There’s something I have noticed about myself since I’ve come through my teenage years and left my gymnast days behind. I am now nearing my mid-twenties and have begun to realise that a part of me is missing. It’s not that I feel less of a person but there is something I really miss about myself.

As a gymnast I was a hard worker, stubborn and fearless but now I am just a hard worker and stubborn. I no longer have the firey fearless persona that the other gymnasts admired in me and that my coaches loved about me. I can confidently coach others to perform upside down moves on the beam or giants on bars and tell them to just “go for it” but when it comes to it now,  I can’t just “go for it”, I am terrified to perform a back flip on the beam or a twisting fly away dismount on bars, not only in gymnastics but also in life.

As a young girl, I would do anything, never embarrassed. I would do a full routine with my bum hanging out of my leotard – I once insisted on finishing my bar routine in training even though my leggings had split right down the middle from jumping into a straddle upstart, leaving the older girls in tears laughing at me! I wanted to try my hardest to get the technique of a move right as quickly as I could so that I could perform it without support from my coach, to feel that I had really achieved something. I was cheeky, a show off and some might say over confident.

I have been trying to discover when things changed. I was forced to retire at 17 and began to train casually as an adult from 19. The devastation of having to retire made it difficult to begin training again casually, mainly because of the physical pain but also the emotional pain. Eventually things got better as I understood technique and biomechanics more and I was able to achieve moves easily, even if it was on a casual basis, I knew ways to avoid hurting myself or putting too much stress on my recovering injury. Throughout these years, I went through the emotions and situations that any normal person does, heartache, depression, defeat and loss of a family member. I think each of these experiences maybe took a little part of me with them, they took my fire.

Apparently as a baby, I was firey and active, my parents have recalled many a time that I would crawl out of my cot as a baby whereas my brother acted like the normal baby and just slept! I think that gymnastics kept my fire burning and developed it into something special. I will always believe that gymnastics contributed largely to the person I am today.   When I go out and will be around people I want to look immaculate, I want to appear confident, a similar feeling that I would get when stepping out into the middle of the floor to perform a routine, maybe I see people as an audience. When I am going somewhere special or to something important, I like to take my time and get my head in focus. In an argument with someone close to me I am stubborn, I know what feels right and want to do it my way.  When I feel I have done something right or made the correct decision and someone tells me I have not or that I have failed at the task, I am gutted, I don’t take corrections too well. When I work, I have to have things organised, clear in front of me and tend to do things exactly to the book, I want it perfect and will try hard until I get the perfect result for a deadline.

I remember being 16 and on holidays. A facility on the island was offering bungee jumps, I was convinced that I was going to do it, in the end we didn’t have time (although maybe my parents told me that so that I wouldn’t give grey hairs early!). Now, I will not even go on the same rollercoaster that I would have gone on several times in a day every year! Ask me to get up on the beam to do a flip or to do a flyaway on bars and I’ll have to think it over several times.

The knock backs in life have certainly extinguished some of that fire that gymnastics nurtured, developed and matured in me. I miss that confident “get up and go” attitude about myself – since retiring it has slowly but steadily begun to diminish.  As a gymnast I would never question myself, consider what others would think of me or think the consequences and “what ifs”  through thoroughly. Maybe it’s my age, I’m getting older,  I’ve seen the world and read the news. I’m getting to the harder part of life and maybe it is that I don’t want to take risks as much, if any. I am still me but I would very much like this part of me to return, I’m not sure if I feel complete without it.

Part 2

The End

Performing a simple handspring vault, I landed incorrectly, meaning one foot took a disproportionate amount of the impact, mainly on the big toe joint from pointing my toes so much during the move. I was competing in an international friendly at the time and oddly I had complained to my coach that this vault was too easy for my level.  I almost felt like Kerri Strug in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.   I was in incredible pain but presented to the judge before hobbling off to the side. Bruising and swelling came almost instantly. Half of my foot was swollen, I couldn’t fit it into my shoe. At the hospital I was told that there were no breaks and just to rest.

 I was in terrible pain and on crutches for  two months.  For the next few months I trained occasionally but was unable to cope with the pain for any length of time.  Something was never right. I saw two specialists who couldn’t see much of a problem, except a very swollen tendon (“which will go down”), bruising and a lack of movement in the joint due to the swelling. They refused to operate on me, instructing me to ice it before and after training and whenever I felt I needed it.

When I was seventeen, I had to stop training altogether.  It broke my heart to make this decision but there was no other way, I was just in too much pain. I lived with the pain for 3 years, not being able to walk home from school or wear high heels, like every other girl did, without being crippled within an hour.  I was devastated.

Nearly three years ago, I was referred to a podiatrist. During the first visit, I was diagnosed with a “Femoral Anteversion”, a congenital disorder in which the femur becomes twisted and the hip ball-and-socket joint does not sit correctly. Although it is a disorder I’ve had possibly since I was in the womb, the imbalance of my feet played heavily on my hip, only aggravating the disorder. You can see in this picture, how the the “ball” of the “ball and socket”  joint is rotated compared to that on the left.

I now have frequent appointments to have my legs, from hips to toes, manipulated and mobilized. To put it bluntly, I lie on the plinth and hold onto the sides while my feet are cracked and bent in mysterious ways and the rest of my joints are pulled,pushed, popped and cracked. The podiatrist also discovered numerous tiny fractures in my past x-rays and tears in the large tendon in my foot, which was in danger of rupturing at some point in the future. I can now wear heels, I can train without pain and swelling.

Unfortunately, the diagnosis was too late. I wish it had been made six years ago as I never reached my peak performance.

 Coping with injury

As I said at the beginning, it’s not only physical pain the gymnast has to cope with, but emotional pain too. Having to retire as a practicing gymnast made me feel extremely down and disheartened. I took a few weeks out to get myself together. It always feels odd coming into the gym when injured, everyone’s looking at you and you’re looking back, watching your team mates train and achieve new moves, all the while thinking, “I hope she doesn’t get better than me”.

The emotional pain is tough. The one place I would go to escape everything was where the problem stirred from.  There is a strong temptation to feel sorry for yourself, thinking that the injury wasn’t your fault. However, Gymnastics isn’t a team or contact sport – you can’t simply blame someone else for, say, a bad tackle. You know that your technicalities were incorrect and are now suffering the consequences.

 Injury is a very tough thing to get through and to get over. When returning after injury there is the frustration that you have to be very careful as your body is vulnerable. There is also the terrible psychological factor that it may take many gymnasts weeks, months or longer to perform the same move that caused the injury. It’s a dangerous sport but well worth  it for the thrills