Me and my gymnastics...

I am an ex-acrobatic gymnast and I am researching into the culture behind this sport, as I feel that there are both good and bad points throughout this sport. I am in particularly investigating into whether coaches have the best intentions for the gymnasts or whether it is mainly for their club.

As I was previously a gymnast and loved the sport, I realised that I was lying to myself half of the time and I was so 'into' my sport that I wasn't taking proper care of my body and I would go to ridiculous lengths to get to the top. Gymnastics became my life and I wasn't bothered about going out with friends outside of 'gym time', I would practise in the house over and over until I could perform what I was wanting to perform with ease.

I won my first ever competition at NDP level when I was 9, I continued this on to being British Champion a number of times at junior and senior level. I was picked to represent Great Britain on numerous occasions which lead to travelling parts of the world and competing against top gymnasts. I competed in Belgium, France, Germany and Greece in the Worlds, World Cup, World Games and Europeans.


I trained 19.5 hours a week and sometimes more to get to where I needed to be, over the course of 6-9 years. Being a gymnast you need to train your body hard and learn and develop many skills needed to be better than others that you compete against.

I loved this sport masses amounts and this meant decreasing my diet massive amounts. As a normal person, you would generally have 3-4 main meals per day and have quite a few treats every now and again, but as an Elite Acro Gymnast I had at the most one meal a day which consisted of either of these:

• salad 
• fruit salad 
• vegetables with one thin slice of meat.

As my time in gymnastics progressed I was told by my coaches to watch my weight as much as possible. This was obvious as when you get older you obviously grow and start puberty and if you are wanting and trying to stay at a certain height and weight then you are bound to watch everything that goes into you body. This can become an obsession with some gymnasts, but as my mother knew that this could be dangerous she always watched what I was doing with my food and if I wasn't eating enough she would tell me to eat an apple etc. Towards the end of my time being an elite senior top, my coach would tell me to sacrifice my food with a chubba chub lollypop. This I could not do as I knew myself that I wouldn't have any energy what so ever to train and perform the things needed.

I also reached my goals by doing most of the above and by sacrificing my childhood; not having a life outside of gymnastics other than school work. 

I hope to investigate most of these things further by feedback from others...