Nicole Shinn

JMC 201
Hogan

10 Things I Learned Doing Gymnastics for 14 Years

I did gymnastics from the time I was four-years-old until last year when I was 18-years-old,
which is about 14 years give or take a few months. Below are just some things I’ve learned doing
this crazy sport called gymnastics for over half of my life. This sport has largely shaped who I
am as a person and for that I will be forever grateful.

1. You will always be much more buff than any normal kid your age:

This is a fact that almost every child athlete can relate to. However, gymnastics is one of the only
sports that works almost every muscle in the human body, so the extreme “buffness” was all the
more apparent. To put things in perspective, I had a six-pack by the time I was a 6-year-old and
could beat my dad, a prior-service Army pilot, in a push-up competition by the time I was 10.

2. The gym becomes your second home:

Growing up doing gymnastics, I spent most if not all of my free time at the gym training and
consequently the gym became my second home in the sense that it was the place I felt the most
comfortable aside from my own home. Over the past 14 years I grew to call all of my teammates
and my coaches my “gym family” because I spent the same amount, if not more, time with them
I did with my actual family.
3. There is no such thing as summer vacation:

As I said, all of my time was spent at the gym and the summers were no different. We had maybe
two weeks off the whole summer, and aside from that I was in the gym for about five to six
hours Monday through Friday. Summer is the offseason for gymnastics, because we compete
from November to early May. So, most of the year we spend our practices learning cool new
tricks, doing routines and getting ready for competition which is really fun. However, if there’s
one thing I’ve learned, it’s that summer is literal hell…because summer practices are basically
boot camp. To give you an idea, in an average summer practice I would run two miles (outside,
in the Texas heat) and do 300 sit-ups, and that was only so I could go on snack break. Sound like
torture? Yea that’s because it is.

4. Spring break? Never heard of it:

I really should just say there are no breaks, like ever. The grind doesn’t stop.

5. ​Mental blocks SUCK!:

For those who may not know, a mental block is exactly what it sounds like. A block in your
mental game, preventing you from trying something because you’re scared. As I progressed in
the sport and started to do harder and scarier stunts, mental blocks became more frequent
because I started to actually think through the skills I was doing as well as every possible
negative outcome. My biggest mental block was with the vault. They want you to run as fast as
you can and flip over an object that is not going to get out of the way if the way if things go
south, so logically the older I got the more afraid I was to vault (because I didn’t want to slam
head first into a giant wooden table, who would want that?).

6. ​The rope is your worst enemy, it can and WILL be used as punishment for most
everything:
Ah yes, the rope. An approximately 15 foot long piece of rope suspended from the ceiling that I
had to climb all the time at practice for exercise purposes and also because all gymnastics
coaches like to use “rope climbs” as punishment. Didn’t land a skill? Time to climb the rope.
Too scared to try a skill? Time to climb the rope. Late to practice? Time to climb the rope. Can’t
finish the conditioning list? Time to climb the rope. Forgot to bring your gym bag to practice?
You guessed it, time to climb the rope.
7. ​Leotards are actually really great one-piece swimsuits:

I learned that leotards could double as functional swimsuits when I was probably seven or eight.
When I was younger my gym had a pool, so during summer on Friday practices my coach would
let us go swimming to finish out the practice and I would ALWAYS forget to pack a swimsuit.
So, I just started swimming in my leotard, which made my mom mad because the chlorine would
turn my leotard’s weird colors, but I thought it was pretty innovative.

8. ​You can NEVER, under any circumstances, pick a wedgie in competition (this is an
unforgivable offense and you’ll probably have to climb the rope like 12 times):
Leotards are great for a lot of things, like swimming and they’re shiny and look cool while you
are competing. One thing they aren’t good for is coverage. They cover just as much as a one
piece swimsuit does, imagine running around and doing flips in your swimsuit! It’s not fun. A
hard lesson for me to learn was that the biggest mistake you can ever make in competition, is
picking your wedgie. If you do that, it’s game over. Not only do you look really stupid picking
your wedgie in front of a judge and an audience, you get points deducted from your score each
time you mess with your leotard during a routine. If you think I’m lying about climbing the rope
12 times for just picking a wedgie in competition, I’m not, because that actually happened to me.

9. ​All of your report cards will have a note from the teacher that says “great work ethic!”:

You may be wondering how this one has anything to do with what I’ve learned from gymnastics.
Since probably the fourth grade, every report card I’ve received had a small note from one of my
teachers about my great work ethic, and I attribute this quality to my growing up doing to
gymnastics. The most important lesson I learned doing gymnastics for 14 years is determination,
how to push myself to new limits and that you have to work hard and give your all in everything
you do in order to succeed. This lesson has bled into every aspect of my life, including my
school work, even if I didn’t do the best on every assignment I would try my hardest to learn and
get better, which is why my teachers would always comment about my work ethic.

10. ​You will meet your best friends:

From spending so much of my time at the gym over the past 14 years (about 25 hours a week) I
not only acquired a “gym family” but I also made my best and closest friends. While in some
ways gymnastics is very much an independent sport, in other ways it is also a team sport. In
practice and competition you are dependent on your teammates for support and camaraderie.
Spending all the time that I did with all my teammates, it only made sense that they would
become my greatest friends and while we no longer do gymnastics together we still offer each
other the same companionship.