Simone Biles Debunks Every Gymnastics Myth | Glamour

i've heard gymnastics stunted your growth still don't know if that's true or not but here i am at four foot eight so possibly [Music] hi i'm olympic gold medalist simone biles and i'm debunking some misconceptions you guys have about gymnast we asked on instagram about misconceptions and assumptions you guys have about gymnasts i broke them down into three categories sport lifestyle and the physique so gymnastics is not a sport i hear this a lot but i feel like every four years everybody tunes in to watch gymnastics so it's got to be a sport at least out of all the sports gymnastics is probably the most competitive right now i train 32 to 34 hours a week just to compete for about three or four minutes it's all sports combined in one you can't just be fast you have to have like agility you have to be able to jump you have to be able to flip memorize routines it's kind of all-in-one gymnasts usually retire at an early age and gymnasts have a short career that's not technically true because we can do it whenever we go to college and get like ncaa scholarships so i guess we all kind of retire around 22 23. you have to be rich to get into the sport our lesson's expensive it actually is a very expensive sport and it has to do with it's also year long we don't have a season and then we can take a break and you kind of have to train your whole entire life for it so yes it does get to be expensive you can't start gymnastics later in life i was six years old almost seven and that's already typically late because usually you start in mommy and me classes or as soon as you can walk you can't be afraid of heights as a gymnast you actually can but it doesn't affect you in the gym when you're flipping because you don't notice how high you are so i feel like that one's kind of a myth now i'm not really afraid of heights i'm just afraid of if i'm somewhere high i'm going to jump off i don't know why i have that fear i don't want to die i just want to jump off due to me being a professional athlete gymnast i try to stay away from those extreme sports bungee jumping skydiving none of that until your career is over i've done zip lining um and i was only allowed to do it because you're strapped in you constantly have a wedgie from your uniform yes and no you can get wedgies but usually you just pick them beauty is a pain so we get over it so gk ali designs all of my uniforms and i have a leo line with him and so i think that's really exciting because i get to design the leos that i compete in training is more mental than physical i would say it's 50 50. every trick comes naturally and they do not struggle at all that's false because on some skills it's taken me like over a year to learn um so it all doesn't come naturally there's actually two skills i can think of one is a takacha from bars that took me like a year to learn and another is a double double on floor which also took me like a year to learn the takata if i was scared and i used to like fall really crazy and then double double i would just get lost in the air so it took me a long time for my air awareness on that skill lifestyle they are not very nice and super competitive in all aspects of life i'm actually not very competitive at all in the gym or like in a competition my goal is never to win it just kind of happens but i also feel like whenever you're at the top everybody like prays on your downfall which is really strange to me my sister did gymnastics until she was about like 17. she was level 9 gymnast training level 10. she was really good she quit because of the pressure and everybody compared her to me and she used to win like a lot of the competitions too and then people thought that wasn't fair and she was just tired of people talking about it whenever she went to competitions like oh her sister always wins she always wins that's not fair so she quit they're intimidating to men i feel like at a young age yes because i feel like our muscles develop way quicker than other kids our age especially like in middle school you don't see boys beefing up to like 16 18 until they hit puberty but even before girls hit puberty we gain muscle so we're typically stronger than the men in our age group so yes how did you meet your current boyfriend was it on a dating app so before i started dating my boyfriend he didn't know who i was yes it actually was no we don't have to talk about it it's fine he's competitive at games and in life in general but i'm not but whenever i beat him i make it known that i beat him because it just gets on his nerves um can i be not nice sometimes but probably if i'm tired or hungry but that's just everybody but i feel like people also think gymnasts are really mean because most of the time we're so serious that you really don't get to see our personality all work no play yes and no i guess we can play after work i've learned that i have to feel myself outside of the gym too whether that's hanging out with family friends going shopping or doing whatever i still have to be happy at the end of the day with or without gymnastics my mom always made it a note to do family vacations so they would take me and my sister out of practice anyways and we would go one of my favorite places to go on vacation is belize the food the water the people everything whenever i do things i'm not supposed to when i post them i get in trouble one time we went to belize and i was doing double flips off this platform and i got in trouble for that but the internet thought it was cool i like to nap i feel like at this age that's like fun for me they have to wake up at 4 00 a.m every day i don't wake up at 4 a.m i wake up at like 6 15 just because we start practice at seven and if i had to wake up at four i wouldn't go to the gym they grew up only going to gymnastics gym and didn't have time to socialize slash date i actually went to public school up until eighth grade which some people never go to public school or some people do public school their whole entire career but yeah once you get to a certain level and you start training more hours you don't really have time to socialize therefore probably don't know any guys so you probably don't date and i didn't so all of my friends actually came from gymnastics or at least around that world this one tendency to be depressed as a result of their young age and pressure to compete i was never depressed as a kid i was actually very happy because i feel like you don't really get pressure to compete well till you get older but it also depends on your parents and your coaches and my parents just always let me have fun and be myself in and out of the gym so as i got older you have to take mental days or whatever but i've probably only taken like two ever so not really for me i go to therapy and i think it should be talked about a lot more because it's not something to be shamed or afraid of everybody has something different that works for them and that's what i just found works for me physique they have body image issues i feel like that's not a misconception about gymnasts i feel like that's everybody in general everybody struggles with body image issues wanting to look different thinking you're not skinny i feel like that's everybody in life you have to have a certain body type to be a gymnast back in the day everybody had a more like slim body and was really flexible and skinny but now you can be a little bit shorter and more powerful like me so i definitely think it's evolved so i think that's false as well you have to be skinny petite to do gymnastics i feel like whatever your body type is you just have to be in shape to do gymnastics they can never grow above a certain height so i'm going to start like five six five eight which is really tall for a gymnast not for a normal person but for a gymnast if you walk into the gym the tallest person on the team is probably five four i think it's different now everybody thought bar swingers were a little bit taller leaner and then if you're like a tumbler you're a little bit shorter and thicker but now it's been proven that you can kind of have both body types and do all of it so it doesn't really make a difference anymore but let me tell you you gained three pounds it's a little harder to swing on the bars they're very flexible no not all gymnasts are flexible me and alan raisman weren't actually not that flexible for gymnasts because our muscles kind of overlap that but we're flexible enough to do what we have to do i'm olympic gold medalist simone biles thank you

Channel: Glamour

Views: 907,285

Rating: 4.9663682 out of 5

Keywords: glamour, glamour cover, glamour cover star, glamour digital cover, glamour magazine, gymnast myths, gymnastics misconceptions, gymnastics myths, how to be a gymnast, olympic gold medalist, simon biles q&a, simone bile debunks, simone biles, simone biles 2021, simone biles answers, simone biles cover, simone biles gymnast, simone biles gymnastics, simone biles height, simone biles interview, simone biles muscles, simone biles reacts, simone byles

Id: kl6O1zwjpO0

Length: 8min 51sec (531 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/adykaty]

I haven't watched the video yet (at work, will watch when I get home) but just stopping by to say holy freaking CRAP, Simone looks next level gorgeous here. Such a beauty.

[u/blueberryatombomb]

Wild that she said it took a year for her to learn a double double & develop the air awareness for it...to eventually make a triple double look easy!

[u/MargeDalloway]

Being afraid of heights doesn't effect you in the gym.

Cheng Fei has entered the chat.

[u/DumpsterFireSocks]

“I don’t want to die I just want to jump off” girl same

[u/D_Leo333]

Love how she said it took her a year to learn the double double on floor. She does it so easily now that its her frickin last pass! But just shows how hard these girls work for these skills, and we see normally the final result instead of all the blood sweat and tears, day in and day out that go into them.

[u/empo7]

I don’t buy for a minute that her boyfriend didn’t know who she was. I really do think at this point Simone is a household name, and he’s an NFL player on top of that.

[u/theworldisnotquiet]

Gymnastics is not a sport makes me want to breathe fire and go on a murder spree. The people who say this would probably die doing a cartwheel.

Love that bit where Simone says bungee jumping is too risky ;-)

Love Simone's eye roll at "every trick comes naturally to them".

Okay I loved Simone before and now watching this I want to start a cult that worships her (and I'm a sceptical Brit who is not a joiner).

[u/National_Jeweler8761]

Feel like she didn't do the best job with this or she was getting cut off...She doesn't give credit to the older gymnasts who have been sticking around for the retirement question. For whether or not gymnastics is a sport, I think she could have gone way more in detail about how gymnasts need to be physically tough (have you seen a pull-up competition among gymnasts??? O_O). For gymnastics later in life, no cred to adult gymnasts? (This is where I think they might have just cut her off because it might take too long to distinguish adult gymnastics for fun vs actually trying to go elite).

If gymnasts are actually intimidatimg to men, I'm enrolling any daughters I have right away.

[u/feministxstitch]

I mean, she sorta did. Simone is clearly the GOAT and the best at doing gymnastics. But I think an obsessive gymnerd (hi!) would probably be better to answer some of these questions.

She does like freaking amazing! Whoever styled her Glamour shot is great at their job.