I began doing gymnastics not because I liked it or because I wanted to, as for many of us it all began as something to do in the evenings. I was only three years old and although I do not remember, pictures prove that my sister, eight years older than me, enjoyed being my first gymnastics coach. She made sure I had all my splits down, taught me to cartwheel, to roll forward and backwards and to do handstands. However, it wasn't until I was 7 years old, that my formal training as a gymnast began. Both my sister and I began training artistic gymnastics at the same time at a private country club in Mexico City (Club Casablanca San Angel), my coach Mayanin Argueyes was a formed gymnast herself. A year later my family and I moved to Spain and so I left Club Casablanca and joined Club Gimnastico Barcelones, a very small gym in Barcelona, Spain.
The gym was located in the fourth floor of an apartment building, looking from the outside you would have never guessed that inside there was a gymnastics facility. I don’t know exactly the dimensions but it is enough to say that in any given day, based on the narrow width of the facility, we were only able to either do floor and bars or beam and vault. The floor consisted of a single strip of foam with plywood on top and a carpet that covered the wood. On beam days we would set the beam on top of the floor. To the right of the floor we would set the bars and then take them down to set the vault. My first lesson learned in Barcelona was that the equipment doesn’t make the gymnast, good coaching and dedication from the gymnast is the primary drive to succeeding in the sport. My coaches Marta and Ester whom I have forgotten their last names were amazing, tough as they can be, but amazing. My gymnastics level sky rocketed in less than three months.
At my first competition, only after a couple of weeks of training with them as a level 4, I finished 56 out of 100 girls. It was a devastating result, I can’t believe that I actually cried over this but I guess at the time it felt like the end of the world –I wasn’t good enough to make it into the team. For the next two months I worked like I had never worked before, my second meet I finished 11th out of the same 100 girls and second out of all the girls in my team and so I earned my spot in the team. My years in Spain were perhaps the toughest as a young gymnast. The Spanish program was very rigorous in all senses of the word. I trained four hours a day six days a week (level 4/5), I was weighted every week and punished if my weight went above certain number. I was too skinny and small for this to really affect me but the more I think about the more I repulse that specific action.
For any elite level gymnast this kind of training is probably nothing in comparison or in some cases close to normal, but neither my parents nor I knew or understood the toughness of the sport. We saw gymnastics as a recreation but it was definitely more than that. After seven months I was burned out. I thank my coaches and parents for having pushed me to continue with the sport, because even at that young age all I wanted was to give up. After a year in Barcelona my dad’s sabbatical was over so we left Spain and returned to Mexico. I went back to Club Casablanca despite the fact that Mayanin my old coach who wasn’t coaching there anymore, had suggested to my mom that I went to a better gym called Benito Juarez. As Mayanin had speculated, my gymnastic level dropped significantly within a couple of months, the drop was big enough for my mom to realize and for her to make the move.
I met Yuridia Cisneros, Aurea and Cesar Arzate sometime in 1997. I remembered entering Benito Juarez and being amazed, I probably stared at the gym with my mouth open for more than five minutes. Not only were the facilities ten thousand better than any gym I had ever trained at but they had a group of extraordinary upper level gymnasts (level 9 and 10s) doing skills I had only watched on TV. From age 10 until age 15 I trained at Benito Juarez. I started as a level 5 and once again I had to prove myself to my coaches in order to make it into the team. After six or seven months I was competing and training level 7 and went to my first National Championships (as a level 7) in 1998. My gymnastics kept improving moving one level each year, at around age 13 as a level 8/9, I began to develop knee pain most likely related to growing taller. At this same age, school was getting tougher (middle school), gymnastics was harder because of the pain and because I began to actually experienced fear, as the skill difficulty began to increase and to top it all up some of my best friends and coaches began to leave the gym. It was then that I used my knee problems as an excuse to quit. I now understand however, that fear and pear pressure from school were the true and major contributors to my quitting gymnastics. Even to this day I regret that decision, but what’s done, is done.
It only took a little bit over a year for me to realize how much I missed gymnastics and to have the courage to show my face back in Benito Juarez. Most of my teammates had quit and the ones who remained had continued to improve. I was back in the gym with no more knee pain, but I was out of shape and my body had changed; I was mad at myself for having quit and jealous of my friends who had stuck with it. My anger, jealousy along with Cesar and Yuri (the only two coaches who remained at Benito Juarez) pushed me to work hard. In less than a year I was back in level 8 and training level 9. This time around I had a bit more of the maturity needed to deal with the pain and sacrifices of gymnastics and so I pushed myself and continued to improve. But after only a year and a half of my comeback to the gym I was faced with having to make a decision: school or gymnastics?
If there is something I admire the most about the American gymnastics program is the fact that pretty much never do gymnasts have to choose between school and gymnastics. Thanks to NCAA there is always a push to keep those two activities together at all times. Even elite athletes who have been homeschooled for a big stretch of their lives, they have the possibility to continue gymnastics while getting top quality education. Well, that is just not the case in Mexico, or at least it wasn’t when I was growing up, things have started to change and now we have programs such as CNAR that try to provide both (http://www.cnar.gob.mx/pabellon_gimnasia.html) but still no push beyond highschool. Needless to say, in my case I had to decide.
Neither my parents, nor my coaches, nor I, ever really hesitated my decision of school over gymnastics. It was clear to me that for many different reasons; I wasn’t going to the Olympics and so what was the point of continuing? So my decision was unanimous, goodbye gymnastics, hello school! I had the honor to be awarded a merit scholarship to study the last two years of high school at one of the 11 United World Colleges (www.uwc.org). This was a one in a life time opportunity to study abroad (I ended up going to the one in the New Mexico, USA www.uwc-usa.org) and receive top quality education in a setting that nurtured international understanding. I was in, so I left. I do not regret a single bit of my decision I just wished that circumstances would have been different and I had had the opportunity to pursue both careers at the same time, but that just wasn’t the case.
I left to New Mexico and even though I always searched for ways to continue training I was never successful. After graduating from UWC I continued my education thanks to another scholarship, at Colby College in Maine. I did my research and I found a local YMCA that had a gymnastics program. It wasn’t until the end of my freshmen fall that I had the time and courage to go to the YMCA, there I met Carol Evans, the most loving coach I have ever had. She received me at her gym with open arms, she always gave me the support that I needed both in the gym and outside of the gym, and because of her I fell back in love with gymnastics. I began training sometime in January and began to compete at level 9 in February.
Now, and here I may pause for a moment – once again the repeated pattern appears, I quit and then get back into competition level pretty quickly. Having a good muscle memory is awesome, however, it can be very dangerous, especially when you are out shape and don’t realize it because your body somehow manages to make the skills. After a period of 2 ½ years of not doing gymnastics a 19 year old body doesn’t behave the same as a 14 year old body -- So with this in mind, I will continue.
My body finally gave out at a gymnastics meet in early March, where I partially tore my MCL and tore my ACL of my right knee. That was it, once again gymnastics was over! My happiness of being back in the sport only lasted couple of months and after my injury I had no more strength to fight for getting back into gymnastics. I continued practicing the sport at a recreational level co-founding the Colby Gymnastics Club. But at that point in my life I really thought gymnastics was over - I had tried and I had failed and there was nothing else to it.
Well little did I know… the rest is now being written and is the force that drives this blog.
I find myself now with the privilege of being able to practice gymnastics, the honor of having an amazing coach, the pleasure of having a superb support team (UNC Gymnastics Club, TAG, CONADE, Friends and Family) and the fortune of having an extraordinary PT and doctors who keep me in one piece. After a long life search, all of these pieces have finally come together at one point and place in time: NOW.
Thanks to all of you and all of this, I am finally living my dream, now is my chance, my opportunity to become the best gymnast and person I can ever be. Lets keep dreaming!
