Use of repression in training may harm Olympic gymnasts, study finds

THE artistic gymnastics has become, in recent decades, a kind of icing on the cake of the Olympics. The gymnasts’ performances fill gyms and delight billions of viewers around the world. But behind these displays of beauty, grace and skill, there may be a “b side” that few people know about.

Training encompasses a series of sacrifices that are not captured by the most attentive eyes. And, in the constant search for technical perfection, there is a risk that coercive and repressive methods will appear in the way of the expected success.

“We carried out a qualitative research with eight former Olympic-level gymnasts who, in the period from 2001 to 2005, attended a training center that aimed at high sports performance and operated on an internship basis. And we found over-training problems and authoritarian power relations, with long-term impacts”, says researcher Vítor Ricci Costa, from the Faculty of Physical Education at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp).

Costa is the lead author of the article published in the journal Sport, Education and Societywhich presents and interprets the testimonies of five of the eight athletes interviewed.

Due to the boarding school regime, the girls, almost always very young, remained for long periods without contact with family and friends. Their weights were obsessively monitored through three daily weigh-ins. And, in order for them to remain as light as their trainers deemed necessary, they were subjected to extremely restrictive diets, with intakes of just 800 calories per day. This despite training four to six hours a day.

The errors eventually committed in the execution of the exercises motivated new and exhausting repetitions of the same series, which Costa interprets as a kind of punishment.

Out of respect for the privacy of the interviewees, he does not reveal their names and presents them with pseudonyms in the article. But he claims that they were all first-level gymnasts, well recognized for their performances.

“Of the group of five interviewees mentioned in the article, two were Olympic gymnasts. The other three represented the Brazilian gymnastics team in international championships: world championships, world cups, pan-americans and south-americans. When I interviewed them, they were already in their 30s and 40s and some were still facing difficulties in social adaptation after the end of their sports career”, says the researcher.

These gymnasts had started training when they were 5 to 7 years old, and by 20 they had already retired. So, they started looking for other paths in life, without being prepared for it.

Costa informs that, currently, the average career ending age is a little higher. The extraordinary Rebeca Andrade, Olympic and world champion, is still active at the age of 23. And she won two medals at the 2022 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships, held in Liverpool, UK: gold in the all-around individual category and bronze on floor. The boarding school system was also abandoned more than ten years ago. But the conception that prevails in the preparation of the athletes is still very similar to the one that the researcher detected in his study.

“Despite the expressive results worldwide, we need to pay attention to the methods used to produce success in this modality. The hegemonic culture glorifies the thought that success can only be achieved with long hours of practice, early specialization, sacrifices such as training and competing with pain and injuries, and the presence of authoritarian coaches, capable of controlling the gymnast and all of her surroundings, including outside the gym. This current of thought has the potential to create a disciplinary bubble that can normalize dangerous situations, such as harassment and abuse”, warns Costa.

The concept of “disciplinary bubble” was explored by him in his doctoral research, carried out with support from the São Paulo State Research Support Foundation (FAPESP).

In this study, completed in 2022, the researcher relied heavily on the thinking of the French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-1984) to investigate the relationship between gymnasts, coaches, parents and all those around this triad. Seminal works of Foucauldian thought, such as Archeology of Knowledge, History of Sexuality and Discipline and Punish, are highlighted in the vast bibliography used.

“The affective relationship between the athletes and their coaches is essential to overcome the challenges of the modality. On the other hand, we identified imbalances that contribute to an autocratic pattern in this relationship. In this way, athletes tend to be dependent on the coach and are taught to act without questioning, becoming docile, productive and submissive bodies”, writes Costa in the summary of his research.

In order to “fly” in spectacular acrobatics, it is convenient that these bodies are very small and thin. Hence the absurd diets of 800 calories per day found in the study, fortunately surpassed in the current context.

The testimony of one of the interviewees, identified in the article with the pseudonym Verônica, gives an idea of ​​how far this obsessive concern with weight could go.

“On Saturdays, when no one was looking, we ate treats. Afterwards, we refused to eat anything else from Saturday afternoon until Monday. Even so, on Sundays, we ran around with plastic bags wrapped around us, took laxatives and didn’t drink water. We learn to do crazy things. I went two years without drinking water. I sucked on ice. Everyone said they had a weight problem.”

Eating disorders, such as bulimia and anorexia, are reported in the international literature on gymnast training. One piece of data collected by Costa in his study was the occurrence of kidney stones, which may have been associated either with low water intake or with the abusive use of calcium supplements, to help recover stress fractures, caused by intensive training, without the due to recovery time.

Another athlete, nicknamed Alice, says that, at the age of 15, at the suggestion of the multidisciplinary team in charge of supporting training, she used to take five anti-inflammatory drugs a day.

“I remember there was a championship, a World Cup, in which I competed with three broken fingers. I couldn’t walk, but I competed. Two months later, the doctor said, ‘Want to get an x-ray?’ I made. And he said: ‘It’s calcifying wrong’. We were all really, really hurt.”

high-level infrastructure

These testimonials may give the impression that the training center was a precarious place. But that was not the image. As Costa states in his article, the center had a high-level infrastructure and a multidisciplinary team of trainers, nutritionists, physiotherapists, teachers and doctors. Its mission was to develop Olympic standard gymnasts. The problem, according to the researcher, was the conception that underpinned all this.

According to Costa, the system set up instilled the idea that the discipline prepared for real life. And, as Foucault has shown in other contexts, the tendency is for the repressed to end up introjecting repression, submitting to various forms of self-control. This combination of repression in training and success in public displays has confined the girls in a kind of parallel reality.

“When they retired and left the bubble, many of them faced major problems in reintegrating into society, recovering the years lost in terms of schooling and finding a place in the world”, comments the researcher.

The disciplinary character of physical education is old in Brazil. It is a kind of mark of origin, linked to the fact that, for a long time, most of the teachers and coaches came from the military environment. During the military dictatorship (1964-1985), the regime invested in training and competitions. But, according to Costa, this trend intensified in the period studied, when, with the objective of raising Brazilian gymnasts to the level of international excellence, a training center was created with an internship regime, where everything started to be meticulously controlled.

According to Costa, the world of women’s Olympic gymnastics was deeply shaken in the 2016-2017-2018 triennium, when Lawrence Nassar, an osteopathic doctor of the US national gymnastics team, was accused of sexually abusing more than 150 gymnasts, who testified against him . Among them was superstar Simone Biles, holder of 25 world championship medals, including four golds at the Olympic Games.

Nassar was sentenced to life in prison and the scandal caused the entire 18-member board of the United States Gymnastics Federation to tender their resignations.

“The Nassar case brought attention to what happens or could happen in the gym. From this, regulatory bodies, such as the International Gymnastics Federation, national Olympic committees and federations, invested in policies to prevent and deal with abuse. However, there was no investment in training the coaches, with courses and recycling. This keeps the disciplinary concept alive”, stresses Costa.

The researcher emphasizes that the problem is not the sport, nor the coaches in isolation, but the model: “We need to understand the limits between discipline and coercion, mistreatment and punishment. Discipline is important, but there is still this confusion. Our study also showed that isolation structures, which separate gymnasts from their families and the school environment, are very harmful. In Brazil, fortunately, this was abandoned more than ten years ago”.

The researcher recommends the creation of systems to protect gymnasts, communities that act to ensure health and well-being in practice environments.

“Sport involves sacrifices and abdications. High sports performance is for the few. So, we don’t propose that the training be less demanding, but we hope that there is a culture of respect and safety in the environments that prepare these few to shine in the sport. Gymnasts almost always start very young, unable to be fully masters of the process. But that your capabilities, your interests and your limitations are treated in a respectful way, ”she concludes.

Myrian Nunomura, full professor at the School of Physical Education and Sport of Ribeirão Preto at the University of São Paulo (USP) and advisor for Costa’s doctoral research, adds: “The testimonials of the gymnasts should be reflected, particularly, by coaches, parents and athletes who aim for high sports performance. Sometimes, the Olympic dream becomes a nightmare, and people immersed cannot wake up. Therefore, we propose that there be co-surveillance in these contexts”.