Listen to Your Body

Growing up I put gymnastics first above everything else from school to even eating. I lived and breathed gymnastics. Along with gymnastics I did clubs and dance. I got homeschooled for two years to pursue a further career in gymnastics but that fame to a hault when my gym closed.

Sadly I had to find a new gym and at first I was happy with my new home, but it became a mentally abusive relationship with the coaches. I was constantly yelled at and told that I sucked even as their highest leveled gymnast.

One day at the gym I was doing a one-handed skill when I heard my elbow pop. For 3 months I was told I had sprained it, but that wasn’t the case. I turned out to have Osteocondritis Dessicans, which mean I cracked my cartilage and cut off my bloodflow.

Before finding out I needed surgery I was at the gym working on the balance beam. I was afraid to go for a skill because my arm was hurting, but the coach made me do the skill I’ve and over again until she’d had enough and took me into the back room. For 20 minutes she told me I was the worst gymnast and that I would never make a college gymnastics team.

To hear those words from someone you trust hurts. Two weeks later though, I lucked out and got to tell my coach I was getting surgery. I was relieved to get a break, but that didn’t last long. I started freaking out about how a long break would impact my ability to make a college team.

As soon as I was permitted to start training again I was in the gym that day my coaches somehow convinced me to do a skill I was too weak to do. I ended up on my face with my coach laughing at me. I brushed it off and continued practicing because I thought gymnastics was the most important thing in my life.

Later that week I started track practice, which made me believe that maybe there is more to life than gymnastics.

After a few weeks back in the gym the coach requested that I come to practice 4 days a week despite me still being too weak to do most of the skills. She told me that I had to push through the injury and force myself back into a full range of skills. What she didn’t understand was that I was still too weak and I still had restrictions.

The next day I broke my collarbone doing the hurdles. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved. Now I finally realized how much gymnastics was hurting me and that I enjoyed being able to have enough time to study along with doing a sport.

At the end, I retired from the sport—although I coach. My grades went up, I made more friends, and best of all I was smiling more often than crying for the first time in my life.

The moral of my story is that you need to decide what’s most important to you. A sport at the extreme can take a toll on not only your physical state, but also your mental state. For me I made the decision that being able to smile and see my friends was more important than killing my body in a sport I no longer loved.