Twenty four hours in a day at seven days a week totals out to 168 hours in a 7-day period, now imagine spending more than half of that time at the gym training under very strenuous conditions for hours at a time, and pushing your body to its physical limits. Gymnast Jacob Becchetti is a complete beast when it comes to training and competing in the sport. Gymnastics is a very demanding sport with many resulting injuries that can be catastrophic to one’s body and career.

Becchetti stated that he practices for “four to five hours a day, six days a week. I have my practice at 1:30 pm, stretch, then go straight into the floor, pommel, rings, vaults, and high bar, three of those events for at least forty five to fifty minutes each day.”

This gymnast has been training his muscles to be able to endure the extreme amount of strength training since the day his mother enrolled him in a class when he was just three years old.

He then grew drawn to the gym and all the opportunities that were to come in the future blossomed from there. He’s now a level ten gymnast, who is a pro at the pommel horse, his favorite event to practice and perform.

“Wednesdays and Saturdays are free days where you can do anything you want, Saturdays you don’t have to go in but I go in just because,” stated Becchetti. Even on his “days off” he is wanting to get time in the gym to improve his technique as much as he can.

Now when you think of a high level athlete, you probably think of someone who is a health nut or someone who meal preps and drinks plenty of protein shakes, but for this athlete moderation is everything. He eats whatever he wants and actually feels like he does not intake enough calories to counteract the ones he is constantly burning off. He works out so much his metabolism burns through energy very fast allowing him to stay physically fit.

Although the amount of time and effort he puts into the sport would suggest that he is obsessed with it, loves it, Becchetti claims that “it’s a hate-love relationship with the sport, it’s one of the most painful sports in the world because it hurts you so bad.” He then revealed his swollen, bruised, and broken wrists that he had gotten from a previous meet.

Even though the hardships of this sport show in injuries and countless hours in the gym, Becchetti is planning to pursue gymnastics after high school in college, and eventually is aiming to be in the Olympics when he gets older.