The Ungraceful Gymnast

I started gymnastics when I two years old, and I fell in love with it. Gymnastics is a sport where you fail almost as much as you succeed, if not more. It’s a sport that is 80% mental and 20% physical. It can be really scary and painful sometimes but the love of the sport makes it all worth it. The friendships and the laughs that come with gymnastics is just another reason to put ourselves through the rest of the trials of the sport.
Laughter is a way of coping for most people. It can be a natural reaction for people in awkward or uncomfortable situations. Laughter is also a way to show happiness, but we also laugh at ourselves in times of embarrassment or pain. It is a distraction from these things as well as being a first reaction.
In gymnastics, we laugh all of the time. Sometimes it is at something that we did, or at something our teammates did. I had my fair share of times that I laughed at myself, mostly because I had a tendency to fall a lot. I have come to find that even though dancers and gymnasts are supposed to be graceful, they are often some of the clumsiest people you will meet. I was a gymnast for thirteen years of my life, which meant a ton of mess ups, which meant a ton of laughter over those years.
Some falls were bigger than other and some were funnier too. I remember one fall in particular, the fall that absolutely highlighted my grace, and ability to laugh embarrassing moments off, it is one moment in my life that my gymnastics friends won’t let me forget. Toward the end of my career in the sport, I had a lot of issues with my back tumbling. I had mental blocks with almost all of my back skills, so even though I knew my body was physically able to do the move, my brain would not let my body go for it. It could be incredibly frustrating, especially since I knew that I should be able to do the skills like my back handspring to a back tuck, and a back walkover on the beam. At the time, I was trying to be able to do my back tumbling pass on the floor exercise. I had lost it again after bailing on the skill during the warm ups at my last competition. I warmed myself up with just some back handsprings. Then I moved on to just a one step round off back handspring, the less power I had going into the pass, the less scary it seemed. I finally got myself back to where I had been. I was doing my pass without a spot once more! As I mentioned before, the less power I had going into the skill, the less scared I was to go for it. Taking only one step into the pass was the easiest way for me to do the skill. Then eventually, I started was going for it with what we call a power-hurdle. The best way I can describe that is, a skip jump, lunge type maneuver. Well, that particular day I was feeling quite confident, I asked my coach if he would stand there for my tumbling pass because I was going to try to run into it. I had not done a run to my pass for over a year at this point. I remember preparing for it. My preparation was a deep breath, wiping my hands on my legs, taking one step forward, and then going for it. I ran hard and I felt ready. I went to do my power-hurdle to going into the round off and KA THUD. I tripped, and since I had all that power from my sprint run, I rolled and rolled across the floor. I know my coach made a funny comment about it, but I don’t remember what it was. I do remember, however, lying on the floor, face down, laughing at myself for what seemed like several minutes. I could hear my teammates laughing too. I suppose it was embarrassing but to be honest, I found it more funny than anything else. It had completely caught me off guard!
I’m glad I was able to laugh at myself in that moment because if I wasn’t able to, I probably would have been overcome with embarrassment and let my teammates teasing jokes get to me. Plus, it was pretty funny and thank goodness it wasn’t at a competition!