It's not about winning or losing a competition, it's about beating the doubt from within yourself and knowing at the end of each day you are one step closer to your goals.
After thorough reflection, I realized that my desire to achieve my goals in this sport outweighed my self-doubt. This perseverance has helped me to be successful not only in gymnastics, but in my non-athletic life as well.
It’s called the pursuit of perfection. The pursuit is the idea that you’ll never be perfect in gymnastics but you can continue to pursue it as long as you’re doing it. I don’t think it’s possible to be perfect in gymnastics. It’s just one of those sports that you’re always trying to improve and pursue that perfection.
One of the things about my sport that's important is consistency - being able to do your routines consistently and training consistently. If you change it up or try to make everything more intense because the Olympics is coming up, you tend to put too much pressure on your mind and your body.
Part of being a good gymnast is being very disciplined - you have to know how to train right, eat right, sleep right.
A line I like to use is, "Every day is training. Every day of life is a pursuit of perfection."
There's mornings when my body aches or my mind is just not with it. But that's part of being an athlete and accomplishing a goal that seems unattainable. You have to find your motivation, what inspires you.
I’m a true believer in the mental side of gymnastics – the 95% mental and 5% physical. It’s totally true. As you get to an older age, at 25 years old, I’ve pretty much learned everything that I need to learn in gymnastics. Now it’s, can I mentally push through the daily grind? Can I push through the small injuries and the aches and pains?
I eat very clean foods, healthy foods and drink a lot of water.
I'm very disciplined in many aspects of my life, and I think a lot of that has to do with how I was raised and the sport I've been in my whole life.
I am completely honest and truthful when I say I don’t want a gold for myself. I want a gold for the team. You go up there and do it as a collective group and it’s so much more satisfying, I mean you look around and you see the faces and just wow, this was a team effort and we did this together. It’s incredible and that’s my dream. I wanna win a gold medal and see the flag go up, hear the national anthem and just know that I did it with my brothers standing next to me.
There's mornings where I have to clear my mind and think, "OK, why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this kind of training every day?" I can literally see myself standing on top of a medal podium winning a gold medal next to my teammates, something I've never accomplished. It reminds me: That's why I do what I do. That's why I love it. Let's get in the gym and have a good workout.
The Olympics is a huge deal, and there's such an adrenaline rush, but I am one of those people that finds every little victory in life extremely satisfying - the day I got married, the day I moved into my house, the first car I bought, becoming an uncle. The little victories in life really keep you going, and none of those are any less special than the Olympic team.
It was definitely a big change in my life going from the college scene to really kind of being on my own. I got married and moved to Houston and started a whole new journey. It was scary in a way, but what's great for me is just focusing on gymnastics and my wife. I'm really able to put 100% into what my goals are.
There is a period of tapering when we're not in the gym quite as long to try to save our bodies, but leading up to the competition we try to keep things similar to the rest of the year.
I tell my coach all the time "Hey, listen, coach. You know the hardest person on me isn't you, right? It's me." I'm the hardest person on myself, my biggest critic, always pushing. But there are days when I have to tell myself, "Relax, breathe, you're too stressed out." When it's no longer fun, when it's no longer something you can tolerate, that's when you have to take a break.
I want to stay involved in gymnastics forever, but the Olympics really opened up doors in terms of motivational speaking. I'd like do some type of broadcasting or commentating for gymnastics events on TV, or even give my insights as a gymnast into other sports; I'm kind of a sports junkie in general.
When I was 22, I finally reached that huge goal. Now I'm going for another one. It's so satisfying. It's something that I worked for for so long, and just to know that I got it feels so great.
It's hard to put what it means into words. It's just a dream I had when I was a little kid. It's not every day [you] get to make your lifelong dream come true. The point of doing things in life is you pursue a goal, and you go after it, you reach it and you pick another one. But they're hard to attain.
It's tough. Gymnastics isn't basketball or football or baseball, where you can get these huge contracts and make a lot of money.
My first workout starts at 9:00 a.m. every morning. I'm in the gym from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. We do strength conditioning, stretching, pretty intense workouts in the morning. We go back in the gym at 1:00 p.m. and train until 5:00 p.m. It's all routines, repetition, doing the same skills over and over again, trying to polish and perfect everything. I head home, eat dinner, spend some time with my wife and start over the next day. I train about six days per week.
I'm on my own, luckily doing well, but like I said, we don't make a ridiculous amount of money and I have to be disciplined with what I do with it.
There's a point in gymnastics where once you get to a certain age your body just isn't going to be able to handle it anymore. But I'd like to continue on as long as I'm able to help the team out and be a contributor to the success of the U.S. team.
Another big difference about not being in college: In college, you're on the team, you're competing for the NCAA - luckily I had a full scholarship and I was taken care of - then all of a sudden you're a pro and you've got to take care of yourself. I'm gonna keep doing the same thing, keep training, and hopefully everything works out.
There's very few of us who are able to be successful, which is why so many guys out of college can't continue the sport. It's unfortunate because there's just no financial backing. I've been very blessed with sponsors.
