Waiting to Hatch

Tumbling

As many of you probably know, I used to be a cheerleader. I know, I'm not the typical cheerleader, but there will always be a special place in my heart for that sport (yes, it is a sport-don't get me started). I cheered for 4 years, I didn't love all of it, but I aboslutely loved tumbling. During season, usually about 20+ hours a week were devoted to cheerleading. Needless to say, it got pretty exhausting, but I always found the energy for tumbling (usually, stunting too, but that's a different story). I took tumbling lessons for 3 years, and loved it. When you first start tumbling, you use muscles in your body that you never knew you had. You lose your fear of falling on your head. You forget the fact that running at full speed only to dive into the floor is considered crazy by some people. Because it's fun, and somewhat empowering. There's something about using all your strength to make yourself fly through the air that's just exhiliarating. It was a confidence builder to know that I could do stuff that made people say "cool!" and had a blast doing it. It's also a release. My best tumbling lessons were usually when i came in angry and took it all out on that blue mat. And we worked hard. You can't be out of shape and tumble. It won't work. There's always something more to accomplish in tumbling. There's always a harder trick. But every trick you master, is like a huge confidence builder. It's hard to explain something like this to anyone who has never tumbled, but it used to be a passion of mine, so I try. So you may ask, why would someone quit if they love it so much? Well, I broke my ankle. Three days after I'd gotten my round-off back handspring back tuck. When I went back to tumbling, I tumbled crooked, favoring my good ankle. And I'd kind of gotten out of shape. Had I done a lot of physical therapy and worked really hard, I probably could have fixed these things, but I ended up quitting cheerleading for numerous reasons and there didn't seem to be a reason for tumbling anymore. I miss those days a lot, but that was almost 2 years ago now. In 9th grade, my tumbling coach told me that if I continued, I'd be able to do a full by my junior year. By my junior year, I had already stopped tumbling because of the ankle crap, but it's still cool to think about. For those of you that don't know what a full is, here's a video of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K0I_z8PcyM

It's just 2 guys doing it over and over again so you really only need to watch for like 3 seconds. Anyway, I just thought of all this because I saw some cheerleading on tv so I thought I'd share with yall the good ole days of when I was a lot stronger and bouncier.

posted by Shari @ 9:11 AM