They fly through the air with the greatest ease only to come crashing back down to earth.
LSU gymnasts attest that those graceful acrobatics that gymnasts are so famous for are, more times than not, accompanied with reverberating pain and injury.
“If I had to put a number on it, I’d say 75 percent of the girls are competing with some sort of injury or pain every time they compete,” said LSU graduate assistant athletic trainer Matt Gregg. “There’s a high risk to it and a high skill as well.”
According to Gregg, almost every member of the team will see him at one point during the week for some kind of treatment.
Many of the injuries are degenerative, stemming from years of constant wear and tear on joints and bones, primarily in the legs and feet.
As Gregg pointed out, most of the gymnasts have been doing this since they were old enough to do a cartwheel, and that grind on their bodies carries over into their college careers.
“We always push through pain,” said LSU junior Kaleigh Dickson. “That’s what we’ve been taught since we were six starting this sport. We do have those little aches and pains, but what’s greater is our love for the sport.”
LSU junior Sarie Morrison has battled injury throughout her time as a Tiger, missing the majority of the 2012 season after needing surgery to remove a lesion, or tissue abnormality, in her left foot.
After her early injury, Morrison was still able to compete on the uneven bars while aspiring to return to the vault for the NCAA championship meet at the end of the season.
“Everyone kept telling me, ‘You’re never going to be able to vault or do floor again because you’ve had so many ankle injuries,’” Morrison said. “I thought ‘No, I’m going to prove them wrong, and I’m going to come back and do the events that I love to do or I wouldn’t have gone through all that to begin with.’”
Fortunately for Morrison, she was able to return to the vault, but during preparation for the meet, she shattered the navicular bone in the same foot. However, that didn’t stop her, as Morrison competed through the pain.
“I was competing in nationals on vault in so much pain,” Morrison said. “I thought in the back of my mind, ‘What if I’m never able to do vault again? At least I’ll be able to do this one last time.’”
To battle the pain, gymnasts rely on a series of tailored treatments that range from the traditional ice and Advil regimen to the more modern technique of dry needle physical therapy.
“[Dry needles are] almost like acupuncture with the needles sticking through, but it works off of trigger points in the muscles,” Gregg said. “[The physical therapist] will try to find the trigger points in the muscle and dry needle them to get the spasm to relax. That helps a lot when we have girls with chronic stuff.”
Gregg works with LSU coach D-D Breaux constantly throughout the season with weekly injury reports that help to create workouts that won’t interfere with rehabilitation.
“We always err on the side of what our trainers are telling us,” Breaux said. “Of course, as coaches we push and we push and we try to get as much as we can out of our student-athletes, but gymnastics is an everyday pounding. It’s a contact sport.”
Breaux and her staff routinely stress the importance of what she calls “prehabbing.”
According to Gregg, if the team has a meet on Friday, the Tigers will be back on the mats in full practice by Sunday, therefore injury turnover needs to be as quick as possible.
The team members maintain their bodies with a strict regimen of cardio, conditioning, cold baths and overall up keeping of their health.
“The biggest thing is to try and get them coming in the next day feeling as good as possible so they can perform well in [the practice gym] and then on Friday,” Gregg said.
One of the more controversial treatments for today’s athletes, LSU gymnasts included, is the cortisone injection.
Cortisone is a chemical naturally created in the body, but when injected straight into ligaments, it reduces inflammation, thus reducing pain.
One of the side effects of cortisone injections is a possible thinning or damaging of joint ligaments later in life if used too many times during a short period of time, leaving the decision of accepting the shot to the gymnasts themselves.
“It sounds bad, but I kind of live in the present and I don’t worry about the effects of it,” said Dickson, who has utilized the treatment. “It makes me feel good at the time and it makes me able to compete and that’s what I love to do.”
