For those people who don't understand how important having a good mental state is for a gymnast, it might be a good exercise to think that, in other sports such as tennis, soccer, basketball, swimming,... if you're not in your right headspace, you lose a set, a game, maybe you get a contussion, or a minor injury, but in gymnastics, you risk severe injuries, some of them life-threatening. Even if you're just doing a simple somersault on floor, a handspring vault, a layout stepout on beam, or a giant on uneven bars, you could have a serious injury. Now try to imagine, impossible as it might be, what it must be even attempting the outrageous skills that somebody like Simone Biles does, you could snap your spine or break your neck.
In the team final in Tokyo, Simone was able to land her vault after getting lost in the air, and she recognized that she couldn't continue performing at her best without risking not only a serious injury, but, with all the scores going into the team final counting, she would have cost her team any chances of winning a medal, so she sacrificed her chances of competing in the team final to allow her team to win a medal, which they did. It takes a lot of courage to admit that you cannot continue competing in one of the most important sport events in the planet, something you have been training for the last 4 years.
In this video, you will learn what happened to some gymnasts who were not as lucky as Simone; to gymnasts who, due to different times or circumnstances, couldn't say "no" to their coaches; and to gymnasts who were training while not fully healed after a previous injury,
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