I was in a local club. I started doing competitions. I made my way up and soon I did about all the tricks my coach was able to teach me. When I was 10 I easily won all the competitions I entered. A coach from another club also training in our hall took me on a training camp. The guy terrified me. He would hit his gymnasts with leather flip flops. I couldn’t eat. My weight dropped down from about 20 to 17 kg in only 10 days. I remember it clearly because we had to stand on his scale every single day. I couldn’t sleep and was crying the entire day. I was lucky my aunt got married in the middle of the camp, so I was able to go home for a day or 2. In the second week my parents visited me. They did not take me home but one of my own coaches did the next day. My coach was not trained to be a gymnastics coach. He was getting his training on the job. Unfortunately, I was the job. I learned new tricks by just doing them, without any physical preparation. We would start it and see where it ended.

I was learning giants. I was so small I fitted under the low bar so I was doing it there. My coach was spotting me. I slipped off the bars and he mis grabbed. I flew away and ended up landing on my head and neck behind the safety mat. I was unconscious. They took my twin sister out of the hall. The one coach shook me to wake me up while the other one came walking by and asked why I didn’t do a dismount. They put me on my feet and took me to the dressing room to play a piece on my violin to check if my brain was still working. My father later took me to the hospital. My skull and shoulder were only bruised luckily. However, they did not do a complete check up in the hospital. I kept training, terrified in the meantime to slip of the bar again. My hands were so small it was very difficult to hold on to it. Being almost 40 my hands still have the size of a regular 7-8 years old.

At that time you had to train with soviet coaches to become a better gymnast. Local coaches brought over soviet coaches now and then. Since I was promising other clubs invited me to train together with their soviet coach. I was always afraid. I did not understand what those coaches wanted from me. They would take you by the arm and gesture, but I did not get it. One of them threw me from the high bar. I still don’t know why but I discovered he would just ignore me if I did bad handstands. That’s what I did. On my turn I would throw a bad handstand so he would send me away.

We did not have a specialized gym hall so we had to move all the material around before and after each session. It was normal for us to carry around balance beams and safety mats. When I was 13 I lifted a giant safety mat. I shouldn’t have tried it on my own probably, but I did. I felt something moving in my back and had some pain.
My parents took me to a physiotherapist. He thought I had a stress fracture in my back and sent me to a doctor. The doctor missed the fracture. He misdiagnosed me and prescribed me a few months of rest. Just rest. Nothing else. I remember going to a physiotherapist, he just applied some warm compresses but that was about it. I never did a single exercise to strengthen my back. I returned to the gym. I had grown. I was still small, about 130 cm for 25 kg but I was heavier than I was before. It was hard to return, i just tried doing everything again from day 1. I heard people talking behind my back I looked heavy and was lost for gymnastics.

I continued training. I loved the strict structure of my days when I was training. School, homework, gym, eat, sleep and repeat. In fact, I needed it. I couldn’t imagine what to do without the gymnastics part in my schedule. I continued training but my back was still acting weird. It was making sounds when I did conditioning. During a stretch where we had to sit with our nose between our knees with a coach sitting on top of us, I could feel something moving just too far. My body seemed to be stuck in that position. During the stretch I heard the visiting Soviet coach telling my coach he did not want to work with me because I was too fat and old. Sometimes I couldn’t stand upright after a vault. My coach then did a traction on my legs to make them move again. I don’t remember telling much about it to my parents. I wanted to do gymnastics. One day it happened during the warmup of a competition. I did a front somersault on beam, landed it nicely but simply could not straighten out. My parents were watching so I couldn’t deny.

I hated competitions. Especially after my back gave up. I could clearly see I was staying behind. My body just wasn’t able to take it anymore. In the club I could feel the jealousy of some parents and gymnasts. At first I was a real standout but with my injury the others were able to catch up. I could hear them talk about me when they were watching their children train. My parents rarely came to the hall.

Another year passed by. Luckily for my back, I sprained my ankle. A new doctor in town, put me in a cast because he did not want me to go to the gym. I got a complete checkup because my back was giving me trouble even when I wasn’t doing gymnastics. That’s when they found the fracture in my spine. By that time the fracture was unstable and needed surgery. I had a spinal fusion when I was 16. I’m almost 40 now. I’m in pain every single day.

The post Another Belgian gymnast speaks out appeared first on GymPal.

But in the light of “Athlete A” and “In the Heart of Gold” documentaries, as well as the statements of all the brave gymnasts all around the world, I decided I could no longer be silent about my own trauma. I am not so sure there is a reason for me to be proud about being a gymnast anymore. Gymnastics has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It still is to this day. And to be honest I fear the consequences it might have on my life. But I choose to stand up and share my own story, though anonymously.

I live in Belgium and I started gymnastics at the age of 4, in a local club in my hometown. My mother did gymnastics when she was younger, so it was logical for her to sign me up for classes. Back then, elite was not as developed as it is now.

I was going once a week, then twice, then four times a week. I still vividly remember one of my coaches talking to my mom, saying I was “promising” and that I should train more to reach my potential. That’s when they decided that I would train 6 days a week for 20 hours. I was 6 or 7. 

Back then, we didn’t have schedules that allowed athletes to combine school and sports, so my routine was to go to school, do my homework in the study hall, then go to the gym until 7pm, eat, sleep, repeat. Morning trainings on Saturday became all day trainings.

I don’t exactly remember when I started hating it. What I remember is the constant yelling. The injuries we were told were not that bad. The body shaming. The weekly weighing in front of everyone. Our coach coming to the changing room during lunch breaks to see what we were eating. 

I was always the one injured. I was the muscular one, the not so flexible one. Once, I twisted my knee and had to wear a brace for a month. During one practice, one of my coaches asked me to come to him. He told me to remove the brace, that my injury was not a real one, that my teammate, who had torn her meniscus, kept training. He forced me to train on bars without the brace before allowing me to put it back on. Needless to say I was in tears at the end of practice. I thought I was weak. After all, if my teammate could train on an injured knee, surely, I could do the same?

Another time, I twisted my ankle during conditioning at the beginning of practice. I was so scared of my coaches I didn’t say a thing for almost the whole duration of practice. That is to say, until my ankle couldn’t carry me anymore. Turns out I had fractured it. I was in a cast for 4 weeks.

I wasn’t the only one that was scared and we usually joked about it. We were excited when our coach’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, we were wondering if he would show up or not. He also used to throw his flip flops at us. Dodging them became part of our trainings.

My ankles and knees were always my weakness. I had another knee injury, that prevented me from training normally for almost two years. But I was still in the gym 6 days a week. My knee hurt for weeks on; I could not even run. But I was still in the gym every day. I was constantly told I was falling behind on my teammates, that I would never be able to catch up. They were showing me charts and agendas with competition dates I had to compete at if I wanted to stay at the same level.

I remember during a training camp, we had to do layout back flips and land flat on our stomach on a mat at the end of the trampoline. At some point, I got too far and when I landed, I smacked my foot on the hard ground floor. I knew at once something was wrong. Once again, I didn’t say a thing. My teammates helped me cover it up. I was applying anti-inflammatory cream on it and a bandage every night. Until one morning, one of the coaches came to our dorm to wake us up and saw my bandaged foot. They didn’t say a thing until practice later, when they called me out in front of every one and forced me to practice on it. Once again, I was in tears.

I remember the body shaming my teammates and I had to endure. We were told we couldn’t eat this or that, no sweets, no sodas, no pizzas, but also no potatoes or pasta in the evening, even after a 4 hours practice. We were told we had to lose that much weight, that some skills were easier if we were lighter. I thought it didn’t concern me, as I was never personally called fat or told that I had to lose weight, but it still impacted me at some levels. Years after I quit gymnastics, I suffered from an eating disorder. It took me more than 2 years to get out of it, with a lot of help. I am still not sure I will ever recover completely. My relationship with food will always be difficult, as well as the negative body image I still suffer from these days. 

Little by little, I started to despise the sport that I used to love so much. I was in tears, just at the idea of going to practice. I didn’t enjoy it anymore. My mom didn’t understand it at first. I don’t think I ever told her the real reason behind it all, just that I didn’t enjoy it anymore. She tried to talk to the coaches, tried to find a solution, something that would make me go back to practice, but I was too far gone.

I didn’t walk away from the sport right away. I choose to compete at a lower division, still in the same club. For the first year, I didn’t compete, I still had that knee condition. The year after that, I got to compete again. At first, my mom couldn’t come to the competitions. She thought I didn’t belong there, that I could do better. I disagreed. But she did not know all that was happening so whose fault was that? 

But training and competing at a lower division than anyone expected me to compete at also had its very own problems. Coming from the elites, I had to win. It did not matter that I basically spent two years of my life only training bars because of my knee. I was an elite. I had to win, period. At one of the competitions, I fell and came 2^nd, and I was happy about it, given it was only my 2^nd competition in two years. But it was not enough for my coach.

For weeks, between this competition and the next, he constantly reminded me that I had failed, that I was only a silver medallist. He said it on a teasing tone, but there really was no teasing about it.

So the next competition, I won. And still, it didn’t seem fair to others. I heard the whispers, the people calling me a cheater because I was not supposed to be there. I did not belong there. I had won, I was happy, I thought I had succeeded, and yet it was still not enough.

When I reflect on my career, all I remember were the injuries. I do not think I had a year free of injuries. During a competition, I landed short on vault and injured both of my ankles. It was the first event, and I said nothing. The adrenaline kept me going. I didn’t want to let my team down. We won a medal, I was happy, my coach was happy. But by the next morning I couldn’t walk. 

Another time, I was at practice, a few weeks before another team competition. I first twisted my ankle (again!) falling on beam. I said nothing. I tried to cover it up by compensating on my other leg on floor. I ended up injuring my wrist in the process. Again I said nothing. Until we went to bars and I couldn’t put any more weight on it. I got screamed at for not telling sooner. And then I got screamed at because my team wouldn’t be able to count on me at the competition. I ended up with a cast on both my wrist and foot.

I rested, I healed and I went to physical therapy. Then I went back for another season. That is when my coach told me he wanted me to go back to a higher level. The week after that, I walked away.

It took me a long time to view all of this as abuse. I would often joke about it and try to minimize what I went through. I still feel the consequences of the injuries I suffered to this day and I wonder if my career would have been different had I talked about them right away. But at the time, the fear of being screamed at or being forced to train with those injuries was too big.

For years after I quit, I couldn’t watch gymnastics. I wanted nothing to do with it. I just thought I had grown up, that my hobbies or passions had just shifted to something else but I know now that I was just coping from the abuse I went through for years. The sport I loved so much disgusted me in the end. I saw no beauty in it, I just saw pain. 

I came back to it eventually, as a simple fan at first. I am still involved in this world on a daily basis. That’s the reason my statement is anonymous. But I do not want to be silent anymore.

I hope my statement, as anonymous as it might be, will help others and make them realise they are not alone in this and that we are stronger together.

Anonymous, from Belgium

#GymnastAlliance

The post A Belgian gymnast speaks out appeared first on GymPal.

I was in a local club. I started doing competitions. I made my way up and soon I did about all the tricks my coach was able to teach me. When I was 10 I easily won all the competitions I entered. A coach from another club also training in our hall took me on a training camp. The guy terrified me. He would hit his gymnasts with leather flip flops. I couldn’t eat. My weight dropped down from about 20 to 17 kg in only 10 days. I remember it clearly because we had to stand on his scale every single day. I couldn’t sleep and was crying the entire day. I was lucky my aunt got married in the middle of the camp, so I was able to go home for a day or 2. In the second week my parents visited me. They did not take me home but one of my own coaches did the next day. My coach was not trained to be a gymnastics coach. He was getting his training on the job. Unfortunately, I was the job. I learned new tricks by just doing them, without any physical preparation. We would start it and see where it ended.

I was learning giants. I was so small I fitted under the low bar so I was doing it there. My coach was spotting me. I slipped off the bars and he mis grabbed. I flew away and ended up landing on my head and neck behind the safety mat. I was unconscious. They took my twin sister out of the hall. The one coach shook me to wake me up while the other one came walking by and asked why I didn’t do a dismount. They put me on my feet and took me to the dressing room to play a piece on my violin to check if my brain was still working. My father later took me to the hospital. My skull and shoulder were only bruised luckily. However, they did not do a complete check up in the hospital. I kept training, terrified in the meantime to slip of the bar again. My hands were so small it was very difficult to hold on to it. Being almost 40 my hands still have the size of a regular 7-8 years old.

At that time you had to train with soviet coaches to become a better gymnast. Local coaches brought over soviet coaches now and then. Since I was promising other clubs invited me to train together with their soviet coach. I was always afraid. I did not understand what those coaches wanted from me. They would take you by the arm and gesture, but I did not get it. One of them threw me from the high bar. I still don’t know why but I discovered he would just ignore me if I did bad handstands. That’s what I did. On my turn I would throw a bad handstand so he would send me away.

We did not have a specialized gym hall so we had to move all the material around before and after each session. It was normal for us to carry around balance beams and safety mats. When I was 13 I lifted a giant safety mat. I shouldn’t have tried it on my own probably, but I did. I felt something moving in my back and had some pain.
My parents took me to a physiotherapist. He thought I had a stress fracture in my back and sent me to a doctor. The doctor missed the fracture. He misdiagnosed me and prescribed me a few months of rest. Just rest. Nothing else. I remember going to a physiotherapist, he just applied some warm compresses but that was about it. I never did a single exercise to strengthen my back. I returned to the gym. I had grown. I was still small, about 130 cm for 25 kg but I was heavier than I was before. It was hard to return, i just tried doing everything again from day 1. I heard people talking behind my back I looked heavy and was lost for gymnastics.

I continued training. I loved the strict structure of my days when I was training. School, homework, gym, eat, sleep and repeat. In fact, I needed it. I couldn’t imagine what to do without the gymnastics part in my schedule. I continued training but my back was still acting weird. It was making sounds when I did conditioning. During a stretch where we had to sit with our nose between our knees with a coach sitting on top of us, I could feel something moving just too far. My body seemed to be stuck in that position. During the stretch I heard the visiting Soviet coach telling my coach he did not want to work with me because I was too fat and old. Sometimes I couldn’t stand upright after a vault. My coach then did a traction on my legs to make them move again. I don’t remember telling much about it to my parents. I wanted to do gymnastics. One day it happened during the warmup of a competition. I did a front somersault on beam, landed it nicely but simply could not straighten out. My parents were watching so I couldn’t deny.

I hated competitions. Especially after my back gave up. I could clearly see I was staying behind. My body just wasn’t able to take it anymore. In the club I could feel the jealousy of some parents and gymnasts. At first I was a real standout but with my injury the others were able to catch up. I could hear them talk about me when they were watching their children train. My parents rarely came to the hall.

Another year passed by. Luckily for my back, I sprained my ankle. A new doctor in town, put me in a cast because he did not want me to go to the gym. I got a complete checkup because my back was giving me trouble even when I wasn’t doing gymnastics. That’s when they found the fracture in my spine. By that time the fracture was unstable and needed surgery. I had a spinal fusion when I was 16. I’m almost 40 now. I’m in pain every single day.

The post Another Belgian gymnast speaks out appeared first on GymPal.

But in the light of “Athlete A” and “In the Heart of Gold” documentaries, as well as the statements of all the brave gymnasts all around the world, I decided I could no longer be silent about my own trauma. I am not so sure there is a reason for me to be proud about being a gymnast anymore. Gymnastics has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. It still is to this day. And to be honest I fear the consequences it might have on my life. But I choose to stand up and share my own story, though anonymously.

I live in Belgium and I started gymnastics at the age of 4, in a local club in my hometown. My mother did gymnastics when she was younger, so it was logical for her to sign me up for classes. Back then, elite was not as developed as it is now.

I was going once a week, then twice, then four times a week. I still vividly remember one of my coaches talking to my mom, saying I was “promising” and that I should train more to reach my potential. That’s when they decided that I would train 6 days a week for 20 hours. I was 6 or 7. 

Back then, we didn’t have schedules that allowed athletes to combine school and sports, so my routine was to go to school, do my homework in the study hall, then go to the gym until 7pm, eat, sleep, repeat. Morning trainings on Saturday became all day trainings.

I don’t exactly remember when I started hating it. What I remember is the constant yelling. The injuries we were told were not that bad. The body shaming. The weekly weighing in front of everyone. Our coach coming to the changing room during lunch breaks to see what we were eating. 

I was always the one injured. I was the muscular one, the not so flexible one. Once, I twisted my knee and had to wear a brace for a month. During one practice, one of my coaches asked me to come to him. He told me to remove the brace, that my injury was not a real one, that my teammate, who had torn her meniscus, kept training. He forced me to train on bars without the brace before allowing me to put it back on. Needless to say I was in tears at the end of practice. I thought I was weak. After all, if my teammate could train on an injured knee, surely, I could do the same?

Another time, I twisted my ankle during conditioning at the beginning of practice. I was so scared of my coaches I didn’t say a thing for almost the whole duration of practice. That is to say, until my ankle couldn’t carry me anymore. Turns out I had fractured it. I was in a cast for 4 weeks.

I wasn’t the only one that was scared and we usually joked about it. We were excited when our coach’s car wasn’t in the parking lot, we were wondering if he would show up or not. He also used to throw his flip flops at us. Dodging them became part of our trainings.

My ankles and knees were always my weakness. I had another knee injury, that prevented me from training normally for almost two years. But I was still in the gym 6 days a week. My knee hurt for weeks on; I could not even run. But I was still in the gym every day. I was constantly told I was falling behind on my teammates, that I would never be able to catch up. They were showing me charts and agendas with competition dates I had to compete at if I wanted to stay at the same level.

I remember during a training camp, we had to do layout back flips and land flat on our stomach on a mat at the end of the trampoline. At some point, I got too far and when I landed, I smacked my foot on the hard ground floor. I knew at once something was wrong. Once again, I didn’t say a thing. My teammates helped me cover it up. I was applying anti-inflammatory cream on it and a bandage every night. Until one morning, one of the coaches came to our dorm to wake us up and saw my bandaged foot. They didn’t say a thing until practice later, when they called me out in front of every one and forced me to practice on it. Once again, I was in tears.

I remember the body shaming my teammates and I had to endure. We were told we couldn’t eat this or that, no sweets, no sodas, no pizzas, but also no potatoes or pasta in the evening, even after a 4 hours practice. We were told we had to lose that much weight, that some skills were easier if we were lighter. I thought it didn’t concern me, as I was never personally called fat or told that I had to lose weight, but it still impacted me at some levels. Years after I quit gymnastics, I suffered from an eating disorder. It took me more than 2 years to get out of it, with a lot of help. I am still not sure I will ever recover completely. My relationship with food will always be difficult, as well as the negative body image I still suffer from these days. 

Little by little, I started to despise the sport that I used to love so much. I was in tears, just at the idea of going to practice. I didn’t enjoy it anymore. My mom didn’t understand it at first. I don’t think I ever told her the real reason behind it all, just that I didn’t enjoy it anymore. She tried to talk to the coaches, tried to find a solution, something that would make me go back to practice, but I was too far gone.

I didn’t walk away from the sport right away. I choose to compete at a lower division, still in the same club. For the first year, I didn’t compete, I still had that knee condition. The year after that, I got to compete again. At first, my mom couldn’t come to the competitions. She thought I didn’t belong there, that I could do better. I disagreed. But she did not know all that was happening so whose fault was that? 

But training and competing at a lower division than anyone expected me to compete at also had its very own problems. Coming from the elites, I had to win. It did not matter that I basically spent two years of my life only training bars because of my knee. I was an elite. I had to win, period. At one of the competitions, I fell and came 2^nd, and I was happy about it, given it was only my 2^nd competition in two years. But it was not enough for my coach.

For weeks, between this competition and the next, he constantly reminded me that I had failed, that I was only a silver medallist. He said it on a teasing tone, but there really was no teasing about it.

So the next competition, I won. And still, it didn’t seem fair to others. I heard the whispers, the people calling me a cheater because I was not supposed to be there. I did not belong there. I had won, I was happy, I thought I had succeeded, and yet it was still not enough.

When I reflect on my career, all I remember were the injuries. I do not think I had a year free of injuries. During a competition, I landed short on vault and injured both of my ankles. It was the first event, and I said nothing. The adrenaline kept me going. I didn’t want to let my team down. We won a medal, I was happy, my coach was happy. But by the next morning I couldn’t walk. 

Another time, I was at practice, a few weeks before another team competition. I first twisted my ankle (again!) falling on beam. I said nothing. I tried to cover it up by compensating on my other leg on floor. I ended up injuring my wrist in the process. Again I said nothing. Until we went to bars and I couldn’t put any more weight on it. I got screamed at for not telling sooner. And then I got screamed at because my team wouldn’t be able to count on me at the competition. I ended up with a cast on both my wrist and foot.

I rested, I healed and I went to physical therapy. Then I went back for another season. That is when my coach told me he wanted me to go back to a higher level. The week after that, I walked away.

It took me a long time to view all of this as abuse. I would often joke about it and try to minimize what I went through. I still feel the consequences of the injuries I suffered to this day and I wonder if my career would have been different had I talked about them right away. But at the time, the fear of being screamed at or being forced to train with those injuries was too big.

For years after I quit, I couldn’t watch gymnastics. I wanted nothing to do with it. I just thought I had grown up, that my hobbies or passions had just shifted to something else but I know now that I was just coping from the abuse I went through for years. The sport I loved so much disgusted me in the end. I saw no beauty in it, I just saw pain. 

I came back to it eventually, as a simple fan at first. I am still involved in this world on a daily basis. That’s the reason my statement is anonymous. But I do not want to be silent anymore.

I hope my statement, as anonymous as it might be, will help others and make them realise they are not alone in this and that we are stronger together.

Anonymous, from Belgium

#GymnastAlliance

The post A Belgian gymnast speaks out appeared first on GymPal.