Gymnastics

my name as I prepare to end my routine on the uneven bars. This was the very last meet of my gymnastics career. I can remember the first time smelling the chalk and listening to higher level gymnast as they landed on the mat. At this point in time I knew that this would be my new sport to try, just like the other sports that I failed but this wasn’t just another failed passion it was my sport,gymnastics took my whole childhood away from me the one that I had to be perfect all the time even…

“Blood, sweat, and chalk; never tears.” These words have guided my gymnastics career throughout high school. Pretty much starting from the beginning, I had to re-learn many skills and tricks that I had lost after quitting gymnastics for dance lessons in fifth grade instead of joining the competitive team. I lived for gymnastics and I still do. Walking into the gym always boosts my mood and gives me a rush of determination. As I began to re-master trick after trick that first year, kips and back…

A barrier that I have faced that I feel has defined me is a fear-driven loss of skills in the sport of competitive gymnastics. Whether it was a fear of release move on bars, going backward on the beam or the floor, or a new vault or dismount, when my emotions went unchecked in the gym, fear spread through me like wildfire. Often, I couldn’t even clearly articulate why I wouldn’t go for certain skills or what I was even afraid of, and from one skill to another, one event to the next, I became…

accompanied the cash. However, I soon found that really having a job was completely different to how I had imagined. I despised it. Did I want to quit gymnastics? I remember weighing up the pros and cons of quitting in my mind. On one hand, I just didn’t want to lose touch with my dear friends who I had grown up with whereas on the other hand I was sick of gymnastics and continuing with it would be like willingly torturing myself. The cons I had desperately searched for, which would persuade me…

because of his previous gymnastics…

Radi: You probably do not know this about me but, I am from a small village in Ohio where I started gymnastics at the Licking County YMCA at the age of three. When I was eight I was in my first year of level five and we were told by the coaches that that was as good as I'll ever be. So having been doing private lessons with the gym I moved to (Champion Gymnastics and Cheer) for a year we finally made the decision to officially move gyms at the end of the competition season. I then competed one…

Learning how to walk on a balance beam may seem like a breeze for the average gymnast, but for A.J. Kleinheksel’s daughter, Aletha, it was quite the challenge. Kleinheksel said she put Aletha in adaptive gymnastics at Balance 180, to help her deal with developmental delays and a physical disability. “Aletha has trouble with communication and gross motor skills and she is missing tendons in her thumbs, which has really challenged her self-confidence,” Kleinheksel said. These disabilities have…

With Lord’s statement on “silence will not protect you,” I think of controversial Olympic Gymnastic scandal with Larry Nasser. He has pled guilty to sexually abusing hundreds of women. It is surprising to me. All of these great women who knew and trained with each other could suffer in such a horrible way. Until recently, none of them thought to speak up about the pain that has afflicted them for years. These accomplished women were silent, but currently they know that their former silence…

pickup truck slowly making my way to gymnastics practice. All I had been thinking about was trying my roundoff back handspring since I woke up. I had just stopped doing physical therapy for my achilles and was really worried about trying my new flip. I kept thinking in my head how things could go drastically wrong. I was just looking out my window at all the bare trees and the bright green grass trying to distract myself. We were pulling into Toledo Gymnastics Academy, went over the bump of the…

We were warming up. I had always thought it was the easiest and most boring part of practice. But I guess in gymnastics it really does matter. Being stretched and warming up skills. “First up cartwheels,” My coach Jason said. Everyone would go through the lines on the floor and do cartwheels. Then we would all go through handstands, back walkovers, and Jumps. I had always loved doing these things because when I got a lot of power I would rebound and I felt like I could touch the sky. “Now…