Gold Star Gymnastics

I ran into Nathalie at the break room at work a week ago and saw her heat up dinner at 5pm. "Wow, early dinner!" I commented.

Nathalie told me she was taking gymnastics classes at Gold Star Gymnastics that night and wanted to eat something early so she would not throw up while doing various tumbling exercise. Then she asked if I wanted to try the lessons. "The first lesson is free", she said.

I had to work late that evening, so had to decline the invitation, but promised I would try the lesson next week.

This Thursday, I reached Gold Star Gymnastics at about 7:45pm and was given a waiver to sign, then changed into workout clothes in the bathroom. At 8pm, a lady rounded up about 10-12 people to begin the class.

We started by running around a big exercise mat followed by stretching of the hamstrings. Then we practise fall. A common gymnastic injury is when a person falls, he uses his hands to balance himself. The weight on the wrist and elbow may be too much and bones can break. We learned to fall backwards, roll backwards while keeping our hands on our sides.

Warm up continued with jumping on a trampoline, followed by doing a seat drop on the trampoline. This involve jumping on the trampoline, then in mid air push the legs horizontal and keeping the hangs on the side, then drop butt first on the trampoline. With the bounce, get mid-air and stand up. There was a more advance move of doing seat drop in one direction, followed by seat drop in another direction which I was unable to do. The final warm up was inch-worm.

After warm-up, we formed lines to do forward rolls and backward rolls. My lack of arm strength quickly became obvious. Also, I was not used to being upside down. After each roll, I quickly lose orientation and needed a few seconds to gather myself.

The instructor pulled me aside to do backward roll on a decline mat. This way, I do not need to use as much force roll myself backwards as gravity helped do some of the pulling. I was able to do the skill several times, but the dizziness got worst.

The next exercise was cartwheel. I was too weak to try doing the drill. The instructor pulled over a stack of mats and had me do semi-cartwheels by putting my hands on the stack and jumping over the mats. She had the students worked on a roll followed by a handstand turn. I could not do a handstand, so I was reduced to doing a hand push up with kicks of the legs in the air.

After these exercise, the instructor pulled a big roller mattress and have the students do running flips. The students ran towards the roller, then bend down to pushed themselves onto the roller with their hands. At this point, I was feeling very sick and did not participate in any of the drills. I started watching my fellow students and found most of them were doing quite well. A few were even able to do the flip without the rollers! I later learned that many of the students were former gymnasts and just wanted to continue working out gymnastics moves. Compare to them, I was clearly out of shape.

After the running flip exercises, it was a free for all period. I saw some people worked on floor exercise moves, working on back flips with rollers. The gym also has a setup for working on jumps. I saw more than a few students ran down the running track, jumped, twisted and turned in mid air, then land into a pool of foam cubes. A fellow student saw me watching and encouraged me to try. I politely declined as I was still fighting the urge to throw up.

After 45mins of free exercise, we gathered again on the mat for conditioning exercise. There was a body crunch followed by rolling on the sides, and clapping push ups.

Nathalie came and checked with me to see how I enjoyed the class. It was fun trying something new, but clearly I am not ready for many of the exercises and definitely not ready for the rolls and flips. I would need to work on those skills before returning.