When the calendar turned to 2024 and also you immediately end up in an Olympic yr, there isn’t any doubt issues get ramped up considerably.
It’s a place I’ve been in thrice earlier than and you need to use the very fact the most important present on this planet is now on the horizon positively and to assist fine-tune your focus.
I’m ensuring I’m forward of schedule. I’ve learnt to take it one step at a time the place an Olympics is anxious and hold future targets behind your thoughts. There’s lots nonetheless to return earlier than the Video games.
For me, which means my first two championships of the yr – the English after which the British – in March and making an attempt to make a superb, stable opening to 2024.
My goal is to get every part proper and that started with a sluggish tapering of coaching from the beginning of the brand new yr and I’m actually, actually happy with the place I’m at.
I’ve come to know my physique extra as time has gone on and I do know now restoration is ten instances extra vital to me than it was beforehand. I’m all the time on the lookout for extra information on my physique to assist me assess the place I’m at.
I’d wish to suppose, in comparison with my three earlier Olympics, I’m extra in management this time. Again in London 12 years in the past, I in all probability felt a number of inside stress, in addition to the apparent pleasure of a house Video games, which was additionally my first.
I used to be advised it wasn’t my cycle so I assume I had nothing to lose as I gained my first two Olympic medals, each bronze, in London.
4 years later, it went from inside stress to exterior stress in Rio. In Tokyo three years in the past it was a very totally different ball sport, competing at an Olympics delayed for a yr by Covid.
Now, I really feel like I’m extra chilled but additionally fired as much as get essentially the most out of myself in Paris. I’m 31 and gymnasts’ careers are presupposed to be completed by this level however I really feel I cannot simply acquit myself nicely this yr however go on for so long as I can within the sport.
I see 2024 as a problem. Can I nonetheless do what I might after I was 19? There’s definitely extra to show to myself this time so it feels as if issues have gone full circle and now the stress comes from inside, for me to see simply what I can do in my 30s.
I needed to suppose: how can I make my habits more healthy and get the very best out of myself? I actually need to see how far I can push myself at this age.
All the pieces will get tougher once you become old as a gymnast and I even have a life exterior of the game, which I didn’t have after I was getting ready for London in 2012.
I’ve two start-up firms, a spouse and a younger daughter, so this actually is a unique ball sport now. I feel I take advantage of my time properly, although, and have lots exterior of gymnastics to maintain me recent after I’m not coaching.
It could have been really easy for me to cease after Tokyo, and I did, however on reflection I realised that retirement wasn’t me, not who I needed to be.
I already really feel I’ve surpassed what I assumed I might do after I set out within the sport and I’ve the love for it once more. Gymnastics is such an enormous a part of my life and I’ve discovered to embrace that.
Getting again into it on this Paris cycle made me suppose something I can do now’s a bonus and comes minus an exterior stress to an extent as I’ve achieved so many goals on the Olympic Video games over time.
I even have the information I gained the World Cup occasion in Paris final September and have produced a number of the greatest pommel horse scores over the past yr, the outcomes I do know again up my perception I can win gold once more.
I really feel extraordinarily fortunate and hopefully the way in which I’ve taken care of myself pays off on this build-up to Paris. I do know it is a huge alternative to indicate that age is just not vital, gymnastics has modified and you may go on past standard expectations. Deliver on 2024.
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