I Competed Through An Injury...

追加: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]The thing I was not going to do was fall on my butt in front of everybody. I really only need half of a reason to fall apart. Hey everyone, my name is Andrew. I'm an adult gymnast, coach, >> [music] >> and photographer. Today, I wanted to debrief a little bit about my back injury from NAIGC Nationals. [music] Okay, what's the diagnosis? Something has happened to a disc in my back. Hello there, it's editing Andrew. [music] So, I had an in-depth conversation with my physical therapist. She thinks that I have some sort of mechanical instability that kind of went like this, slipped out, angered some nerves, and then [music] I'm kind of dealing with the fallout of that this whole time.

[00:00:36]So, how did it happen? The day I was set to compete, everything felt fine. The time comes where it's time for me to change [music] into my Sylvia P leotard, and then was about to go warm up, and something immediately felt wrong. There wasn't like a motion or an incident, [music] but just in general, it was really hard to bend over. I grinned and bear it through open stretch. Actually competing beam went fine, stayed [music] on top of my aerial, did a good dismount, felt pretty good about beam. It's actually the only event that I placed in. I got third. Moving on to floor, this was honestly the place that I was the most [music] nervous. The thing I was not going to do was fall on my butt in front of everybody and have it ruin [music] the performance. I stayed on my feet, the performance was good, and I'm proud of the performance. After floor, honestly the rest was kind of just gravy because I got through floor. The next morning [music] was the most pain I have ever been in in my entire life. I immediately knew that I needed to bite the bullet and go to the emergency room. So, I get home and basically get right into PT. Things have improved. I don't have a specific timeline of [music] when I know it's going to get better. It's going to be a slow, incremental thing. I still have two meets left. I have AAU Nationals and I have the Gay Games, which is once every four years. It's like this huge, important to my soul meet that is now [music] in jeopardy because of this injury, I don't know if I'm going to get there. The timeline is going to be close. The hardest part about all of this has not been the pain. So, this is my third [music] season of competing in adult gymnastics and it is my third injury. There has been a lot of soul-searching. Is this even worth putting my body through [music] anymore?

[00:02:20]Right now, the answer is yes. I'm going to continue, but I can't have an injury every year, like a big injury that I'm going to run out of parts. So, I'm really going to have to really take stock of what is working, what is not, and what can I be doing to get myself in the healthiest situation possible, but it has been a really big challenge.

[00:02:40]This injury also brings up some >> [music] >> other stuff. Um, throughout my entire teenage and adult life, I have had issues with disordered eating >> [music] >> and diets and fitness yo-yoing and things and [music] I really only need half of a reason to fall apart. So, [music] basically since that happened, I've been eating whatever the heck I want and it's been a couple weeks now and I am trying to be kind to myself. There's no right way to like perfectly handle an injury, but um it is frustrating to be going through some food nutrition stuff again.

[00:03:19]It kind of goes in cycles or spurts. It is something that I have been talking about in therapy. It also from a content creation standpoint has really thrown a wrench into like the rhythm of how I was producing and putting out content. It's partly why I'm doing this video right now is to sort of bring you along through the good, bad, and the ugly of being an adult gymnast.

[00:03:42]I feel like [music] my role in adult gymnastics is very much not over and I have a lot more to do and say in this space. If you've made it this far, thank you so much for caring enough about me to come on this journey with me and to listen to me whine on the internet. With that being said, like and subscribe and uh I'll see you guys in the next [music] one. Bye-bye.