When do gymnasts peak

USAG is the sole national governing body of gymnastics in the United States, pushing aspiring stars through its renowned Junior Olympic program. But this is not to say that the Junior Olympic program is a carbon copy of the grueling college season.

Of the five women on the gold medal-winning USA Olympic team, two were 16 years old, one was 17, one was 15 and only one was A younger gymnast usually has more power and flexibility, making it easier to perform many of the complex routines that require incredible coordination. She is also usually smaller, which is often advantageous. It takes less time for smaller gymnasts to get stronger because less muscle is needed to support a smaller mass.

The continuous wear and tear on the body and grueling practice schedule get increasingly harder as a gymnast gets older and often becomes unreasonable to maintain. For most female gymnasts, college competition is the end of a long career in the sport. Like Cervin, he would like to see young athletes do a lot of sports and also pursue other interests before they decide to make gymnastics their exclusive focus. Puberty is highly individual and happens at different times for different people.

And the fear does eventually set in, usually during puberty and after some injuries. That fully grown women can do a very acrobatic form of gymnastics at the highest level is a settled matter. Just look at year-old Chellsie Memmel , the world all-around champion and member of the silver-medal-winning U. Olympic team. Memmel returned to gymnastics after an eight-year hiatus during which she got married and had two kids.

While there is a national team stipend, it is meager and difficult to live on. Ask any U. How will a gymnast pay her way then? Many of the top gymnasts in the U. Some gymnasts have certainly been able to juggle both — University of Alabama gymnast Shallon Olsen is on the Canadian Olympic team — but this is relatively rare. It worked out for her, as she was selected to compete in Tokyo. How much more artistic would our floor routines [be]? A change in the developmental timeline might force college programs and coaches to reconsider their role and purpose.

Or it might force gymnasts to choose between the two paths instead of getting to do both. And if gymnasts are being trained to peak later, they might not arrive on campus with all the skills they need to compete at either the college or elite level. Skill development can be pretty time- and labor-intensive. College coaches have to prepare for long seasons and almost immediately start constructing routines for the start of the season.

And during the season itself, the focus is on conditioning and injury prevention. And this new schedule could change how college coaches approach recruiting not just the elites but also Level 10s.

To get anywhere near the developmental model that Cervin, Tilley and Casey seem to favor, the culture of the sport would need to shift significantly.

Even after all that has happened in gymnastics, many people still believe that the old ways work or that rather than effecting fundamental change, only some tinkering around the edges is sufficient. It will, of course, take several concurrent changes to effect a cultural transformation. The sport needs to continue addressing coaching abuses and creating systems of accountability so that bad actors can be weeded out.

We have to think critically about a sport whose structure not only enables bad people to flourish but also encourages poor decision-making in people who might actually be well-intentioned.

For starters, we need to change the incentives for gymnasts. Or perhaps difficulty caps so extreme should be instituted so that the difference between junior and senior elite is significant. One indication of baby steps in the right direction: FIG has adopted a age range for international junior elite competition.

A year-old elite gymnast, no matter how talented, is not able to compete at any major event. But for its own domestic meets, each country is free to do what it wishes.

Right now, there is no age minimum for junior elite gymnasts in the U. To accelerate the cultural change, Cervin would like to see an increase in the current age minimum for senior elites.

Cervin is not alone in thinking this, though her wish appears unlikely to come true anytime soon. That was after USA Gymnastics had requested that the age minimum be lowered in Take Rio team member Simone Biles, for instance. She hasn't been to the Olympics, but she's been hailed as the greatest gymnast of all time. She's a few inches shy of five feet tall, and she's just 19 years old, yet many of her predecessors retired even before their own 19th birthdays. Mary Lou Retton, who won the individual all-around gold at the Olympics, retired in at the age of Carly Patterson, who competed in Athens in , was the first American woman to win the all-around gold since Retton's win.

Patterson was 16 when she competed at the Olympics and 18 years old when she retired from the sport because of back problems. You would think the rest would do you good, but your body just forgets how to do gymnastics.

With that said, it wouldn't be a surprise to see Biles join the trend of retiring at a young age, especially considering that she told the New York Times her favorite part of her career so far has been her time off. Before the Olympics, Biles noted that her body is starting to wear down and ache after years of gymnastics training. Specifically, she detailed that she was dealing with "unreal" ankle pain in an interview with the New York Times.

Biles also entered the event nursing a foot injury that had been bothering her for a while, as she detailed during an episode of "Simone vs. Herself" that was shot on May We don't have time for rest, we don't have time for shots and all of that stuff, so tape it is. That explains why Biles' right foot has been heavily wrapped when she has competed during the U. In addition to the physical ailments, Biles has also dealt with a mental issue during the Olympics: the "twisties.

That's why Biles withdrew from the team competition and the event finals that followed — the all-around, vault, uneven bars and floor exercises; she didn't want to risk a significant physical injury.

Later, she would explain via her Instagram that gymnasts "literally cannot tell up from down" while in the air when battling the twisties. She added: "It's the craziest feeling ever.