Gymnastics (July 6th, 2015)

Our youngest daughter was a gymnast when she was young, and always really enjoyed every aspect of the sport. Unfortunately, she wasn’t built to be a gymnast, and eventually had to quit due to injuries. She has recently been commenting on how she missed her flexibility and six-pack from when she used to do gymnastics, and how fun it was to stay fit in that way, so she got on-line and looked for some adult gymnastics classes, and behold, she found one fairly close to our house. She came into my office today, and told me that she was going to try this adult gymnastics class tonight, and asked if I would go with her. When I finally caught my breath, after laughing until I cried, I told her she was crazy and said that she would have to ask her sister to go with her. Of course, sister already had plans, so back in my office she came pleading for me to go with her. I work out five days a week, so I am in fair shape, but I have never in my life done gymnastics, and let’s face it, I am no spring chicken. But after a lot of contemplation, and stressing, I finally told her that I would go and support her, and would hopefully even be able to do some of the stretching, although the gymnastics would be out of the question.

So off we went together to our adult gymnastics class. We got checked in, and I looked around to see me, my daughter and a lot of 20-somethings waiting for our class to begin. Talk about intimidation. Yikes! Was I really going to do this? But again, I told myself that stretching would be good for me.

We started out by jogging lightly around the spring-floor, and then stretched out all of our tight muscles. Ok, this isn’t so bad. So far I am looking like a pro! And then the coach immediately started us on some basic gymnastics moves; forward rolls, cartwheels, handstand to a forward roll (what?) (really?). OK, I was allowed to do donkey kicks across the floor instead of the obligatory handstand to a forward roll. This was a little humiliating, but doable. The coach (Webster) was watching everyone closely to see what their gymnastics levels truly were, so he could gear the class to work for everyone.

He eventually moved us to an area where he set up stations so that we could practice our handstands, cartwheels, round-offs, handstand to forward rolls, etc. When I attempted my round-off, he suggested that I might want to just stick with cartwheels for now. I agreed that he was probably right, since I was only here for the stretching. I did kind of master the handstand to forward roll as long as the big cushy mat was there to catch me. I’m not sure that I’m ready to do this on the spring floor yet though. All of these skills came very naturally for our daughter. It has been about 5 years since she has done anything with gymnastics, but she looked really good; beautiful cartwheels, handstands, back rolls, etc. She was totally in her element.

He then moved us to this waist-high mat, and had us practice jumping backward onto it. The goal was to hurl ourselves backward and get our bodies as far onto the mat as we could. I wasn’t doing real well at this, but again, it was doable, so I was enjoying it. Then he moved us to this funny looking squished circle mat that was about the same height as the mat we had just been using. Again the goal was to hurl our bodies backward as hard as we could onto this circle. If we threw ourselves hard enough, it would roll over, and we would land on our hands and then we could flip our feet over. If we were too delicate, the circle would force us back to standing position where we started. It soon became clear that this circle mat is a self-spotter for learning our back-hand-springs.

The first time I used the circle mat, I threw myself hard enough to make the mat roll over, but I wasn’t ready for that, so he pulled me back to standing position. But I kept trying, and eventually was going clear over, landing on my hands, and then flipping my feet over. Most of my attempts were not even close to graceful, but it was really fun. My last few attempts, I actually landed on my feet. Yay for me!

Our daughter's first attempt on the circle mat was completely different. The coach took one look at her, pulled her off of the circle mat and spotted her in a standing back-hand-spring. She was really nervous, but tried it and did great. A few more tries with Webster spotting her, and then she did one on her own.

Finally it was time for conditioning. Webster told us all to head for the ropes. We were going to climb the ropes. And of course, there were about 10 people sitting around by the ropes just watching us. No, that’s not intimidating. Especially because I couldn’t even climb a rope when I was little, so this certainly wasn’t going to be pretty. Our daughter made it to the ceiling with ease, and came back down. I made one and a half hand pulls, and that was it for me. Oh well, at least I tried. And being the great coach that he is, Webster said that next time we would try for two hand pulls. I love realistic goal setting! We finished off with 60 jack-knife crunches (I think I only did about 50, I was pooped), and then collapsed ourselves in a heap on the floor.

I made it through an entire gymnastics class, still in one piece, although I don’t think I have ever been this tired. I used muscles tonight that I didn’t even know existed. And even though I was the unintentional class clown, I am very proud of myself for trying. I told our daughter that if I can get out of bed tomorrow I might consider coming back with her sometime.