Prologue When I did gymnastics I felt empowered. When I did gymnastics I felt happy. When I did gymnastics I felt alive. I started gymnastics when I was about six years old, all the way until I was twelve. Unfortunately I had to stop abruptly, due to an injury in the growth plates in my wrists. I write this not in memory or in loss of the dedication I had for gymnastics, but as a celebration of all the things I learned and accomplished, both physically and mentally throughout this process. Note to reader: This piece was specifically intended to include a massive amount of figurative language. Though the prompt did not require, this selection is also meant to make the reader feel a tad uneasy. The figurative language may be slightly …show more content…
‘CLICK CLICK, CLICK CLICK.’ She snapped the button on the top of her pen nervously, analyzing the X-rays of my arms. Her perfectly white coat in contrast with the black background of the bones behind her. “It appears that you fractured the growth plates in your wrists. I have to ask you to stop gymnastics permanently so you don't further injure yourself. If you continue it looks like your arms may stop growing due to all the repetitive damage.” She gave me a tentative smile. “There are several other options, swimming, or- SILENCE. So loud I could hear it. So loud I couldn't hear anything, my brain crowded, thumping, like the over stimulation of a cramped rave concert. No more gymnastics? No more gymnastics! Gymnastics was my life. It made me feel liberated. Something I had actually cared enough about to get “good” at. Good in quotation marks because it's impolite to complement yourself, but you know what, I had gotten good. Screw being polite. I was great at gymnastics. It made me feel like I was in my own skin, and ironically, despite the physical exertion, like I could breathe. All my time had been spent dedicating myself to it, now it was back to the drawing board, just like
In fourth grade I took gymnastics. I really like it, and had a lot of
Gymnastics is considered by most to be one of the top 3 hardest sports in existence. There are aspects of the sport of gymnastics that exceed all other sports. The strength, flexibility, speed, power, and the intense training and competition all play factors in what make gymnastics so difficult. This sport requires as much or more than most other collegiate athletes while the teams receive much less money than that of a football team. The first point will introduce the massive benefits of gymnastics such as increasing bone mineral density and lean tissue in the body. Next, a study on the immense number of injuries that occur in gymnasts will be analyzed. How gymnasts are able to throw themselves in the air, do every movement that needs to be done, and prepare for the ground is the next analysis that will be done. This paper will look at the benefits of gymnastics as well as the factors that make it such a difficult sport.
For years gymnastics has been a sport that many children participate in. But as the years have gone by it has turned into something other than a place for kids to grow and learn. Its overwhelming commitment has continued to replace kids’ childhoods with stress, mental and physical pain and eating disorders. Many results have come from this change in the gymnastics society. Gymnasts have come to a point where they have been told and directed to understand that winning is the only important factor in gymnastics. “ It’s about the elite child athlete and the American obsession with winning that has produced a training environment wherein results are bought in at any cost, no matter how devastating. It’s about how cultural fixation on beauty and weight on youth has shaped the sport and driven the athletes into a sphere beyond the quest for physical performance.” (Ryan 5)
...rried gymnastics popularity throughout the world. Gymnastics started out being a training tool for only men, to being an all guys sport around the world, to being one of the most popular Olympic girl sports in the world. Sometimes it only takes that one person to change the whole idea of one sport. Gymnastics is that sport that no one would have ever imagine that it would have only been used for guys at one point and now it is a girl based sport. It only takes one person to break out and do something different for everything to change.
I started gymnastics at the age of six and because of performing from an early age I became confident in being public. My motivation towards exercising has kept me on practicing a variety of sports for example ath...
Some values that make activities a sport would be that it’s time consuming, healthy, and also beneficial to emotional and physical requirements. However one concern that has been on people’s minds was why dance is not always considered a sport. There are various reasons to uphold both sides of agreeing or disagreeing the issue, but not all opinions support the fact with reasonable thoughts. “As knowledge about the body increases, dance training improves and the competition for excellence paired with innovation is greater, dancers bodies are pushed to the limits. The physical ability and disciplines expected of a dancer can be easily related to those
Fraser, Allen. “What a great gymnastics movie should be.” The New Yorker. conde Nast, n.d. May. 17 Feb. 2014
After attending the speech given by Shawn Johnson, I feel motivated, encouraged, and determined. She stated that ever since she was a little girl she fell in love with the gym and always wanted to be a gymnast. She talked about all of her experiences through her young ages and growing up. The biggest experience that stuck out to me was she was in competition for competing for the gold medal, actually running against her own teammate. At this time, she was only 16 years old. This was such an incredible moment because she had so many thoughts running through her head and she had to pull herself together after looking at her school to where she was standing compared to everyone else and the score her teammate just scored. She said she was really
When you are performing and competing as a gymnasts winning isn’t everything. For instance, when I would perform or compete on uneven bars if I was just happy with finishing my routine and not falling off the bars. Bars was my worst area in gymnastics. Almost every gymnasts has this area they dread but have to do. In this area if you didn’t win it didn’t matter as long as you did your best. Also just advancing in your skills is what matters to a gymnasts not winning. Another thing people say is all gymnasts are perfectionists. This is also a false statement. When being a gymnast you can’t be a perfectionist because if you are then every skill that you do won’t ever be good enough. Even the best of the best don’t do every skill perfectly. Gymnasts do spend a lot of time on one skill but that doesn’t mean that they are perfectionists. Many different components go into just one skill. For instance, doing a backflip in gymnastics you have to jump at the right time you have to tuck your legs in at the right time and point your toes. In many of the skills it is timing and it is very rare you go out there and do a performance completely perfect. To be a gymnast you can’t be a perfectionist because doing your best has to be good enough, otherwise you will constantly be down on yourself. For me when learning a new skill just landing on my feet makes me feel good. Then after I land it I worry
The sheer energy of a gymnast alone can be felt by audiences of all ages, but what the spectators lack the ability to feel is the pounding of the bodies that bear the impact of the athletes in action. Gymnastics consists of a mixture of acrobatic performances of four different events for females, and six different events for males (Gianoulis 1). Gymnastics is demanding in a multitude of ways, including: physically, emotionally and mentally. It requires countless hours of dedication. The concerns of most gymnasts are moving up to the next level, or getting a more advanced skill, while the concerns of the doctors, coaches, and parents revolve mostly around the athlete’s health, which is put at stake for the adored yet dangerous sport. Injuries are common among both male and female gymnast alike, but due to the fact a female gymnast’s career peaks at the same time of major growth and development, a female gymnast’s body as a whole is more likely to undergo lifelong changes or affects (Gianoulis 2). Among the injuries of the mind blowing athletes, the most common ones affect the ankles, feet, lower back, wrist, and hands of individuals (Prevention and Treatment 1). From sprains, to the breaks, the intriguing sport of gymnastics is physically demanding on a gymnast’s body.
For Gymnastics every year you get evaluated to see if your are ready to move on to the next level.I had been practicing to go on to level eight and working very hard on my skills to get therefor that whole year.But, growing had an impact on my skills and I became more sloppy and less elegant with
Competitive sports have been around for as long as history, and most people have participated in one at some point in their lives. Competitive sports are not for all people, however, because not everyone feels the pros outweigh the cons. One popular sport is competitive gymnastics, which has always had controversy as to whether it is more beneficial or harmful. While gymnastics is a potentially dangerous sport, if taught or performed improperly, its benefits, both physical and psychological, are far greater than the potential risks.
Firstly, engaging in a dancer’s career develops aerobic power, muscular strength, balance, flexibility and bone and joint integrity (Koutedakis & Jamurtas, 2004) physical elements of strength within a discipline that centers on aesthetic values glorifying the body; the body being the valued medium of manifestation. Consequently, it seems reasonable to suggest that the body, meaning it’s physicality, could be one of the key factors in the formation of a dancer’s identity. Although I do not intend to separate my work into chapters as such, there will be three themes that reoccur and these will be three components of dancer identity, with physicality being one of them. If possible I will avoid using the three components as chapters because I feel their topics overlap each other and cannot always exist alone in the matter I choose to discuss. It also seems that if I chose to form chapters the specificity of the focus into the professional dancer’s career transition to retirement may be endanger of becoming faded in
In Klein high school, unlike football players, wrestlers don’t get recognized for what they do, and perhaps all of Texas for that matter. After all, football is Texas's favorite sport and has been long before the spread of wrestling. I was the new kid on the team for a while. The coaches decided to place me and JV for my lack of experience. Though I managed to learn quickly, I hated JV. Most juniors and seniors trained in varsity while I was stuck with the wimpy sophomores (plenty of seniors and juniors as well). I knew wrestling was not for everyone, but that did not stop me from experiencing the lessons of hard work, confidence, and sacrifice.
A warrior does not give up what he loves, he finds the love in what he does.” (Socrates). In the movie, Peaceful Warrior, Dan Millman refuses to cease his passion for gymnastics. Nothing could stop Millman from doing what he loves. One of his many stimulated ambitions is to make it to the Olympics. Although Millman goes through difficult obstacles in the movie, he gets through it with the help of a generous man named Socrates, another character in the movie. Even through all the struggles that Dan faces, it all shows his ambition for gymnastics and how self-improving he is.