Keep up!

Alright! I got my answer, not that I wasn't really expecting it... So from now on I'll be writing about a gymnast's life. The blog title, "Flip Lane," is in honor of what this road represents, and while driving down it we'll always pass a lesson!.

To begin I'll tell you two of my favorite quotes and they pretty much sum up the sport.
"God supplies the talent, we must put forth the effort." and "OWW!!!"

Now most high level gymnasts carry around the story that they have been doing gymnastics for 15+ years. I, myself, have only done this sport for the better part of 10 years. Starting at the young, tender age of four my mother introduced me to the sport in a girls rec class. It's not your average start. My mother wanted me to try out the sport, but the gym we went to was lacking the sport's male counterpart. Because I was so young they allowed me to join in some preschool and recreational classes.

At the age of five my family moved from where my story began, Oklahoma, to Illinois. Here was where I picked up men's gymnastics. At a gym, just outside of St. Louis, called World Class Gymnastics I enjoyed two years of gymnastics and then hated my final year. Scary coaches and scary skills will do that to a cowardly eight year old.

After a three year break on the other side of the globe, in Japan, I took the sport back up. It was one week into our new Alaskan lives that I started back up. I found my passion for the sport again and have been going ever since.

In all reality, the name of the game in this sport is perseverance. This is the first lesson we'll be passing.

When people talk about perseverance they normally mean to push through some sort of adversity. Whether it's social, mental, physical, or any other aspect of life, we all have had to persevere at some point. When you're younger you don't realize you persevere,but non-the-less you've done it most of your life We academically persevere to make it through school. When we get hurt we persevere and keep on living. We don't give up. I don't know if it's natural for us, as human beings, to give up. On small things, maybe, things with no major impact on our lives we have no problem letting go, we're lazy a lot of the time too, but when it comes to things that directly affect us and threaten our life or lifestyle, we don't give. Especially not as a whole. Individually people may give, but when a threat arises to a community or group, someone's if not everyone exhibits perseverance to get through the situation.

Now, in gymnastics, most of our perseverance is in the mental and physical form. A lot of gymnastics is running into mental walls, either you can't figure out how to position and move your body or are so scared you want to piss yourself. The other times you break down your body somehow. Torn muscles, ligaments, ACLs, and broken bones are an inevitable part of the sport. An any case we heal up, break out the wrecking ball, and crash through the walls. It's like driving through construction zones on the highway, slow moving in some sections, fully stopped at others, but in any case, you get through it. To be successful you can't be stopped and left in the dust, you have to keep up. That's one of the first lessons a gymnast learns.


Now to cap off my first blog post on life lesson brought to you by the sport of gymnastics I'll introduce some of the basics of gymnastics.

Men's gymnastics consists of six events: Floor Exercise, Pommel Horse, Still Rings, Vault, Parallel Bars and High Bar. Women's gymnastics has four events: Vault, Uneven Bars, Balance Beam, and Floor. The order in which I have listed these events is referred to as the Olympic Order in the gymnastics world. In most meets and all international competitions, events are competed in this order as to keep the system organized.

 "Random question gymnasts get" of the day: do guys the Balance Beam? Simple answer; no, the pain could surmount to unbearable amounts.

Skill of the day: Magyar. (most skills are named after the first person to create and internationally compete a skill)