"This isn't as easy to fix as just sleeping it off and hoping for a better day tomorrow," one former gymnast and diver pointed out on Twitter.īiles cheering on her teammates from the sidelines on Tuesday.īut Biles doesn't have the luxury of time to work through the twisties. Not to mention that getting past the twisties can take time - sometimes months - to resolve. Training aids such as the ones that Finnegan mentioned, which are standard in most gyms around the world, aren't available at competitions, which means the Olympic training gym that Biles now has access to is not the right place for her to work through this. "It's extremely dangerous especially since the mats that they train on aren't as forgiving as a foam pit or a soft and squishy mat," Finnegan wrote. As Aleah Finnegan, a current US elite gymnast, pointed out on Twitter, the training facilities at competitions don't have the aids that are necessary to safely address a bout of the twisties. But "going back to the basics" isn't really an option when the twisties strike at a competition like the Olympics. On the gymnastics side of things, Wiwatowski said it was a matter of returning to fundamentals and building back up. "USAG and Nassar, being a high-profile Black athlete in these politically charged times, being the GOAT, expectations of perfectionism every time she goes out, and more we don't know about," he said. Andrews noted that Biles had more stressors than most, being forced to represent USA Gymnastics, the institution that enabled her sexual abuse by Larry Nassar, because it's the only pathway to the games.
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"We also do a lot of work to teach them how to listen to their bodies' warning signs that they are heading down the wrong path," he continued. Then, he said, they start working on resolving the stressors to "calm the brain and the nervous system." "For some, it is the stress of making it to a new level in gymnastics, trying to get a college scholarship, or making the national team," he said.
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"He just couldn't do a straight layout without adding a full twist so that became his warm up," he said.Īndrews says that when gymnasts come to him to work through mental blocks like the twisties, he first takes stock of any stressors like injuries or relationships with coaches and teammates (and even parents). But Wiwatowsk's teammate simply couldn't pull that off. Usually in warm-ups, gymnasts will do a non-twisting version of their vault as a timer, to get a feel for the apparatus. "His competition vault was a tsukahara double twist," he said. He mentioned a former teammate of his who struggled with this on vault. "For example," he said, "a common skill for the twisties is a front salto that you absolutely cannot do without a full twist." Wiwatowski said it typically appeared for those working on new skills.
Wiwatowski likened that urge to picking a scab: "You know you shouldn't do it, but every fiber of your being is pushing you to pick that crusty coagulated blob."Īs we've seen with Biles, the twisties can strike anytime, anywhere, even in the biggest meet of your life. (As a journalist who has covered Biles' career since her first senior meet in 2013, I, too, have seen her do that vault live in training and in competition dozens of times over the years, and I have never seen anything like what happened in the warm-up and the first rotation of the women's team finals.)
"I've also had the privilege of seeing Biles compete in real life and I've never seen a warm up like that before." "You can see her arms stretch open pretty early in her flight phase," Wiwatowski said. The intended flight phase for Biles' vault was 2 1/2 twists. The flight phase is what your body does in the air after you lift off the vaulting table. "It makes for an awkward flight phase often with arms and legs in odd positions." "Generally, it's one extra twist or one less twist and there is urgency in the body in flight to do two different things at once," he said. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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