TAMPA, Fla. — Megan Skaggs stood on a corner of the mat during her floor routine, ready to accelerate into a tumbling pass, a series of jumps, twists and flips executed in a diagonal line.
She started running, then stopped. She suddenly forgot what she was supposed to do next — a back pass, double back or full-in, skills she had practiced hundreds of times had vanished from muscle memory.
She was 14 then, at the start of a yearlong mental block on her journey to becoming a six-time All-American on the University of Florida gymnastics team. So she could relate when U.S. gymnast Simone Biles experienced her own mental block at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo.
Biles and tennis star Naomi Osaka launched a global conversation about athletes’ mental health by prioritizing their own. Osaka announced in September that she is taking an indefinite break from the sport, after disclosing her struggles with depression and the pressures of being in the public eye. Those conversations about athletes’ well-being are playing out in community gyms, high schools and Florida universities.
Biles, the most decorated gymnast in history, withdrew from four of five Olympic events. She was experiencing the “twisties,” a disorienting mental block that made it dangerous for her to compete.
”I’m not just entertainment,” Biles said following the Olympics. “I’m human.”
Student-athletes also live with the stress and pressures of competitive sports, often juggling demands from coaches, parents and themselves. The Tampa Bay Times spoke to competitive gymnasts about what they dealt with, from the expectation to excel at a young age to the pressures of being an athlete of color in a predominantly white sport, like Osaka and Biles.
Skaggs started gymnastics when she was 4 and practically grew up in a gym. That’s why the mental block she experienced as a teen threatened not only her athletic career but also her sense of who she was as a person.
“I grew to believe there was something wrong with me,” she said.
Mind fields
A mental block takes place when an athlete suddenly fails to perform the skills they have spent years mastering, said USF instructor Nic Martinez, who teaches exercise science and has studied exercise psychology.
Mental blocks can be synonymous with lost move syndrome, a psychological condition where muscle memory fails to kick in and athletes are suddenly unable to perform skills that once were automatic.
Research is limited, but the phenomenon is well known among gymnasts, divers, cheerleaders and trampolinists. They jump and, once in the air, realize they don’t know where they are spatially or what they’re supposed to do and end up falling or hitting equipment.
Fear of getting lost in the air often prevents those athletes from successfully attempting maneuvers for months or years. In professional sports, one of the more memorable examples of a debilitating mental block was the case of former New York Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. The All-Star suddenly struggled to throw the ball to first base — or as it’s called in baseball and golf, the “yips.” Research shows the “yips” can have both physical and psychological causes. Knoblauch’s condition peaked in 2000, and his career ended in 2002.
Martinez said mental blocks can be triggered or exacerbated by environmental stressors or emotional pressures.
Biles, 24, said in an August video interview with her mother that the issues she faced in Tokyo built up over time. Martinez pointed to one factor that could have contributed to her mental block, the sudden death of Biles’ aunt during the Olympics.
The seven-time Olympic medalist testified before Congress in September about the sexual abuse she and hundreds of other athletes suffered from Larry Nassar, the former USA gymnastics doctor now serving a maxium prison sentence of 175 years.
Biles told New York Magazine in September that she should “have quit (the Olympics) way before Tokyo, when Larry Nassar was in the media for two years. It was too much.”
Skaggs, now 22, recalled the stress she faced before experiencing her mental block. The pressures of competing for spots on national and world teams was intense. But she was also dealing with a coach who reinforced toxic thinking.
Her mental block started with the tumbling pass, then spread to other skills and events. But her old coach did not offer the then-middle schooler patience and positive encouragement. Instead, the coach suggested she no longer had a future in gymnastics.
“I was coming to practice and feeling worthless,” she said.
Having a coach who prioritizes mental health is vital, said Katherine Glaser, who treats young athletes at Thriveworks Counseling in Tampa.
Coaches who overtrain kids and demand that they meet expectations regardless of their mental health are setting athletes up for failure, she said.
Glaser encourages coaches to talk openly about mental health with their athletes, to foster an environment where they feel safe to express fears and anxieties — and take a break before they reach a breaking point.
Teams should consider having a psychologist or licensed clinical social worker available to help student-athletes work through mental blocks, depression associated with physical injury and other challenges involving family and school, Glaser said.
Coaching staff should also be prepared to recommend clinicians who specialize in treating teens, and books or videos that speak to the challenges of growing up as a student-athlete.
Skaggs’ parents eventually found a new coach for their daughter, and she started working with a gymnastics psychologist.
She said she also spent hours watching YouTube videos. She learned a technique called mental choreography, which identifies cue words for specific movements. Then she would say them to herself internally while performing or visualizing routines.
Skaggs said she had to “relearn all of (her) gymnastics,” going back to basic skills and working up to complex routines.
In 2015, she qualified for the U.S. national gymnastics team alongside gymnasts Aly Raisman, Gabby Douglas and Biles.
Skaggs said it takes effort to prevent mental blocks and manage the fear of that possibility. Her college teammates help a lot.
She has learned to maintain a positive mindset, reminding herself that gymnastics is a challenging sport and fear is normal. When she’s about to compete and feels fear creeping in, Skaggs turns to her team and talks through her routine.
“This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to do a layout,” she will say to them. And they’ll confirm.
Perseverance, not perfection
When the University of Florida’s Trinity Thomas walks into a gym, she sees little girls look at her and whisper to each other in excitement. Young gymnasts and their moms often send the 2020 SEC Gymnast of the Year emails and messages via social media, expressing how much they look up to her.
Black girls watching the four-time U.S. national team member see something else: a college gymnastics star who looks like them. Thomas is among the 9 percent of Division I female gymnasts who are Black, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s 2020 statistics.
Only 2 percent of Division I gymnastics coaches are Black women.
Barriers exist to entering the sport. One is that gyms tend to be built in affluent or predominantly white neighborhoods, forcing Black families to spend considerable time and money getting their kids to training, said Derrin Moore, founder of Brown Girls Do Gymnastics, a national organization that promotes representation.
Black gymnasts who want to compete at the college level can’t do so while attending any of the 107 historically Black colleges and universities in the country, Moore said. None of the schools have gymnastics programs.
Many Black girls also have been discouraged from the sport because their physiques may not conform with the traditionally petite body types of white gymnasts, Moore said.
“It’s that your butt’s too big or thighs are too thick,” Moore said, “or your ankles don’t touch because your thighs are too big.”
Thomas, a 20-year-old senior, said she feels both the pressure and privilege of having so many eyes on her. She used to think that meant never showing failure or weakness, because she would never want to let down her supporters.
Then came the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championship Finals in Fort Worth, Texas, livestreamed by ESPN. Thomas stood on the balance beam, competing in her first event April 16.
As the commentator narrated Thomas’ routine — “back handspring with one arm, into the layout step out ...” — she suddenly gasped. Thomas had lost her balance and fell. She hung onto the beam with her hands and knee and dragged herself into a standing position.
“I felt like it was the end of the world,” Thomas said.
She didn’t have much time to process what happened. She had a floor routine to perform next and needed to get her ankles warmed up and retaped before that. Tears of frustration streamed for a few minutes. Then she pulled it together for herself and her team.
Four months after the Gators placed fourth at the NCAA Championships, Thomas posted a video of her fall to Instagram and the floor routine she performed minutes later. It’s a video of triumph, Thomas said, because mistakes are inevitable. But it’s what she did next — scoring a 9.95 on her floor routine — that mattered most.
Thomas said that she wants to show kids who look up to her that perseverance, not perfection, is the goal — a message particularly important to Black girls.
“Just because there aren’t a lot of Black athletes in the sport doesn’t mean that there can’t be.”
Start conversations early
Clearwater native Malia Martin has won her age division in the state gymnastics competition three years in a row. The 11-year-old balances nearly 20 hours a week of gymnastics practice with consistently making the principal’s list at Cambridge Christian School in Tampa.
“If you give (Malia) an assignment,” said Kim Marks, Malia’s coach at LaFleur’s Gymnastics Club in Largo, “she would complete the assignment to the extreme.”
Malia has a favorite beam — the end beam, farthest from the door and everyone else. It’s her lucky beam, the one where she performed her first independent back handspring in August 2020.
She spent six months struggling to learn the skill.
At first, she couldn’t move her legs to spring backward. The coach then asked her to step off the 4-foot tall beam and practice on an easier surface.
Tears of frustration and embarrassment would fall, on the gym floor or in the car when her mom picked her up.
Marks, known by her gymnasts as Miss Kim, helped Malia work her way back to the high beam by setting small goals. Malia moved from the floor to the floor beam, and then to one that was 2½-feet tall.
Next, the beam was lifted by a 32-inch foam box, with thin folding mats piled on either side, so Malia felt that she was closer to the ground. When the folding mats were peeled away, it took another month and more tears.
Then one day last year, Malia sprang backward and landed perfectly on her lucky end beam. Miss Kim gathered the other gymnasts’ attention and pointed to Malia — a tradition when someone learns a new skill. Malia did a second back handspring, and everyone clapped.
Malia’s struggle to learn the fundamental gymnastics skill showed her mom, Alexis Martin, a different side of her daughter. Even though Malia has mastered the skill for a year, she still has trouble talking about it.
When asked how she eventually learned the skill or how the experience made her feel, she shrugs. Her eyes get watery. Malia’s mom said her daughter puts a lot of pressure on herself.
Martin, who also was a gymnast, is still figuring out how to get her daughter to open up. But she said the attention on Biles’ decision to withdraw from Olympic events gave them an opportunity to talk about the mental toll of gymnastics in ways they never had before.
Martin hopes to continue these conversations, as gymnastics and life become more competitive and stressful with age. And she hopes that Biles’ example — a four-time Olympic gold medalist unafraid to show vulnerability — sticks with Malia.
