Why I Wrote This Book

I want to begin with the truth, because gymnastics taught me to. Almost nothing in this sport happens alone, and certainly nothing lasting. Behind every skill I have ever landed are people whose names may never appear on a scoreboard, and this book belongs as much to them as it does to me. Before I tell you about the sport, I have to tell you about the kind of love that made the sport possible.

My parents were there through every single situation, without exception: the mornings that began before the city woke, the long journeys between states with kit bags heavier than me, the endless hours waiting outside training halls in heat and cold with nothing to do but believe in someone behind a wall. They were there for the falls no one filmed, and just as fully for the days that ended in a medal. They carried my fear so I could carry only the routine. Behind them stood my grandparents, whose quiet blessings travelled with me into arenas they could only picture from home. Their love never once moved with the scoreboard, and that, more than any skill I own, is what keeps me standing on the beam.

There is one struggle I have to name honestly, because it shaped this book. I am a pure vegetarian, and food was often the quiet challenge behind the competition. Eating enough of the right nutrition while travelling, in unfamiliar cities and competition canteens never built for an athlete like me, was something we solved again and again, meal by meal. My family carried home food across the length of the country so I would never have to choose between competing well and eating right. That invisible effort is why this book gives you not one meal plan but two: one for vegetarians who face exactly what I faced, and one for everyone else.

I owe this book to the coaches and mentors who shaped my journey. A coach gives you far more than technique: the steady hand under a skill you do not yet trust, the honesty you do not want to hear, and belief in a movement long before there is evidence you can do it. There was a point when I almost walked away, when the fear was louder than the love and I had quietly decided I was finished. I did not become brave because of a result. I stayed because someone refused to let me leave on my worst day, and stood beside the apparatus until I trusted my own body again. That kind of faith stays with an athlete long after training ends, and it runs through every page that follows.

I also carry deep gratitude for the training spaces where so many of these lessons were lived before they were written. A gym becomes important not only because of its mats and bars, but because of the standards it sets every day: how safely skills are taught, how honestly corrections are given, and how much belief is held for an athlete before she can hold it for herself.

I am deeply grateful to my school community, because a gymnast is never only a gymnast. While I was away competing, my classes did not wait, and yet I never fell behind in a way I could not recover from, and that was not luck. The adults around me treated my sport as something to protect, not to apologise for. They explained again what I had missed, gave me extra hours, and never made me choose between the classroom and the mat. Every student athlete will understand what a rare gift that is. They taught me that being away does not have to mean being left behind.

And none of it would have been possible without the people who showed up beside me. My fellow gymnasts shared the early mornings, the bruises, the nerves before a competition, and the fierce joy of watching a teammate land something she had feared for months. Friends and families around the sport became part of that circle of support too. From them, I learned that the love and learning we receive in sport should be passed on to younger athletes. We held each other’s fear and lent each other courage on the days our own ran out. I improved because they pushed me, and I kept going because they were going too.

People ask why the book is called Balance, Bounce & Believe: A Practical Guide for Young Gymnasts. The answer begins with those first three words. Balance is staying composed on something far too narrow to feel safe. Bounce is the courage to leave the ground knowing you must come back down. Believe is the quiet promise you make to yourself in the half second before a skill, when nothing has happened yet and everything depends on whether you commit. Together, those three words can carry a gymnast through more than she thinks.

Most of this is quiet. The medals last a few minutes; the sport is thousands of ordinary hours. It is the same drill repeated until it becomes clean, the conditioning no audience sees, and the patient return to a skill that frightened you yesterday and may frighten you again today. I wrote this book partly to honour those hours, because that is where a gymnast is made, long before anyone is watching.

There were days when I did not feel like a strong gymnast. I felt like a tired child with chalk on her hands, trying not to cry before the next turn. But somehow, someone always stood close enough to remind me that courage does not always look powerful. Sometimes it looks like wiping your eyes, saluting again, and trying one more time.

If you are a young gymnast reading this, I want to tell you one thing directly. You are allowed to find this hard, to fear the beam, to cry after a bad competition, to wonder whether you are good enough. Every honest gymnast has stood where you are standing now. What separates the ones who stay is not that they felt less. It is that they came back the next morning anyway.

If there is a single thread running through all of this, it is gratitude. I did not arrive anywhere alone, and I never will. The people behind these pages include family, coaches, teachers, teammates, helpers, medical professionals, judges, drivers, friends, and strangers in stadiums who were kind on hard days. Whatever else this book teaches, I hope it teaches that too: every gymnast who stands tall is being held by people whose love may never appear on a scoreboard.

I wrote this book to gather, in one place, the knowledge that usually lives scattered across coaches’ notebooks, physiotherapy rooms, judging manuals, and quiet conversations beside the apparatus. It is written from lived experience, so that the next girl who walks into a gym can feel a little less alone and a little more prepared. Whether you are an athlete chasing a skill, a parent in the stands wondering how to help, or a coach shaping a young life, this book is for you. It is my way of handing forward everything that was handed to me.

Gymnastics is not only a sport. It is a way of meeting yourself: your fear, your patience, your stubbornness, and your joy. If you take only one sentence from this entire book, let it be the one below, because the whole sport, and most of life, lives inside it.