The judge salutes me in. I face the beam and take a deep breath before I start my routine, going over a million little reminders in my head: point your toes, tighten your muscles, don’t over think it. I jump, and as my feet grip the rough, familiar beam, I relax and the muscle memory kicks in. For a moment I flash back to a distant memory. I am eight-years-old, standing on an identical beam. My foot is slipping, and I brace myself for the inevitable slap as I hit the floor. Tears begin to flow, and they don’t stop as I sit on the ground and ignore the world around me. Back in the present, the memory fades away as I finish one of my best routines. But as I take off for the dismount, I know something is wrong the moment my feet leave the beam. I am too late, rotating too slowly, and my heart sinks as I slam down onto the cold hard mat. So close. As much as I want to sit there and give in to the tears that are attempting to fall at any moment, I get up, turn around, and give the judges a big salute, making sure to smile just like nothing went wrong. As I walk away, I am reminded of just how much I have learned from my gymnastics experiences; get up after you fall, smile, and try again.
Think about the first time you failed at something: blowing a job interview, not getting in to your dream college, even struggling through a bad breakup. Now imagine someone told you the next day to go back to that employer and try again, march up to the dean at your dream college and demand to be let in, bang on your ex’s door and refuse to leave until you work things out. Crazy, right? People do crazy things like this maybe once or twice in their lives, if they truly feel passionate enough to put aside their pride and refuse to give up.
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Gymnastics asks you to do this every day. Fall flat on your face? Get back up and do it again. Break your leg? You better be back in the gym tomorrow, conditioning and doing everything you can to make up for lost time.
At the 1996 Olympics, Kerri Strug broke her ankle on her first vault, her best event and the last score needed for the U.S. to win gold. But she didn’t accept defeat. She completed her last vault, sprinting down the runway on a broken ankle and sticking the landing on one foot, all with a gigantic smile on her face.
Gymnastics teaches you so much more than a few cool tricks. Commitment, ambition, and perseverance are all qualities you will find in all serious gymnasts, because that is what it takes to make it in this sport. It’s in our bones. Practices are never just fun and games; we must work hard by conditioning our muscles, increasing our flexibility, and doing countless repetitive drills. But diligence always pays off when you finally master a new skill. That feeling is unlike anything in the world. It is easy to work hard when you are doing well, but it is a whole lot harder to give your best effort when you have already failed multiple times. Gymnastics teaches you to push yourself even when you’re tired or have tried the same skill twenty times. And that twenty-first time when you finally do it right is what makes it worth it.
I pride myself in being incredibly resilient, in picking myself up even when it seems nothing can go my way, smiling for the judges all the while. Without having to do this every day as a gymnast, that characteristic may not be such an integral part of who I am. My passion for gymnastics and my own self-discipline shaped the way I deal with failure, and without that passion and dedication it would have been so easy to give up and walk away.
Gymnastics is not just a sport. It shapes gymnasts from our earliest years, through the trials of adolescence, and continues to be rooted in our character for the rest of our lives. The word "no" is not in our vocabulary, we refuse to give up even when it seems like the only thing to do.
So are you going to just sit there on that cold, hard mat, accepting defeat? You better get back up and try again.
