Gymnastics

I retired from gymnastics 25 years go (I say retired, though the language that was used and sticks in my craw is “quit”). It was the 1990s, and the Karolis were in power. My coach hailed from Brazil and had trained in the Soviet Union under Bela Karoli. I was never sure how or why he landed at Dana’s Westside Gymnastics, a small recreational gym in the underdeveloped west mesa of Albuquerque. I was a recreational gymnast, starting at age 3. I don’t have the narrative, but if I had an ounce of my current energy, I imagine my mother put me in gymnastics to save her sanity and my neck. Petite, energetic, strong. Long toes (to grip the beam). Sass and little fear. Aerodynamic. I was the perfect gymnast. My coach arrived and selected a few of us, scooping his hand through the pond.

There were a handful of us who worked with him, no longer having fun practice. But serious practice. Specialist coaches were brought in — dancing, strength, flexibility. I remember two metal folding chairs, spring boards put between them in a V. Our splits pushed past 180 degrees. Ankle weights and spread legs, climbing a floor-to-ceiling rope. Ballet commands shouted in a heavy accent. I developed stomach problems so severe that at the age of six or seven, I had an endoscopy to check for ulcers. Those years are a blur, but roughly at age eight, my coach was asked to leave Dana’s. We went to a world-class gym that had trained several men into the olympics. It still operates today. My coach, and the little girls (us), were to be the women’s gymnastics answer to this success. It is not an overstatement to say I had national level, collegiate, or even olympic potential. I watch NCAA gymnastics today, and I was training those bars releases when I was eight. I was the youngest on my team, a year ahead in school and training. I left the sport the year I was to be alone in our age division. What would have been the start of my dominance.

What does it take for a gymnast who trains sixty hours a week and competes regionally and nationally to walk away? Desperation. Sheer desperation. Hyper-extended muscles, torn meniscus, undiagnosed back fracture. Terror. Constant anxiety. Hiding in the bathroom before practice to pray that my coach wouldn’t make it in that day. I loved the sport. I loved flying through the air. Was capable of a standing triple back. But it had ceased to be mine, and I saw my future as if drawn on a map; if not physical death than emotional and spiritual death. I sat in the car with my mom before practice, immobilized. Tears running down my cheeks. Frozen. She drove away, it was to be my second break. A first having come a few months before. I never went back.

It took until 2016 for me to be able to stomach watching the sport. Until now, with the bravery of Simone Biles, Ali Raisman, McKayla Maroney, and Maggie Nichols to even start to reckon with what I suffered. And a dear companion of my soul, saying to me again and again as I sit with my leg extended, the torn meniscus, injured again after so many years, “you were a world-class gymnast.” And my coach’s voice reaches into my mind, “quitter.” My therapist says that leaving gymnastics saved my life and that it was a brave decision for a ten year old, to defy every adult in her life and do for herself what no one else would do.

I’m harkening back to the ferocity of that ten year old girl because I am about to do something that again requires choosing myself, saving my own life. Why write this on a professional website? Because for me, there cannot be a separation between my work and my humanity. They inform each other. And as we prepare to dip our toes into 2023, I will publish this post in the hopes that another woman sees it and finds courage. Sometimes I feel like the only one who left gymnastics. The only one who has found herself again needing to escape. Isolation and its vestiges are marks of abuse. So if you are reading this, you are not alone. And if these words remind you of a friend, then reach out. Together we are stronger, and the world is ours to change.

-Amanda