University of Georgia Athletics
It's All In The Details
December 14, 2016 | Gymnastics
By John Frierson
UGAAA Staff Writer
Morgan Reynolds stands at the end of the vault runway inside the Suzanne Yoculan Gymnastics Center, a look of deep concentration on her face. Then she's off, sprinting toward the other end.
This is during a Monday practice in November, when the Gymdogs are getting in their repetitions and trying to correct the little mistakes that in gymnastics can prove so costly. So again and again Reynolds stands at the end of the roughly 25-yard runway, gets that look on her face and takes off at something close to full speed.
It's hard to watch the senior Georgia Gymdog move without wondering what her 40-yard-dash time would be.
"Vault is all about power and dynamic movements," Gymdogs coach Danna Durante said.
The sprinting is the easy part. What comes after, the roundoff into back handspring onto the springboard, hitting the vault table in the correct place at the correct angle — all those elements have to be nailed before a Gymdog even begins executing her routine in the air. Then come the aerial acrobatics, followed by coming in for a landing.
"I think at this point we wanted to work on the small details, whether it's landings or just finding an extra tenth of a point where we can increase our scores," Reynolds said. "It's just staying really focused throughout the routine and working on those corrections."
Little things matter in all sports, of course, but they matter more in judged sports like gymnastics, equestrian and diving. If a 3-pointer goes in, it doesn't matter whether it rattled around the rim a bit before dropping. A 15-yard reception is still a 15-yard reception regardless of whether or not the throw is high or low or the receiver bobbles the ball for a moment.
But a gymnastics routine in any of the four events is judged on every moment of those routines, not an end result. And that's why the Gymdogs put in so many hours in their events, refining every little piece to as close to perfection as possible. That day in November, Reynolds did 25 repetitions on the vault, before moving onto the bars.
"It's about staying in it and knowing how to stick," the 5-foot-1 senior from Athens said. "You see the landing and stick it. It's the small things. ... You have to think the most in the fastest part of the vault. The round-off onto the board and then the back hand-spring, that's the most important part, that's going to set you up."
One of the most impressive things gymnasts do is make mid-air adjustments, literally on the fly. Like a golfer making a correction in the middle of a swing, gymnasts often, in milliseconds, figure out what's wrong and fix it.
"I honestly don't think in a meet I've ever taken a perfect turn, where I'm like, wow, this is going to be perfect," Sydney Snead said. "I think it's constantly making adjustments on the spot. You hit high on the [vault] table and you're like, oh, well then I need to pull my feet up and twist quicker.
"It's crazy because you're talking to yourself while you're flipping."
You can have all the talent and athleticism in the world — and Gymdogs like Reynolds and Snead have both in abundance — but it's in the training, it's in the hours and hours of work, that champions are formed and the pursuit of perfection is a realistic and worthwhile endeavor.
Of course, perfection isn't always perfect. Durante score five perfect 10s in her career at Arizona State in the early 1990s. All of them, she said, were a surprise.
"I never once felt like it was a perfect 10," she said. "You come off and you're like, oh, it was OK, and then the score would flash and I'd be like, wow, I'll take it. I think that's probably human nature, but I know it's a gymnast's nature."
All gymnasts are pursuing perfection, which means encountering a lot of failures along the way. Before any routine reaches something close to flawlessness, a lot of challenges are encountered, processed and overcome.
"I think coming into practice, it's all mental and the mindset that you have coming in," said Snead, a 5-2 sophomore from Raleigh, N.C., that made the SEC All-Freshman team last season. "You know it's going to be a hard workout and you just have to be ready for it, especially because we're going at 7:30 in the morning. That can be difficult, but I think mentally and physically it's made us stronger."
At the Super Six last April, Snead competed in the vault (9.85) and bars (9.8125), while Reynolds scored a 9.8 in the floor, her only event. Both Gymdogs are expected to have bigger roles this season, with Reynolds competing on bars for the first time in her Georgia career.
Fear of failure might be something that every athlete confronts, but physical fears are something else. In gymnastics, falls and injuries are common. Reynolds said she had to confront some fears when she started doing bars again.
"This is my first year training to compete bars so for me, honestly, my dismount was something coming into this past summer I was like, I want to compete bars this year and I have to get over this fear," she said. "Even still it gets me a little nervous, I get butterflies in my stomach, but I think like Syd said, developing that habit, and knowing that you can do this and just trusting your body. Not letting your mind get in the way too much is important.
"When I get nervous for my bar dismounts, I just go, 'Why am I going to do this? I want to compete come season time, that's what I want to do, and I need to get over it, it's just a dismount.' I think keeping your motivation in the back of your mind helps, too."
Gymnastics is in part about executing a series of very difficult moves, but it's also about performance and presentation. Or, in Durante's words, "being captivating." The looks and the smiles that you see during a floor routine, they're part of the performance, too.
"You want fans and judges to not be able to take their eyes off of you — you captivate them. I like to use that phrase: captivate them," Durante said. "I want to not be able to move my eyes because I'm so intrigued by what you're doing, the way you're moving and the confidence with which you're moving."
Confidence, maybe, is what all this boils down to in the end. Pushing through the ups and downs of training so you reach the point of total confidence in what you're doing. Having confidence in your ability to make minute adjustments mid-air, and then projecting that confidence to everyone watching once you're finished, even when everything might not have gone as planned.
All of that starts with the hours and hours of practice.
"For me it is such a game of mindset and focus and the way you approach your gymnastics," Durante said. "We don't just feel like we're coaching gymnastics, we're coaching life. Everything we do in here, every struggle, every adversity, every victory, all of that, we have an obligation to connect those dots and help the athletes connect those dots.
"Confidence is key in everything."
John Frierson is the staff writer for the UGA Athletic Association and curator of the ITA Men's Tennis Hall of Fame. You can find his work at: Frierson Files. He's also on Twitter: @FriersonFiles and @ITAHallofFame.
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