Gymnastics In College

Moving to a new state, from the south to the east, was one of the largest changes in my life. Everyone would be different: my teachers, friends, and coaches. In fact, my parents' biggest worries were about gymnastics, as I never had difficulty making friends. They were mainly fretful about the coaches; after all, they would have the most impact on my attitude towards gymnastics. After arriving in Pennsylvania, we immediately searched for a gym. Fortunately, there were plenty not far from our residential area. Furthermore, we devoted the first few days to finding a suitable gym, and found two possible ones.
Approximately a week prior to the beginning of school, I had a few days to try out one particular gym, meeting my possible teammates and coaches. My skill level fit in fine with the others, and I made immediate, genuine friendships …show more content…
This annoyed me: I really wanted to improve, and I swore to myself that I could deal with any criticism. However, at my new gym, things were different. As I began to spend more time with my new coaches, I began to realize they were much stricter than I had first expected. One day, on bars, one of the coaches blatantly criticized my skills. Having never experienced such straight-forward and harsh corrections before, I felt defeated and helpless. Improvement was difficult for me, and the criticism was only making me feel worse. However, I knew that I would have to get used to the corrections and that they were supposed to help me improve. After a few practices, I began to switch my mindset and came to each training session stronger than the last. I constantly convinced myself that the criticism would end up helping me improve, and I slowly began to notice changes in my performance. Instead of allowing the corrections to drag me down, I stored them in my mind, using each statement as fuel for my determination to