Gymnastics: The Way It Should Be
For years gymnastics has been a sport that many children participate in. But as the
years have gone by it has turned into something other than a place for kids to grow and learn. Its
overwhelming commitment has continued to replace kids childhoods with stress, mental and
physical pain and eating disorders. Many results have come from this change in the gymnastics
society. Gymnasts have come to a point where they have been told and directed to understand
that winning is the only important factor in gymnastics. “ It’s about the elite child athlete and the
American obsession with winning that has produced a training environment wherein results are
bought in at any cost, no matter how devastating. It’s about how cultural fixation on beauty and
weight on youth has shaped the sport and driven the athletes into a sphere beyond the quest for
physical performance.” (Ryan 5)
As a society we have the ability to change the ways in which our elite gymnasts
are learning gymnastics. We need to redirect the teachings of the coaches and the parent
involvement in order to achieve a atmosphere in which gymnasts can explore, learn and gain
gymnastic abilities in which they feel they can handle. “ Over the last 20 years there have been
many publications on coaching as it relates to sport psychology or sport pedeology. No
theoretical framework, however, exsits for explaining which factors are most important in the
coaching process and which relationships among these factors are most significant.” (Cote pg.1)
I propose that we create an environment with a stress on healthy dieting, good exercise and less
strenuous workouts. Not an environment where winning is the prime concern. There are many
issues in which I would like to direct your attention to throughout this paper. “Winning” is one
issue in which I feel (as a former gymnast) has a great affect on the gymnasts ability to achieve
and succeed. The idea of always having to win is not the only concern in which I find to be true.
Anorexia, as well as poor dieting is another one of my main concerns. Something must be done
about these two issues which hold very true within the gymnastics world today. But there are “
no comprehensive frameworks that represent the complex reality within which coaches
work.”(cote pg. 2)
Coaches today have trained their gymnasts to maintain the so called “proper
weight” that they feel is right for their athletes. Christy Henrich’s coach
“claims that gymnastics and its emphasis on slimness are not responsible for Christy’s
illness and death. He claims her intense drive to win contributed to her eating disorder. The
gymnastic training system encourages young female athletes to keep their weight down, and
many gymnasts live on diets of fruits, laxatives, and painkillers” (93).
This coach’s statement is not unusual. Many gymnasts go through this kind of training
throughout their gymnastics career. We have the ability to change what goes on in gyms like this
one. As a lot of psychologists suggest, we as a society have to “inform” our athletes and coaches
about the dangers of eating disorders. I don’t think that coaches ever talk to the athletes about the
importance of healthy dieting. Most of the time they encourage them to cut down on eating, not
to just reconstruct their eating habits and the kind of food they intake. Another solution to the
problem, which some psychologist do not agree on, is to have meals in the gym. Instead of
taking time off to go eat at home, or to the store, have food brought in. This way the girls can
feed off each other by what is good and what is not good. When girls sit together they tend to
listen and take in what others are doing. If one girl is eating a healthy lunch, then the other one
will as well. The girl who does not eat properly will stick out like a sore thumb and will create an
obvious reach towards anorexia. Even though Christy’s coach says that it was more her fault
than the gym’s, it is unfortunately more likely to be a combination of both. Coaches tend to
believe that their reasoning for such training is important for the future of the gymnast. “In 1976
the average age of a U.S. gymnast was 18, with an average weight of 106 pounds. In 1992, the
average age of a U.S. gymnast was 16, with an average weight of 83 pounds-a drop of 23
pounds” (93&94). We know and understand that it is important for a gymnast to keep a low
body weight, but unfortunately measures are being taken too far. Something must be done to
help the young gymnasts become fully aware of what they are doing to themselves and hence
destroying their bodies. “Participants must maintain a very low body weight to conform to the
standards, and must also devote many hours to practice to maintain those standards” (94). A
coaches emphasis on the body makes many young girls self-conscience about their weight. This
encourages many adolescents to become obsessed with their eating habits. Thus, the girls watch
everything they eat and focus on maintaining or losing weight to fit the coaches criteria. Alas,
many girls resort to starving themselves (anorexia) or purging their food after meals (bulimia.)
Anorexia and bulimia are common forms of ways for gymnasts to fight away the pain that the
pressures of winning gives them. “ Others-many-who became so obsessive about controlling
their weight that they lost control of themselves instead, falling into the potentially fatal cycle of
binging on food, then purging by vomiting or taking laxatives.” (Ryan 4) “ A lot of the time
coaches tend to nag gymnasts about their weight, and look at weight loss as a victory because
they encourage their gymnasts to be as thin as possible.” (Jett 27) Coaches need to learn that you
can’t resort to pushing an athlete in a direction you know she will fall from. This constant
nagging with the gymnasts about their weight does not necessarily make them strive to win. I
feel a lot of the time it holds them inside, not letting them express their true feelings about certain
issues. “Our national obsession with weight, our glorification of thinness, have gone completely
unchecked in gymnastics.” (Ryan 9) “ ‘Everyone goes through it, but nobody talks about it,
because they’re embarrassed,’ gymnast Kristie Phillips told me. ‘But I don’t put the fault on us to
be so skinny. It’s mental cruelty. It’s not fair that all these pressures are put on us at such a young
age and we don’t realize it until we get older and we suffer from it.” (Ryan 10) A lot of what
Kristy says is true for most gymnasts. They come to this point in their gymnastics career that
winning becomes the soul glorification of gymnastics, and without it they will have become
nothing, as well as have failed their parents and coaches. Anorexia I think can sometimes give
them a sense of hope. And what I mean by that is, that the girls in gymnastics are always so
controlled by the coaches, that them controlling their food intake gives them a sense of control
over themselves. Something they have seemed to have lost, ‘control’. “I weighed ninety-eight
pounds and I was being called [ by her coach] an overstuffed Christmas turkey, I was told I was
never going to make it in life because I was going to be fat. I mean, in life. Things I’ll never
forget.” (Ryan 10) When it comes to anorexia and bulimia the only one that is in control of their
bodies is the gymnast herself. Coaches tend to influence many things upon the gymnast, but self-
discipline and responsibility must take charge in times like these. Many people say that anorexia
and bulimia lye within the coaches and parents responsibility, but I think that it lyes within the
beholder. It can become the gymnasts fault for letting the coaches influence them. I think the
coaches are responsible for creating the mind set that goes into the gymnasts heads, but the
actions are only taken upon by the gymnast herself. Self discipline and responsibility can
overpower the control that the coaches feel they have over their athletes. “ Self-discipline
involves many things, but in the athletic world it implies the ability to control one’s destiny
through self-enforced practice, willpower and firmness of purpose.” (Neal 4)
When it comes to your daughter or your special elite gymnast, the hopes and
dreams for them are high and wide. If she can’t make it there, don’t blame her. Unfortunately,
today’s parents and coaches want them to succeed in their gymnastics career, they tend to forget
about the athletes feelings. “Any time you have trouble, there is a period of loss. But if you can
renew- almost get them mad, like it’s never going to happen again- then they come back
fighting”( Normile 47). Many studies have been done on the issue of anger. Whether or not
getting angry helps. When reading upon the Journal of sport and exercise psychology I found
there to be similar belief as those that the coaches had. They agreed that “ Anger is a good thing.
It’s okay in my mind, and it is almost encouraged to the point that it is not going to make you
faster or stronger, but you can get aggressive. If your angry that is good.” (Cote pg.6) This kind
of attitude is what occurs in most gyms today. It is a period of commitment for the child and a
time of pressure and demands for a coach. Most of the time coaches develop a sense of control
for their gymnasts and expect them to follow the demand. “ Dawes’ mother, Loretta admits it
was hard to watch, and Dominique had a difficult time herself coping afterwards.” “ It did
disappoint me. I would have loved to medal in the all- around”(Normile 48). Most parents
around this time in their child’s gymnastics career, find a point in which they overload their child
with their expectations. They don’t mean any harm in suffocating them with their hopes and
dreams for them; but they feel some connection to the sport by this time and sometimes feel to
make it a point to give advice or opinion. This attitude can help most girls, but the fact is that it
hurts more than it helps. It put the gymnast in a position were she does not know how to handle
something, therefore the coach or parent goes ahead and tells her what to do. That is not what a
gymnast needs. She needs to figure out for herself what she expects out of her, not what others
do. Because if she lives for what they want, then there is no point in attributing that much time
and effort into something that she can’t appreciate for herself. For parents and coaches it’s not
the performing that matters, it’s the performance. “In gyms across the country, the air is thick
with a scent of the Olympics. And the parents, coaches and young athletes chase it like hounds,
impatient for the rewards of the sport that captivate American audiences as no others do.” (Ryan
2) Parents and coaches continue to fight for their right to “make” their daughter’s experience of
gymnastics a unique one. Unfortunately they tear them apart by trying so hard. “Much of the
direct blame for the young athletes problems fall on the coaches and parents. Obviously, no
parent wakes up in the morning and plots how to ruin his or her child’s life. The money, the
fame and the promise of great achievement can turn a parents’ head around. The boundaries of
parents and coaches bloat and mutate, with the parent becoming the ruthless coach and the coach
becoming the controlling parent.” (Ryan 10) A lot of the times parents are struggling so hard to
train their children to perform well, due to the fact that they are making up for lack of something
they didn’t have in their childhood. It is hard for them to understand that they can only push their
children so far before they crack. They sometimes don’t understand that winning isn’t
everything. “ The intensive training and pressure heaped on by coaches, parents and federation
officials-the very people who should be protecting the children-often result in eating disorders,
weakened bones, stunted growth, debilitating injuries and damaged psyches.” (Ryan 7) One
method that I have found in reading in the Journal of Sport psychology that will help the coaches
as well as the athletes to understand what we can do to encourage each other with positive
attitudes is “ that is high expectancy children who attain higher frequencies of performance
success will trigger higher frequencies of positive instructional feedback, where as low
expectancy children, who attain higher failure rates, will present the instructor with more
opportunities to respond with some form of mistake- contingent behavior.” (Horn pg. 61)
I think coaches have one of the hardest jobs. They are responsible for making the
athlete into everything she can possibly become. But along with that job comes a lot of stress.
Not only stress from the outside community, but from parents as well as the athlete herself. She
is counting on her coach to get her to where she wants to be. As we can see throughout this
paper, coaches tend to handle the stress and release out upon the athletes in ways that are not
conducive to learning. It has become a problem throughout society. It is hard to direct a coach in
the actions he must take in order for his athlete to succeed. But we need, as a society, derive
ways in which the actions that the coaches take in order for their athletes to perform well do not
hurt the athlete in the long run. There are not that many solutions to the problem at hand. But
through reading about sport psychology, one can see that there are ways in which you can alter
the actions in which a coach takes in order for a gymnast to do her best.
The “self fulfilling prophecy” theory is one way in which coaches can learn how
to respond to the needs of the gymnast without taken harmful action. “ This theory postulates that
the expectations which instructors form concerning the achievement potential of individual
students are reflected in differential instructional behaviors which convey to the student the type
of response and level of achievement expected from him or her. If such instructional behaviors
are consistently exhibited over a period of time, the students performance and behavior may
conform to the teachers expectations.” (Horn pg.61) With this theory we are helping to redirect
the way the coaches coach, as well as the way in which the student learns and performs. One of
the goals in which sports psychologists feel the coaching process should work is developing the
athletes to establish goals for their technical skills. This will help the athletes to have a mental
model for competition. What they mean is that is now the coaches responsibility to give
appropriate knowledge to the gymnast as to what demands and activities they may need to
perform while in training. (Cote) Many of the coaches have to come to understand that the skills
that the athletes are being taught is not something that is going to come naturally to them. A lot
of times coaches think that the athletes automatically will respond to the skill when it is given to
them. Although for many years psychologist agree that aggressiveness is one of the key factors in
training. “ develop aggressiveness/intensity.”( Cote pg.6)
As you can see there are several problems that lye within the gymnastics society,
but we the outside force must come to learn, understand and teach the athletes and coaches some
of the correct ways in which they can handle situations. I have come across some major problems
throughout this paper, along with some good solution which I hope everyone can take into
account. It is important for not only the athletes of this country to be aware of the problems they
have, but also to inform the rest of society about the situations hence forth. I know things can
change when we put our minds together and create action upon our solutions. I hope this
information has helped anyone who was having a difficult time understanding some of the issues
that arise with gymnastics, or anyone who had a question.
“ Don’t let a problem or situation get in the way of a dream.”
Bibliography
About the Author
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Rjarcher@imap1.asu.edu