For the majority of my life, gymnastics has been central and significant. I started competitive gymnastics in elementary school and competed through my senior year of high school. Practices were up to four hours, and gymnastics season was all year long. During high school, I started coaching gymnastics, so I was at the gym five days a week, either coaching, practicing or both.
When I moved across the country, I stopped gymnastics entirely. I did not find a new gym in my college city, despite there being many gyms in the region. I wanted to start a new chapter and thought that going back to gymnastics would hold me back. I swore off ever stepping into a structured competitive gymnastics team again. Gymnastics is a very rigid sport, and I wanted to learn how to be more flexible. For the past three years, I have continued to coach gymnastics and attend open gyms in my hometown, but it was never a part of my life in St. Louis.
I believed that continuing in the known and comfortable gymnastics world would stop me from growing into a new version of myself. I knew I would apply all the skills from gymnastics in my childhood to new activities and challenges, but I thought those skills were the only things that I would bring with me from gymnastics into my new life. For example, the time management and organization from hours of practice would help me balance my life as an elementary teacher. But I felt like rejoining a gymnastics team would drag me back to my high school self. I am naturally a structured person, and gymnastics reinforced that rigidity. If I wanted to move forward with being a more cognitively flexible person, there was no way going back to the sport with so many rules would help.
One day, my friend invited me to go see her friend’s club gymnastics meet. As I watched the team compete, I was inspired by their camaraderie and love for the sport. The team was self-motivated and expressed so much joy for just getting to compete. In comparison to my meets, there was a lot less visible stress, regulation and seriousness. I became curious about what joining this atmosphere would do for me. I missed the feeling of flipping and also wanted the opportunity to meet more new people.
With a lot of trepidation, I signed up for a practice. I have been practicing for about a month now, and this experience has reignited my love for gymnastics and helped me grow holistically.
I have fallen back in love with the strength, flexibility, coordination and mindfulness that gymnastics requires. As I am striving to be a more present person, gymnastics has served as the perfect opportunity to practice being in the moment because there is no time to think about other life problems while swinging on the bars.
I am trying to focus only on myself and not compare my abilities to others. It is so easy to fall into a judgmental or comparative mindset, but I want to make an active effort to change how I think. I believe that if I can see myself as a gymnast in a positive light, then I can see myself positively in other arenas of life.
Rejoining a gymnastics team has helped give me a fresh perspective. There are so many new experiences and challenges I am facing as I transition into my final years of college. It is comforting to remind myself of all the challenges I overcame in gymnastics and how I can persevere through obstacles. It also helps me build perspective on my current life challenges; teaching a science lesson in front of sixth graders feels much less scary than trying to do a flight skill on the beam. Reconnecting with gymnastics has helped me remember how I have persevered before.
In an effort to move toward a new and brighter future, I find that we often ignore or push away our past. I find this practice limiting because we can always learn from our mistakes and positive experiences. I strive to take time to recognize how far I have grown and the skills I have developed along the way. Through reconnecting with past hobbies, I believe we can all find new ways to stretch ourselves.