EhEvery four years I become a gymnastics fanatic. It's the only Summer Olympic sport I constantly watch from my couch as athletes perform tricks that seem defy the laws of physics and human capabilities. Since my own career as a gymnast ended around the time I entered elementary school—in other words, around the time classes began to involve more than diving into a pit filled with foam blocks—I figured that this casual experience was the closest I would ever get to the sport as an adult.
Until a recent Monday evening, when I joined about 20 others at a gymnastics class for adults of all levels at Chelsea Piers Field House in Brooklyn, New York. Even though the Summer Olympics are over, the enthusiasm for gymnastics hasn’t waned. I was lucky to get in because I overheard many people saying that the waiting list was filling up fast these days. And it seems to be a similar trend across the country.
“There are a lot of classes now that you have to waitlist to sign up, and that was very rare before the last Olympics,” says Gina Paulhus, who leads list of gymnastics classes for adults on its website. That list has grown significantly over the years, from 231 gyms offering adult classes in 2015 to 590 this year, Paulhus says. She also runs Facebook group for adult gymnasts, whose membership has grown from 300 in 2014 to nearly 14,000 a decade later.
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Why are so many adults suddenly trying to become gymnasts? Maybe people just want to fun, community-oriented ways to exercisesays Paulhus. Or it could be because some of Team USA's stars, like 27-year-old Simone Biles and 25 years old Stephen “The Boy on the Horse” Nedorochikprove that adults can succeed in sports once upon a time teenagers dominatedshe says. Former Olympic gymnast Chelsea Memmel also made national news a few years ago when she returned from gymnastics at the age of 30.
If Memmel can do it, then this 30-year-old guy will surely be able to try to do a cartwheel for the first time in decades.
While I nervously waited for my class to start, I chatted with a couple of people lounging outside, trying to figure out what had made them jump out and fall, and whether I was about to be humiliated for my lack of experience. The first person I talked to was a beginner with no gymnastics experience, who had only signed up because the class sounded fun and it made me feel better. The second was a professional dancer, but he wasn't.
“Is this a difficult lesson?” I asked the dancer, who said she had done it several times before.
“No,” she replied, then added that some of the warm-up exercises “will make you realize how weak you are.” Great!
Her assessment was correct. The warm-up began like a high-school gym routine—high knees, butt kicks, lunges—and then progressed into a series of humiliating strength exercises, like sliding across the floor in a plank position with your feet on a glider. By the end of the warm-up, I was sweating profusely, at which point we began stretching. As we did, a couple of the instructors asked if anyone was brand new. My hand, along with a few others, went up. Any former gymnasts? Just a few hesitant hands. Fine, I thought, maybe I can do it after all.
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After stretching, we split into two roughly equal-sized groups: beginners and advanced students. While the advanced group worked on tricks like flips and somersaults, we beginners tried to master the basics like handstands, cartwheels, and roundoffs.
Here's where I'll tell you about my delusion. Even though a) I'm not very flexible and don't have particularly good upper body strength and b) haven't done gymnastics in 25 years, a tiny part of me was hoping that I would be amazingly good at it. Not Simone Biles is goodobvious, but passable. Maybe all these Pilates and yoga classes over the years will somehow transfer over, and I will amaze everyone with my grace and skill!
Those hopes were dashed during our second exercise: a backflip. When the instructor demonstrated the move, he flipped smoothly and jumped up to a standing position as if nothing had happened. When I tried it, I was stuck with my legs above my head, like a turtle flipped on its back. It didn't earn me a medal.
Despite my crippling lack of hidden talent, I enjoyed the rest of the class. The instructors were unfailingly patient and supportive, and none of my fellow newbies seemed to take anything too seriously. I’ve been to plenty of group fitness classes that felt quiet and serious, but in this class, the students complimented each other and chatted between exercises. We were all in it together, maybe because we were so far outside our comfort zones.
Were my handstands perfectly straight or my cartwheels smooth by the end of the hour? Not at all. But it was fun to try and experiment with exercises completely different from what I usually do at the gym, and every little improvement felt like a victory. Who cares that I had to run into a wall to hold a handstand for longer than a second? I was still upside down. I felt a little like a kid again, in a good way.
At least until I realized I'd pulled a muscle in my leg doing cartwheels. Then I remembered I was in my 30s.