OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST SIMONE BILES ON TAKING A MENTAL AND PHYSICAL REST

Most people believe that it is very difficult to be an athlete. The amount of discipline, on everything that they eat and do that has something to with their bodies, that every athlete have is just out of this world. This is of course a fact and most people admire athletes for their dedication to their chosen path especially if it is bringing honor to their country. However, living a strictly healthy lifestyle is not the only thing athletes have to go through because it is not always just about the physical being. Athletes, no matter how old they are, even if they compete internationally or not, must always be mentally prepared for everything. They must look after the psychological aspect as well.
According to experts, the most difficult thing athletes do is not their extreme training, but their emotional strength. They always aim for the best and normally when they lose a competition they don’t have anything or anyone to blame but themselves and it could change them in a lot of different ways. One particular young athlete who managed to bag not just one but four gold medals last 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

OLYMPIC RECORD

Biles started gymnastics at the age of 6, so technically she is definitely just like every child who started everything as a simple dream. However, just like every athlete, it hasn’t been easy. She is known to be this generation’s most decorated humans after Shannon Miller from 1993. Bikes currently has a total of nineteen Olympic as well as world championships medals. In 2016, she became the sixth woman in history to ever win an individual all-individual title at both world championships as well as the Olympic Games. She even hold the record for the most Olympic gold medals an American in women’s gymnastics have at a single games.

Simone Biles hold the record for the most Olympic gold medals an American in women’s gymnastics have at a single games

YOUNG WOMEN’S CONFIDENCE

People might think that gymnasts actually don’t have a problem with their body image since they are just so disciplined with their diet. However, just like ordinary girls her age, Biles have struggled with confidence issues with her body as well and when she needed support, she got it from her fellow gymnasts, “We all had similar body types, so it was easy to go to the gym and glam to them and realize we wouldn’t be able to do all the skills we do if we didn’t have these bodies,” Biles stated.

Unfortunately, not every young woman can get the confidence and support that she is getting from her teammates and she knows how difficult it can be, which is why she partners up with Target and Always to become a spokesperson for the nonprofit that gives help to young girls to gain confidence as well as life skills through running known as Girls on the Run. Target as well as Always are teaming up to donate $1 million on the organization to achieve their goal on having 2 million girls before 2021.

SIMONE BILES: MENTAL AND PHYSICAL PREP

Biles admitted that after the Olympics last year, she was planning on taking an entire year off. “It’s just personal preference because if you take more than a year off, you can find it’s harder to get back into it. Gymnastics is a year-round sport and we don’t get breaks. Most of us athletes don’t take time off throughout our entire careers. There are things I look back and I’m like ‘do I have to do it again?’ It wasn’t scary before but it’s scary now,” The Olympic gold-medalist said in an interview with ESPN.

She also revealed that she will be working with a new coach and that she has never actually taken a break from gymnastics before and is looking forward on how things will go. Biles told ESPN that she has indeed taken a break both mentally and physically. She said that there are times that it feels like going to work sometimes and it can get pretty exhausting. “You don’t know what life is like without gymnastics, so it was exciting to get a little feel of what that was like,” she explained.

Biles taking a photo with her celebrity crush Zac Efron at the 2016 Rio Olympics

Before the 2016 Olympics, she verbally committed to UCLA via Twitter but instead she decided to go pro to join the 2016 Olympics which then forfeited her NCAA eligibility.