Following the decision by the world’s most decorated gymnast to drop out of the Olympic finals, there was some confusion as to the exact reason this decision was made. It was initially reported as a “health issue” and later upgraded to a “mental health issue,” but it appears that the real reason given was that it was a “mental issue” in a more literal sense of the word and in a way only serious athletes can really understand.
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What Simone Biles was struggling with and the reason for the misstep she experienced during the vault that preceded her decision to step back was something that gymnasts refer to as “the twisties,” and it can be incredibly dangerous to athletes who throw themselves into the air and do a ton of flips.
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Basically, imagine the phenomenon known as “the yips” but it happens while you’re several feet in the air and upside-down, and it could literally kill you.
Former gymnast Catherine Burns took to Twitter to explain it better.
Hi, your friendly neighborhood former gymnast and diver here to attempt to explain the mental phenomenon Simone Biles is experiencing: the dreaded twisties.
— Catherine Burns (@WittyNameChoice) July 28, 2021
Those who only ever watch gymnastics during the Olympics every four years likely do not appreciate the kind of work it takes to be able to throw your body around like that and maintain the kind of bodily awareness that allows you to land on your feet, sometimes on a four-inch wide beam. Through years of training, Burns explains, gymnasts change their own brains and develop muscle memory that lets them do all that in just a couple seconds, all while airborne.
“Once you’ve practiced a trick enough, you develop the neural pathways that create kinesthesia which leads to muscle memory,” she wrote. “Your brain remembers how your body feels doing the trick and you gain air awareness.”
This is something average people do all the time, but with easier and less dangerous activities like driving a car or playing video games. You also might have experienced a moment in which stress gets you too in your head, and suddenly you have to think about something that used to be practically automatic for you.
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“Suddenly, in the middle of driving on the freeway, right as you need to complete a tricky merge, you have totally lost your muscle memory of how to drive a car. You have to focus on making you foot press the pedal at the right angle, turn the steering wheel just so, shift gears.”
Now imagine this happens while you’re in mid-air, trying to remember how to do a bunch of crazy flips and land on your feet in a way that won’t break anything instead of on your head.
“The twisties are like this, and often happen under pressure,” says Burns. “You’re working so hard to get it right that you stop trusting your muscle memory. You’re getting lost in the air, second guessing your instincts, overthinking every movement.”
Obviously, this is a frightening and disturbing experience for athletes who are used to their minds and bodies doing as they’re told.
According to Burns and many other athletes who have chimed in on the subject, the twisties are a very common experience among gymnasts, divers, and others who engage in similar trick sports. Indeed, this type of mental self-doubt and overthinking is common throughout sports, and all athletes know that there is a strong mental component to what they do. It’s why the field of sports psychology exists, as well as the 2016 film The Phenom.
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The danger of the twisties is not at all theoretical. Another former gymnast came forward due to the attacks on Biles from people who have never done any gymnastics to tell the story of how they caused her to break her neck and become paralyzed from the chest down.
“I experienced those mental blocks throughout my career as a gymnast, and to be quite blunt, it only took one bad time of getting lost “or what they called the ‘twisties’) in the air in a big flip to break my neck and leave me paralyzed….most likely for life,” wrote Jacoby Miles.
As many others have noted, whether they’re gymnasts or not, no amount of entertainment or nationalist pride is worth the kind of injury Biles could have sustained if she had tried to force herself to continue, no matter how much nerds like Charlie Kirk whine about it.
*First Published: July 29, 2021, 10:13 am
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