Balance

I have had athletes ask me how I did it as an athlete. How did I find balance? How did I get good grades, practice all the time, and hang out with friends? Honestly, it wasn’t easy.

First, I personally don’t think we ever really find balance. Everything is a trade-off. When we give one thing more, we take away from something else. There never is true balance, just choices.

When I was an athlete, especially in high school, I burned the fuse at both ends. I would go until I couldn’t, and then I would break down. I was not honest with myself about what I could handle. I was a kid; I just kept doing what I thought I was supposed to be doing. In high school, I would get up early, go to school, come home, maybe get a little homework done, have a snack, go to practice for 4 hours, come home at 9:30, have “dinner,” do my homework (usually until 12:30 or 1:00 if I was lucky), go to sleep, and do it all over again. It was hard, really freaking hard. But I did it every day. A lot of mornings I would wake up in tears because I was so tired and stressed, but I would get to school and things would slowly start to seem more manageable. I would get to practice thinking there was no way I could get through it, and once in a while I couldn’t, but the majority of the time I would start moving my body and I knew I could do it. But why did I do this every day?

Sometimes I don’t think I knew why. Some days I was so tired I wanted to quit everything. But deep down, I knew why I did it all. I loved gymnastics. I love the feeling of being challenged, being strong, competing, and learning new skills. I thrived on all of those things. I also took pride in my grades. Again, I love learning. To me that is what life is all about. I did have an unhealthy need to get good grades, partially driven by my father. My parents never put pressure on me in gymnastics. As long as I worked hard, got good grades, and I liked it they were good, but school was a different story. Anything less than an A was not good enough. I look back now and know that I gave everything to school so if I got a B that was all I had to give, but at the time I did not have that understanding.

As for a social life, I had one, but I was never big on going out. My best friends were my teammates, and they had the same schedule I did, so we hung out and had sleepovers when it worked with practice. I never really cared that much about the school events like the dances or football games. I don’t know, it just wasn’t my thing. Maybe that was because I never had the time, so it never had the chance to become my thing, but honestly, I never felt like I was missing out. I am not taking away from the social scene nor am I saying it’s not important. I have had so many conversations with competitive athletes about this and the importance to them. It is up to you to determine your priorities.

I played multiple sports up until college, but they were all summer recreational sports with the exception of gymnastics. Playing multiple sports has so many benefits to the body (which is why non-sports specific strength & conditioning is so important), but there does come a time when you do need to choose what your sport will be if you want to be competitive.

So, gymnastics, school, social life, other sports, the question still remains: how do you balance it? The answer is that I have no idea. You just have to try your best. Figure out what is most important at the time and put your energy into that. Life takes constant re-evaluating. Every day you have to wake up and figure out what you are going to do. Some days are easy and some days are really hard. Some days you will screw up and some days you will get it right. But the thing is, you get to wake up again and make the choices, change your direction, or keep your path. That is a really important thing to keep perspective on. I am not saying you get to do exactly what you want every day, but you do get to choose how you react to the things that happen to you. That is powerful.

I do want to touch on feeling out of balance and very stressed. I think we think that quitting something because we are stressed would make life so much easier, but the thing is, life will always have something that challenges us. In my opinion, if it doesn’t, we are not living it right. Quitting something because it is hard or you are stressed is not a reason to quit. You quit something because you don’t love it anymore. (Yes, you can still love something that is hard and stresses you out!) You quit something because it is no longer adding to your life. You quit something because physically your body can’t do it anymore, maybe because of injuries. But you do not quit because it is hard, you are overwhelmed, you are having a bad day, or because you are having a bad month! Getting through those rough patches is where growth comes from. It is what makes you a strong person.

Now, all this being said, it is very important to know when you need a break. When you need to take a step back. There are going to be days where you can’t do it all, and that is okay. Take a day off, cry it out, go play outside, hang out with a friend. Do what you need to do to get yourself back on track. We all need a re-set once in a while.

It is also so much easier to handle the stresses of life if you have a good support system around you. Make sure you have those people you can go to when you need to talk.

To sum it up, Balance in life is a myth. It doesn’t exist. What does exist is your power to make choices. Put your energy into the things you need to and want to at the time, redirect that energy when needed, and know your limits.