Getting a Case Of "The Twisties" Sounds Terrifying

Nate7/28/2021 7:45 PM

Obviously Simon Biles is hot in the news because she had to bow out of the Olympics. I don't know why the narrative has become "she quit on her team" when she pulled out to HELP her team because she knew she couldn't compete at the highest level, but that's idiots on the Internet for you. It's actually gross how little information people have and the narratives they run with anyway. Also, I do think Biles/Team USA could have explained it a little better. It's not that she was having a bad day and feeling down, she has what they call "The Twisties", the gymnastics term for the yips. But it's not just missing a throw from 3rd base to first, it's potentially life threatening:

BBC - In gymnastics, it can cause a person to lose their sense of space and dimension as they're in the air, causing them to lose control of their body and do extra twists or flips that they hadn't intended. In the worst cases, they can find themselves suddenly unable to land safely.
The twisties can happen to a gymnast even if they've done the same manoeuvre for years without problems.
Biles - one of the sport's all-time greatest athletes - appeared to become disorientated while performing a vault on Tuesday and stumbled as she landed.

It happened to a gymnast in 2016:

British gymnast Claudia Fragapane competed at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
"It's really dangerous if you doubt yourself a little bit, or you find it really hard, you can really really hurt yourself. I've been in her shoes and I ended up hurting myself."
Fragapane said that under pressure, for some reason, instead of performing a single somersault, she found herself trying to do a double from a slow run up.
She landed on her head and neck, wound up in hospital with concussion but says she could have been paralysed.

Another gymnast compared it to forgetting how to drive a car:

Another ex-gymnast, Catherine Burns, compared it to being on a motorway and suddenly losing your muscle memory of how to drive.
"You're moving way too fast, you're totally lost, you're trying to think but you know you don't usually have to think to do these manoeuvres, you just feel them and do them," she tweeted. "It's not only scary and unnerving, it's incredibly dangerous even if you're doing basic gymnastics."

It sounds horrifying. You're doing 100 flips and twists and then forget how to do the trick you're doing. You don't know how to spot your landing. You could end up landing directly on your head with no idea how you got there.

Former gymnast Jacoby Miles wrote on Instagram after one particularly bad bout of the twisties mid-air, she broke her neck on landing.
"It only took one time of getting lost… in the air for me to break my neck and leave me paralysed, most likely for life," she wrote.
"I'm so so glad [Biles] decided to not continue until she's mentally recovered."

Sometimes I get a little case of writer's block. Just have nothing to blog about, or have no idea what to write about a particular subject. I have ways to circumvent that though (posting smut, mostly). Not the same for a gymnast. Simone couldn't post smut and call it a day. She trained nonstop to get back to the Olympics and had to make the decision to pull herself out of the only thing she ever really has cared about. That's fucking wild to me.