Swing Big, Dream Bigger Gymnastics is one of the hardest sports in the world; I must be fully physically, mentally, and emotionally invested in it. Half-doing anything could land me in a hospital bed. Most gymnasts spend so much time at the gym that it becomes their home, teammates turn into sisters, and for me, my coach is my best friend, and an ally for me. My sparkly, pink-haired gymnastics coach, Shannon, pushes me everyday to make my gymnastics shine, and over time she has changed who I am into a confident person, ready to take on anything that comes my way. I never thought I would be a gymnast; when I was younger I took a gymnastics class, but I disliked it. For a while I was a competitive swimmer, but that passion faded, and I got hooked …show more content…
Not coming naturally to me, I have to work twice as hard there than I do on the other events. In this case, I was racing against the clock; having only a few more weeks before my first competition, my bar routine was nowhere near ready. I barely had all my skills, much less my connections. Shannon was trying her best to help me learn it, but nothing was working. Just telling me what to do would not always work for me, so she had to be creative to get me to attempt new moves. “Try it on strap bar,” She told me when I was working on a connection that I had a mental block on. A mental block is when an athlete has the physical capabilities to do a motion, but their mind is holding them back. For some people, they can be devastating, causing them to quit and lose their passion. For me, I get extremely frustrated, and then the rest of my practice is smudged. I develop a negative mindset, and for the remainder of the day nothing goes well. It was starting to impede my progress. “What? Are you crazy? That won’t do anything,” I cried out. I used to be terrified of strap bar, a setup made for performing drills with my hands strapped in, removing the risk of falling. For me it seemed to have the opposite effect. “No one does those on strap bars,” I