As a child, I was involved in gymnastics. I wanted to be the next Mary Lou Retton and participate in the Olympics. I loved doing and watching the floor exercise. Back handsprings and roundoff backflips were my favorite. I did gymnastics up until eighth grade. (up until age 36, every summer, with the support of my sister, I would do a roundoff backflip in the backyard. I wanted to prove to myself that I was still young.) In my eighth-grade year, I had to make a choice between gymnastics, basketball, and Friday night football games. So as a 13-year-old girl, I realized I wasn’t going to the Olympics so I might as well concentrate on basketball and watch my friends play football on Friday nights.
After all those years of practice, I could never do just a standing backflip. I remember practicing in our living room one night when I was younger. My mom was sitting on the couch. I had taken the huge cushion off of the couch and put it on the floor. I went straight up… and straight back down… landing flat on my face. I may have quit trying after that one 🙂 I don’t know why, but I could never do it. It was beyond frustrating. I could do a roundoff back handspring into a backflip, but just standing there would not work for me.
About a year and a half after starting CrossFit, I felt stronger and more flexible. For some reason, I felt like a teenager again and thought I could do anything I put my mind to. Already I had done the Murph WOD, which is a 1-mile run, 300 squats, 200 push-ups, 100 pull-ups, and another mile run. I figured if I could do that, I could do anything!
One Saturday morning, we were doing back squats at our gym in Pennsylvania. There were usually about 8-10 of us that would do squats then a WOD. One of the women who was squatting that day was a gymnastics coach in our area. I told her how much I loved gymnastics and how I always tried but I could never do a standing backflip. She mentioned I was welcome to come to the studio to do gymnastics anytime to work on my backflip. However, I was feeling confident so I asked if she would spot me over at our stretching mat right there in the gym. I was really nervous because there were several people around, but I was also confident that she wasn’t going to let me land on my head! So we counted to three and can you believe it… I did it!! I was so excited! I think I proceeded to do about five in a row. It was so much fun. I couldn’t wait to call my sister to tell her and to send her the video.
I couldn’t believe I had done it. I was one week shy of becoming a 42-year-old woman and finally did a standing backflip! Thank you to my spot for giving me the confidence to try! And thank you CrossFit Meadville for making me stronger every day!! A lesson learned to never, ever give up on your goals no matter what they are or how old you are! Check out the video of the backflip here!
