spend more time on basics and more detailed work than I did at my other gym,” she said. “At my other gym we were just trying to make a bar routine. Here we want to perfect a bar routine.”
With a newfound confidence and upgraded routines, Roberson is now thriving on the international stage. Prior to 2023, her only international assignment was as an alternate to the Junior Pan Am Championship team in 2021. While Roberson said it was great to be able to enjoy the experience without the added pressure of competing, deep down it was hard to be doing so well but not have the opportunity to march into the arena donning red, white and blue.
