Gymnastics

At the young age of five years old, My Twin sister and I started taking Gymnastics classes Monday through Friday from 5:30 PM to 8:30 PM. I know most parents are thinking, this is too long of a day for children who are in kindergarten. When we were in a kindergarten the students only went half a day so it wasn't as big of deal. My mom never forced us to go to practices if we were too tired, or if we didn't have our homework done from school.

At the age of five I began to understand the term schedule. My sister and I caught our bus at 12:30 PM went to school got home around 4:00 PM, Ate dinner, did our homework, and left for Gymnastics practice at 5:00 PM, providing we didn't have much homework.

My mother worked out a homework deal without gymnastic coaches. This meant if we had too much homework we would not attended practice that day and would come on Saturday if a coach was available.

My mother doing this for us taught me that education came first no matter what the situation was.

In a way, the schedule my mother started for us at the age of five, had inadvertently taught me responsibility. I knew as soon as I came home I had to get my homework done so I could go to practice and have fun. I always knew I had to do well in school or I wouldn't be able to go to gymnastics anymore. I learned priorities as well.

This is how a typical gymnastics practice worked for us. We would all begin by doing stretches to loosen our muscles up. We would then run a few laps around the gym to get our blood and circulation moving! We would then begin warm ups with 50 sit ups and 50 push ups. This taught me repetition and that it wasn't a bad idea.

We would then all line up at the edge of the spring floor to warm up for a tumbling (flip flop) exercise. Being a beginner we would learn how to do cartwheels, forward rolls, backward rolls, and round offs. The older more experienced gymnasts would do back flips, and front hand spring, and other bigger tricks.

Not be able to do those more experienced tricks right away made me anxious to learn but mad at myself at the same time. That experience and the feelings I had made me learn the meaning of practice.

We would then split off into four groups and begin learning the routines for each event. The events where the: parallel bars, the vault, the balance beam, and the spring floor.

Going from event- to event made me realize as well as learn what the meaning of rotation was and that it was similar to the meaning of sharing.

After a gymnast learned the routines they would go as a team to competitions, performing each event as individuals against other teams from different areas.

Going to competitions taught be to work hard for myself, but most of all to work hard for my team as well. Metals were given to the gymnasts who scored the best in each event. Metals were also given to the team with the best overall score, mean the total of the gymnastics scores in the event.

This taught me that if you worked hard for yourself, it would better your team in the long run.

Not everyone got a metal when we went to gymnastics meets, not like now a days when every kid gets a trophy no matter what.

If I didn't get a trophy it taught me to learn from my mistakes and work harder at it the next time around, and not to have any regrets.

All in all to some it all up. Not only did gymnastics teach me, physical strength and physical health guidelines, but I was taught life's little lessons along the way without even realizing it, until I was older.

Most importantly, Gymnastics taught me to "Never give up"!