“Commitment is Pushing Yourself when No One Else is Around”
Learning how to balance your time and commit to a demanding sport like gymnastics is a life skill young gymnasts learn early on in their gymnastics career. As a young child learning how to divide your time between school, practice and friends is often a hard task to master. By the age of 7, I was practicing 20 hours per week. To most people that sounds like a lot of time, but to me it was nothing, because I loved gymnastics, enjoyed being in the gym and respected my coach’s guidance. I had no fear and I enjoyed learning new skills on a daily basis. I was committed to progressing through the levels in gymnastics.
When children begin gymnastics they do so for many different reasons. Some children are put in gymnastics because their parents did it, or because they have a sibling enrolled or simply, because their parents want them to burn off some extra energy. At the age of two I was walking on the back of the couch and climbing on any piece of furniture that would allow me to be upside down. My parents were afraid I was going to kill myself so they put me in gymnastics to learn how to fall and the rest is history.
I was fortunate that I loved gymnastics and wanted to keep going. I moved through the levels quickly and had great success with my gymnastics career. It took a lot of commitment on my part when I got older and wanted to spend more time with my friends outside of the gym. When I started missing out on school activities and spent more of my free time in the gym practicing or traveling to competitions, I found myself struggling with how to balance my time. I started watching college gymnastics on TV and got really excited when I saw how much fun the girls were having, and how awesome it would be to be a part of something like that. I quickly realized collegiate gymnastics was what I wanted to do and I refocused my energy towards getting a full athletic scholarship.
As a teenager I had zero understanding of how much a college education costs. I just knew I wanted to do gymnastics in college. I was fortunate enough to pick the school I wanted to attend. To be able to look back now and see what I accomplished with my gymnastics career and to graduate college with no debt is a life changing experience. I appreciate all the time I spent in the gym growing up.
When your child commits to gymnastics, they will have days where they want to quit and give up. Remind them that life is filled with struggles and hardships and it’s not about what happens to you, but how you react to the situation. Commitment is the key to reaching your dreams!
“Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes; but no plans.” [–] Peter F. Drucker
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