Life Lessons from Gymnastics

Ignore the fact that my hand looks like an orangutan foot. 

Well, today I got my third rip on bars (actually, it was a healing rip that ripped again, so a rip within a rip. Rip-ception, anyone? ok. I'm done.). It's little, but it's deep and bled enough to leave marks on the bars. Woot. Luckily though, my mom found my old grips this week, so hopefully then I won't rip as frequently. Gotta get these hands nice and tough again, right?

Also, I connected some full tumbling passes today. Nothing too crazy. Just tucks and round-off back-handsprings, but it shouldn't be too long before I start adding the back-tucks and layouts. Maybe I'll even get some twists in. We'll see.

Anyway, in honor of rip numero tres, here's gymnastics reflective essay numero dos, written when I was 16... I think.The writing is way better in this one than the other one, in my opinion.

As I lie on the floor with the rest of the team, the buzzing fluorescent lights burn white through my eyelids. A cool, professional female voice trills through the stereo speakers. “Visualize perfection…empty your mind…relax each muscle individually…banish all doubt…inhale…exhale…there is no such thing as trying; there is simply doing and failing…” Coach Kim pauses the tape, and each team member begins to run through each routine in their head, one by one, over and over, visualizing perfection. At an early age, gymnastics taught me important life lessons, including one reminiscent of Yoda’s “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.”

            From that point, our coaches banned the phrase “I tried” from our vocabulary. Instead, we said, “I did it!” and we said, “I failed.”

            Eleven years old, I practically lived at the gym. I went four or five days a week at 3:00, and I didn’t leave until 8:30 or 9:00. For several nights, while the rest of the team worked out, the coaches abandoned Skyler and I to work on ariels and standing back tucks, seeing as we were the only two who still could not “stick” the skills consistently. Each time, I set for my tuck and pushed off the floor as hard as I could, and each time, I crashed to my knees. Ariels seemed to be my defeat. No matter how high I pressed or how fast I rotated, my left hand always brushed the floor. At the end of the night, the coaches came to check on us.

            “Well?” they asked. I refused to look them in the eye.

            “I’m trying,” I said through gritted teeth.

            “You’re failing,” Jeff corrected.

            Vault was a different story. I wasn’t bad at it; I just wasn’t improving. I spent hours stretched out on a skateboard with my arms stiff in front of me while Evonne rammed me into a wall. My job was to “block” off the wall as hard as I could with my shoulders, causing myself to fire backwards. Over and over again, I punched off the springboard and blocked off the vault table, flying through the air and landing on the mats.

            “Come on! Push! Be solid!” my coach sighed, exasperated.

            “I’m trying,” I moaned.

            “No, you’re failing,” she reminded me.

            However, I was always fairly confident on bars. There’s nothing that compares to flying with perfect control. I felt strong, that is, until one meet when I let go of the bar for my flyaway layout dismount a nano-second too soon. The tips of my toes barely nicked the bar. A flaw. A score deduction. And pain. Back in the gym, I was determined to correct the error, but despite my desire, I psyched myself out, and my dismounts got worse. Before long, not only were my feet hitting the bar, but my ankles and shins, too. I needed Jeff constantly by my side to spot me, to prevent me from literally breaking my neck. After a few weeks, I gained my confidence back. I wasn’t consistent, but at least my shins weren’t hitting anymore, and Jeff was not a necessity. The next meet, I mounted the bar and nodded at Jeff to step back. No spot needed. I could do it. But as I started my dismount, I psyched out again. My grips slipped. I peeled off, and I hurtled to the ground. Shocked, I stood up, saluted the judges, and walked back to the bench. “You failed,” I thought to myself.

            Beam, by far my favorite event, never held any problems with me. I was known as “dare-devil” for this event. A dance on a four inch runway. I loved it. And then I got another coach, Nicole. She confused me. She made me second-guess myself. She gave me contradicting directions and advice from what my other, more experienced coaches said. I quickly became burned out and as such, started sustaining more injuries such as sprained ankles from exhaustion and carelessness. And in that is where I truly failed. I stopped caring, so I stopped doing. I recognized this and, with new-found determination, focused harder than ever on perfecting my routine. Late one night, I was the last one on beam, performing my routine for my favorite, and more critical coach, Kim. I dismounted, held my “stick” for three seconds, and looked up to see Kim smiling. “There’s that 9.5 routine! See? You had it in you the whole time! You did it!” I did it.

            Looking back on my gymnastics life, I realize how much I really learned aside from all the skills and friendships. I learned about trust and obedience, respect and responsibility, but mostly about effort and determination. I can do whatever I decide I can do. I will always “do or do not.” If I only try, I am not giving 100% of myself. I am not caring 100%.  But those things I do give 100% of myself to, I will “do”.