Men’s gymnastics requires both discipline and strength. It involves training in six types of events. The six events consist of floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and horizontal bar. Junior Chris Stillwell first got involved with men’s gymnastics at a young age and he continues to train weekly. He puts in large amounts of effort towards his success in men’s gymnastics and has had to overcome the challenges of balancing both his school work and gymnastics.
When Stillwell was six years old his parents tried to get all of his siblings into different sports. Stillwell was put into mens gymnastics and he stated that he, “Just kind of fell in love with the sport.” Stillwell has competed in multiple competitions and recently competed in Texas and at Arizona State University. He continues to work towards the goal of competing at a collegiate level and hopes to get on a D1 team in the future.
Balancing both schoolwork and men’s gymnastics has not been a simple task for Stillwell, he shared, “I take four periods in person and two periods online so I can get to practice on time, and in between school and gym I have about an hour of downtime and I’ll do my homework during that time.” Stillwell spends a lot of his time practicing and has practice Monday through Friday every week.
Stillwell’s weekly practice consists of three and a half hours of gym per day. They spend the first 15 to 30 minutes warming up, afterwards they focus on 3 different events per day. Towards the end of practice they spend around 45 minutes doing strength exercises.
With this busy schedule keeping up with schoolwork has been a challenging aspect for Stillwell. He stated, “The most challenging aspect for me is probably the balance between school and gym, just because, especially this year, school work has gone up so it’s harder to balance.” With gymnastics taking up a lot of his day, Stillwell has worked out a schedule that allows him to focus on both schoolwork and his passion.
School work can be challenging to keep up with, but Stillwell believes that, “You just need to set aside time for school, because obviously school is the most important thing because you’re not going to be competing for the whole of your life. School is going to be the most essential part.” Stillwell advocates for having a good balance between schooling and competitive sports because that is what he believes helps to build your future.
Stillwell encourages those who are interested in competing in men’s gymnastics to, “Do it, if you love the sport and if you love pushing yourself it’s definitely worth doing,” which can also apply to any competitive sport one is interested in pursuing.
