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Saturday, June 18, 2011

Gymnastics!!!!! ... I just like it is all ....

Frodo Baggins Sado Island, South Korea
Korean Word: 토요일 (Saturday - appropriate, right?)
Spanish Word: ¡Qué chiquitita! (How adorable/cute/precious!)

What I should be doing right now is completing a unit plan for literacy, a math interview analysis for math, and a chapter of Nikki's novel to send her as a surpreeze tonight. Instead, I am posting my gymnastics videos!

To begin at the beginning: I began going back to the gym when I discovered that there were gyms for gymnasts in Boston and that one of them was actually a place for gymnasts of all ages! There are several misconceptions about gymnastics that I and my videos would just like to clear up before I continue:
  • Myth: Gymnasts must be 90 lbs and 5' 0"
    • Reality: Gymnasts come in all shapes and sizes. The key is not size but strength. I'm a hefty 170 lbs and 5' 9" so I must be able to support my own weight/bear my own weight. As long as I can do that (and you will see below that I can), there's no earthly reason I can't call myself a gymnast.
  • Myth: Once you are older than fifteen or sixteen, you can't do gymnastics
    • Reality: I attend a gym where the oldest gymnast is forty-two and still doing every event. He does tucks and layouts with twists, he does giants on the single high bar, and he's probably the strongest dude in the gym. The thirty-four year-old female gymnast is the best of the female gymnasts and is likewise flipping, twisting, and swinging her way through competitions.
To continue ... today my friend Julie and I met up at the gym for the first time and spent two hours hanging out and blissing out on gymnastics. We're both going to be sore and exhausted tomorrow, I have no doubt, but it was so much fun! The added bonus for me was that someone was finally at the gym with me whom I felt comfortable asking to film me doing a couple of my favorite things. These feel like benchmarks: Tess at the beginning of her adult training. I'd love to post new videos a year from now and see how much I've progressed.

The first video is of my back handspring, which is the move that brought me to and kept me going with gymnastics from the time I was a wee lassy. The second video is of a short tumbling pass called a round-off back tuck.

Enjoy!

 

2 comments:

  1. awesome! my little Nadia Comenici (sniff sniff) :)

    Ashanty

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh, I used to LOVE her!!! Thanks so much, Gen ^_^

    ReplyDelete