Essay on The Stress of Childhood Gymnastics

In fact, Christopher Bergland stresses that being active as children will lead to being healthy adults, as well as having lifelong habits of working out. Gymnasts definitely are active, as seen in the practice hours mentioned in the first paragraph. In gymnastics, flipping around requires muscle, flexibility, and strength; qualities that are easily transferable to other sports as well. Rita Wieber, the mother of Jordyn Wieber, says nutrition is very important for a gymnast. “Eat what she needs to perform at her best...be as healthy as possible,” she writes. Gymnasts usually do their sport until their mid-teens...being told about eating healthy will have a lasting impact on them. On the contrary, doctors and parents argue that because of the nature of gymnastics, gymnasts are susceptible to eating disorders. Actually, gymnasts who get eating disorders are most likely nagged by the coach to lose weight and become stronger. If the coach is verbally abusive and crude, should the gymnast even be training under them? Probably not! Anyways, gymnasts are not likely to be affected by anorexia, bulimia, and the like because gymnastics enriches confidence. Think about it- on beam, gymnasts are flipping on a four feet high, four inches wide piece of wood in front of judges. They put in their hardest work to get the best score possible, and they know it. Furthermore, healthy habits are just a few of the life skills

Nevertheless, the struggle of an individual letting go of his or her athletic identity is a major component to that process, and has caused a significant amount of distress for many retiring athletes. Warriner and Lavallee (2008) indicated that the transition into retirement can become more complicated when athletes maintain an exclusive athletic identity, (i.e., they derive their personal identity exclusively from their athletic role). In other words, they only identify as athletes (Warriner & Lavallee 2008). Likewise, Stephan and Bilard (2003) suggested that athletes’ identity issues while entering retirement may be correlated to the physical changes associated with detachment from elite competition. Furthermore, Warriner and Lavallee (2008) stated that athletes may obtain their self-confidence from their perception of their physical appearance. For example, female gymnasts are required to maintain below-average size during their career. In addition, these athletes begin competition at a young age and have a strict diet and training regimen, which can delay puberty (Warriner & Lavallee 2008). Because female gymnasts tend to retire at a young age, usually before they reach puberty, it is not uncommon for them to gain an average of 40 to 50 pounds upon retirement (Russell-Mayhew, 2005). This excessive weight gain can be highly destructive to the athletes’ perception of their physical appearance. Again, physical appearance has been correlated with athletic identity issues during retirement, thus creating a multifaceted crisis for athletes upon beginning their retirement. However, it is important to highlight the association between an athlete’s physical appearance and self-confidence. If an athlete derives his or her self-confidence from physical appearance, then maintaining that appearance, when possible, may provide added confidence in obtaining a new career and identity. Specifically, it would

When I was a kid in kindergarten, my parents and I used to watch the Olympics every year. Most memories about watching the games are blurred now, but I clearly remember the gymnasts flipping and twirling in the air. I was enraptured by how they achieved such complex movements as if they can fly while controlling their bodies. I loved watching gymnastics and always wanted to try the sport. However, when I saw the passage “Is Watching Gymnastics Worse than Being an NFL Fan?” written by O’Rourke, I was astonished by the author’s doubts to the sport. In the article, the author talks about the development of gymnastics and emphasizes its sexual and emotionally abusive history. In her opinion, gymnastics is bad for female athletes and she doesn’t enjoy watching the sport as she used to. However, I don’t think she justifies her doubts toward the sport, nor does she explain the specific reasons she doesn’t enjoy the sport as much.

Well, in the present, you see a whole bunch of gymnasts, revolutionists, and billionaires being interviewed. In fact, this year, the worldwide event of the Olympics is coming up, and you see a whole bunch of pro athletes there. You might be wondering, “How does this have to anything with never giving up?” If you’ve seen interviews of people like that, you would’ve seen that they never gave up. Everyone has bad days that sometimes, they just want to quit. I saw a Gabby Douglas movie once that was based on her life story, and she wanted to give up gymnastics once. I was surprised. But today, she is still doing gymnastics. She pushed through and achieved her

After seven years of being a competitive gymnast, I have lost count of amount of times someone has said “Well, gymnastics isn’t technically a sport.” Obviously, these types of comments would send me over the edge with rage and frustration as I struggled to wrap my mind around how someone could so easily degrade the tireless effort I put into something every single day. I struggled to understand how someone could compare his or her one hour practice twice a week to my four hours six times a week. It took serious self-control to restrain from blurting out nasty petty comments such as “I’d love to see you try it”. I got overly frustrated wondering how people could compare throwing a ball to doing multiple flips in the air. As the only competitive gymnast in my grade throughout middle and elementary school, I found comfort with swimmers. We were all told what we did didn’t technically count

Grace Hauge began gymnastics when she was about 6 years old, and enjoyed it so much. Her mother wanted her to join a more advanced group, so she joined Hamline. She quickly advanced to a more experienced group. There she was asked to join the Spirit Gymnastics club team at Hamline. Luckily she was given a choice and she agreed. During Grace’s six years of training at the Spirit Gymnastics club team, she gained friendships, a fit body, discipline, and time management. Not meaning to seem or sound snobby, Grace and her mother were both aware of what the sport could bring to Grace 's life. However, it was not until Grace 's coach, Doug Burns, also commented on the success ahead of Grace, that Grace felt pressured to follow through with the

Not many people get to say that they have traveled around the world to represent the USA at international competitions. The virtues that acrobatic gymnastics has taught me, such as determination, consistency, and control, can all be brought into my learning and benefit me in educational and social ways that are essential in English III.

What if in a matter of seconds all your dreams that you have worked your entire life for shattered before your eyes? What if this happened all while millions of people were watching? Would you still get up and try again? Shawn Johnson has conquered many challenges throughout her gymnastics career all while being watched by millions of people. In the book, “ Winning Balance,” Shawn shares some of her challenges and how she overcame them. The theme of this book is to never give up and keep trying even if it seems as though you have already lost. One quote from the book that really portrayed this theme is, “ Sometimes the real victory comes from simply not giving up. Just remember: God is big enough to handle every challenge, and he is loving enough to calm every fear.” ( pg. 91) The setting of this book takes place in Iowa as well as the 2008 Olympics in Bejing, China.

One essential part of competitive sport is nutrition and exercise. These factors are important because they can considerably affect an athlete’s performance. In the Perfect Body, Andie, an aspiring Olympic gymnast, engages in a strict diet to fit her sporting norm. Her coach pushes her to lose weight, and she feels pressured to maintain a small build. In order to reach the professional level, Andie uses extreme measures such as self-induced vomiting, fasting, and excessive exercise to control her weight. While these methods may seem to improve performance initially, they may be signs of an eating disorder. Compulsive exercise may also lead to burnout and overuse injuries. Ultimately, food restrictions and overtraining can damage an athlete’s health and performance.

Lots of gymnasts have coaches that will discipline them. The coaches will not go easy on the gymnast. Coaches can and will yell at the gymnast if their not behaving or if the gymnast is doing a skill terrible. The gymnast can get punished with conditioning. If the gymnasts are behaving and performing their skills good then the coaches will be kind and have an enjoyable

Before starting first grade and at the insistence of a close family friend, my mother finally decided to check out the gymnastics center in Roanoke, Virginia. Observing this sport was important to her and she actually had me tested for the beginners’ class. Climbing trees and hopping on our trampoline, as a little girl, made for the best days so it only seemed natural that I would fall in love with gymnastics. Beginning at the lowest level and over the subsequent eight years, I would become a competitive Level 8 gymnast. From the beginning, my mother recognized how much I would cherish it. Being part of a military family, on the other hand, required my family to move four times over those eight years and eventually ending up here,

“I had to face a lot coming through this journey, a lot of sacrifices, difficulties, challenges, and injuries,” Gabrielle Douglas, an Olympic gymnast, stated in an interview. Throughout her life, she faced many difficulties in achieving her goals of becoming an Olympic gymnast. She trained countless hours every week and attained many injuries, but never gave up. As Gabby grew up, the problems in her life got worse and she was not sure if she could continue gymnastics. With perseverance and the help of her family, Gabby was able to overcome massive obstacles and win the gold medal in the Olympics. Three of the main hardships that she faced were money struggles, injuries, and wanting to quit.

Most people are watching the Olympics in their homes, hosted this year here in the United States, in the city of Los Angeles, California. Much improvement has been made for in the sport of Gymnastics. Women teams, having only been allowed since 1928, is proving everyone wrong with their accomplishments. It was only 1976, 12 games ago, when Nadia Comaneci of Romania was the first gymnast to ever achieve the score of a perfect 10. Still Americans hope. Through all of historic evolving in this sport, they realize things are unexpected and anything is possible. Starting in 1932, the floor exercise was added into the Olympics in place of individual tumbling. The United States also won five gold medals and the Japanese competed in the in the same

One of my favorite and most memorable gymnastics meets was the Winter Challenge at Chelsea Piers Connecticut. The competition was scheduled on Valentine’s Day earlier this year and was held in Stamford, a city in Connecticut that is just over an hour outside New York City. After a lengthy, snow-filled car ride, my mom and I checked in at the tremendous hotel where a majority of the competitors were staying. I had spent the night with my friends on my team exploring, starting with the hotel’s pool, which had reeked strongly of chlorine. The rest of that night mainly consisted of dancing to loud pop music in one of the many vacant conference rooms.

The American woman’s Gymnastics team is deemed to be unbeatable on the world stage holding their third consecutive world title and placing in the top three at every Olympics since 1996 including the prestigious all around title at the 2004, 2008, 2012 (Roenigk, 2016) and 2016 Olympics (Rio 2016, 2016). Unfortunately, the resources regarding the Coach Education system which implements the team’s success on the world stage is limited. USA Gymnastics University is the main education provider for gymnastics coaching and Judging offering the school of Competitive Gymnastics (USA Gymnastics, n.d.) which offers four levels of certification and the School of Judging (USA Gymnastics, n.d.). Both schools show no signs of formal or importance placed on informal mentoring as part of the education pathway. National team coordinator Martha Karolyi highlighted it was important for her to find a way to guide the