World Class Gymnasts Tell How Chiropractors Made Them World Class
[00:00:00] Coach Frank: Hey, sports fans, coach Frank here. In a sport like gymnastics, injuries are common and can often derail a young girl’s career before it even starts. Today’s guest will be discussing experience as a gymnast while managing to stay healthy, competing against some of the best athletes around the globe.
[00:00:14] Coach Frank: What’s her secret? I’m gonna bring all that to you and more. Right after this game
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[00:00:41] Coach Frank: Welcome back to another episode of Sporting Good Posture. This is Coach Frank, and today’s episode is very special to me. I’m bringing on two former gymnasts. My two daughters have been involved with gymnastics now the last couple of years, and it’s really gotten me more intrigued about how gymnastics works and just to really [00:01:00] help them know what they’re getting involved with.
[00:01:03] Coach Frank: I wanted to pick their brain a little bit today and see what their experiences with doing gymnastics and some of the details around how everything works and the competitions they were. It’s something that’s really important to me because I’m seeing more kids doing gymnastics in my office as well as my own kids, and I wanna make sure that I’m well educated.
[00:01:23] Coach Frank: And I want you to know a little bit if you’re in, if your kids are interested in getting involved in gymnastics, this is gonna be a great episode for you and we’re gonna get to all that right after
[00:01:33] Coach Frank: this. Where do
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[00:02:37] Coach Frank: I have two special guests today. The first is Savannah. She’s a former level nine gymnast, assistant head coach and assistant optional coach, regional champion. Chris Waller’s, heart of a Champion invitation. Team oc, open Champion, and Breton’s Invitational champion.
[00:02:55] Coach Frank: I also have Avery, her. Who’s a former level 10 gymnast and junior elite [00:03:00] qualifier. She has over 12 years of a competitive gymnastics experience. Assistant head coach and optional head coach. 20 16, 20 17 and 2018, California Classic International Invitational Champion, long Beach International Invitational Champion, and former level 10 Junior National Team qualifier.
[00:03:20] Coach Frank: I wanna welcome both Savannah and Avery to the show today. Welcome.
[00:03:24] Savannah: Thanks for having me, Dr. .
[00:03:27] Coach Frank: Well, this is really cool. I’m, I’m excited about this episode because this is an area that I don’t know as much about personally, and I really would love to get some of your experience on here and some of the things that you’ve been through.
[00:03:40] Coach Frank: Um, but first I want to ask you, what kind of got you into gymnastics? Was it something that you always had wanted to do?
[00:03:47] Savannah: So, my mom, when I. , I think one or two years old just was like, oh my gosh, I have a toddler. I need to get some energy out. And gymnastics [00:04:00] was the only thing that would allow a child or toddler an infant to start at that young age.
[00:04:07] Savannah: So it really just started as a way to get outta the house and get a bunch of energy out. And um, what’s funny is I always say my sister’s been doing gymnastics longer than I have. . She’s been in a gym since my mom was pregnant with her and she was in the gym with me. So it’s not ever something that I was like, oh wow, I watched, I wanna do that.
[00:04:27] Savannah: It’s something that I was kind of born into and, and just continued to stick with and fell in love with as I got older and pushed through
[00:04:36] Savannah: it and had an awesome gymnastics
[00:04:38] Savannah: career.
[00:04:40] Coach Frank: That’s so cool. So how long did you compete? So I
[00:04:46] Savannah: was in gymnastics from the time that I was about one, two years old. I actually started competing quite late for the sport of gymnastics.
[00:04:55] Savannah: I didn’t even start competing until I was about eight or nine years old, um, [00:05:00] which typically with girls that make it to the level, but I made it start competing at about four or five. That’s actually when you were allowed to start competing in compulsory and lower level gymnastics. So the fact that I didn’t start competing until I was about nine years old was actually a very, very late.
[00:05:19] Savannah: For my competitive career of gymnastics, but I competed from the time I was nine to, uh, almost 17. That’s a
[00:05:27] Coach Frank: long time. And, and just looking at people that compete in the gymnastics on the Olympics and and things like that, that’s a long time to be that competitive. Um, what region were you in when you compet?
[00:05:44] Savannah: So the United States for gymnastics, cuz some listeners might be confused as like, oh, what’s a region? , what is this? Why is this important? So the United States is split up into eight different regions, the entire United States. So [00:06:00] in region one, we have the entire state of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, as well as, because California is so large and our population density is so vast in California, it’s actually split into two separate regions.
[00:06:16] Savannah: So you have Northern California and Southern California. . So that was just our regional one. Now that’s a lot of girls to compete against. Yeah. So when you qualify for things like regionals and you do well, you’re competing against the best of the best girls from that specific region. And then when you get to level nine, we do what’s called westerns, where you compete against girls from half of the country, which is insane to even think about.
[00:06:45] Savannah: And then when you get to level 10, like. , you compete at a competition that is called nationals, which you compete against the best girls from the best regions and all the regions of the entire United States, [00:07:00] which is crazy to think about when you actually talk about it.
[00:07:03] Coach Frank: Yeah. And you were saying something that you had to do a lot of events that were invitation only, right?
[00:07:09] Savannah: Yeah, so we were very blessed. I mean, we come from my sister and. . Um, there’s a lot of, we, because I ki it’s kinda hard for me to think about my gymnastics career, um, without my sister. Like I said, she’s been in it kind of longer than I have cuz she was, she was chilling with my mom when I was running around the crazy gym
[00:07:30] Savannah: Um, I mean, we, we just did everything, you know? Yeah. Um,
[00:07:38] Coach Frank: so Savannah, I wanna welcome you. It’s amazing that you two have been competitive for so long because in a sport where most people don’t make it, um, you know, you guys were able to stay healthy and actually do that. So one of the main things I wanted to ask both you today was, was about that and how [00:08:00] you were able to stay healthy and compete at a higher level for so long.
[00:08:04] Coach Frank: What, what were some of your secrets that made you able to do. .
[00:08:09] Savannah: Yeah, I mean, the average dropout rate of a gymnast is about, I mean, now it’s about level six, which a lot of girls at that age and even higher, the average lifespan of a gymnast, which is part of why I used to see girls so young in the Olympics is about.
[00:08:28] Savannah: 16, 14, right When you start to hit, uh, you know, puberty and come outta adolescence and growth plates start to expand and you to start to deal with a lot of those fun, um, issues. But what kept both of us really healthy is we always have taken a holistic and natural approach to medicine in general. And Chiropracticing has always been.
[00:08:56] Savannah: Always been a part of our health [00:09:00] regimen. Everything from regular adjustments to infrared lasers, to even just very natural supplements, um, to keep us in shape. And we’re very, very fortunate to have, uh, parents who were open-minded enough to allow their, their, you know, their little girls. We were not very old when we started, uh, having regular adjustments cuz everyone is very scared.
[00:09:24] Savannah: Chiropractic, oh my gosh. I’m not gonna let my kid go do that. They’re gonna like snap crackle on top everything, which is absolutely not true. And I would say, I mean, even for both of us, so my sister can attest to this, that that is one of the things that kept us, if not the primary thing, that kept.
[00:09:45] Savannah: Healthy and able to do the sport that we love for so long. Yeah.
[00:09:49] Avery: Especially cuz keeping everything in alignment in gymnastics is so important because when you’re tumbling on a four inch beam, there’s not a lot of room to go crooked. Yeah,
[00:09:58] Savannah: yeah, absolutely. [00:10:00] Yeah. Think about that. You’re up. I mean, the standard height of a beam is about.
[00:10:04] Savannah: Four and a half feet off of the ground in the air, and it’s only four inches wide. So it’s an imperative that our bodies are completely in alignment. So then when we’re tumbling backward and forward blind, not seeing where we’re going, that we know our body and our hips and our shoulders are all gonna stay nice and straight.
[00:10:25] Savannah: So we’re not falling off a beam where you get those really fun fail videos on YouTube, .
[00:10:31] Coach Frank: Absolutely. And that brings me to, to just me and my family. I have two daughters, one is six, one is 10, and I’ve been adjusting them actually the day they were born in the hospital. I adjusted both of them. And most people don’t realize you can even work on babies that young, especially cuz.
[00:10:50] Coach Frank: You know, the birth process is so traumatic that it pulls things outta place. Sometimes if the baby isn’t out right away, they might be pulling on the neck or [00:11:00] the shoulders or even the feet if, if they’re breach or anything like that. So it’s really important to be aligned and most of these problems that people get happen as, as young kids, but because the, the pain tolerance is there and they don’t.
[00:11:15] Coach Frank: Feel it as much. It just kind of sits there over years and years and years. And all of a sudden when you get older, you know, teenage years and adult years, it’ll kind of come out at that point. So if you stay ahead of it, it’s something that you can feel a lot better with earlier in life and then also succeed better.
[00:11:31] Coach Frank: And that seems like what you guys were able to do as well.
[00:11:34] Savannah: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, at the level that we trained, uh, pain was not an option. Let’s just say that. ,
[00:11:41] Coach Frank: I remember you telling me, yeah, you guys were. Basically doing everything, even when you were sore and, and, uh, you know, your coaches were pushing you guys through a lot of things.
[00:11:52] Savannah: Oh, absolutely. Again, when I say that injury was not an option, I remember , [00:12:00] uh, I actually broke my toes out of the gym, uh, because a fun little, uh, thing about gymnasts is that we are very, very clumsy people. Doing anything aside of gymnastics. Any gymnast you find, any gymnast you ask can probably attest to this.
[00:12:20] Savannah: We are very, very, very clumsy. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve slipped going down the stairs, stubbed my toe, done this, that . But anyway, I broke three toes at a friend’s pool party. I repeatedly stubbing them on like rocks, . Um, my coaches looked at me and said, they’re. Taped them together and then competed on them all season with just tape around ’em, which our competitive season is about three to four and a half months.
[00:12:51] Savannah: Wow. Um, they really did not care. They were like, they’re just toes, tape them together. You’re okay. . So us pushing through pain [00:13:00] training from the time that we were about. 12 years old. We started training at an hourly rate of about 38 to 40 hours a week. It was a very fun, full-time job, but with that year at a professional sports level, so we needed professional sports, medicine and regimens and care, and again, yep.
[00:13:24] Savannah: We are also two of the only girls, both my sister and myself who have never had. Slipped discs and other broken back related injuries. No spinal injuries at all, and I attribute that to having adjustments on a regular basis.
[00:13:43] Coach Frank: Absolutely. That, that is one thing that I’ve known about with, uh, girls that do gymnastics at a young age.
[00:13:50] Coach Frank: They typically get stress fractures in their back. It’s very common and it’s hard to recover from. If you repeatedly have that happen at a young age, it could even damage the growth plates, stunt your growth [00:14:00] and, and just really impede in your athletic performance for years to come. So I’m glad that that never happened to you guys.
[00:14:05] Coach Frank: And, and I, I agree with you. I really do think chiropractic is the main reason. You guys were able to stay healthy and not have stress fractures in there.
[00:14:14] Savannah: Again, I mean, I even attribute other things, right? Like the infrared laser. Obviously I’m gonna let her do this because my sister is one of the most amazing badass people that I know.
[00:14:29] Savannah: Now I gotta say she is such a. Cookie to crack. She broke both bones in her arm, her Oma and her radius. Not once, but twice. Oh, wow. Yeah. Again, crazy stuff. Um, the fact that she was able to come back from that injury, not once but twice, says a lot about her character. , but also I remember, didn’t you get, even when you were in the full cast, didn’t you have [00:15:00] regular infrared laser appointments?
[00:15:02] Avery: Yeah, I did. I had regular adjustments, regular infrared, everything like that, and I think that definitely helped my heel time and my recovery time be shortened. I think without that, I would’ve been out of, not only in a cast longer, but it would’ve taken me a lot longer to get back to. My full events.
[00:15:21] Savannah: Yeah,
[00:15:22] Coach Frank: and definitely that is something else.
[00:15:24] Coach Frank: We actually do that at the office as well. We, we use that for a lot of different injuries, but it is one thing you can do on a broken bone because it’ll heal it at a much faster rate. Even if somebody has a cast on and, uh, it’s covered up, you can still get to it. Um, how did you hurt your arm like that?
[00:15:41] Coach Frank: And you did it a couple times you said?
[00:15:43] Savannah: Yeah, so
[00:15:44] Avery: the first time I was, I wanna say I think it was about 10. And a common rule that you learn
[00:15:50] Savannah: when you start tumbling in gymnastics
[00:15:52] Avery: is you don’t stop. , even if it’s a little bit weird, like you come out of it wrong. Where someone gets in your way, you don’t [00:16:00] stop because if you stop in the middle, both of you are getting hurt.
[00:16:03] Avery: Yeah, I was young. Someone ran in front of me. I stopped, so I went weird. The weight came down wrong and it broke that way the first time.
[00:16:12] Savannah: Oh man. The
[00:16:13] Avery: second time I was being rushed to get back into full training for season. My coach neglected my. I did it incorrectly, turned my hand out, went short. That’s how it happened.
[00:16:28] Avery: The second time,
[00:16:30] Savannah: on the same skill you do ,
[00:16:33] Avery: same skill, same arm within about the span
[00:16:36] Savannah: of a year. So, right. But again, what’s crazy about this is when they took her back in for X-rays, they actually looked at us and. Her bone broke. About how? How? Well, what was the, it was like a centimeter. Centimeter, yeah. A centimeter down from where she broke it the first time.
[00:16:53] Savannah: The bone had gotten so strong and had in the original break. That [00:17:00] it couldn’t break. There again, it wanted to, but it
[00:17:02] Avery: couldn’t.
[00:17:03] Savannah: Right. Wow. And I think that probably has a lot to do with, with the lasering and things like that.
[00:17:08] Coach Frank: Probably. Yeah. Yeah. It’ll heal it at a, at a higher level for you that’s, well that was good.
[00:17:13] Coach Frank: At least it, you know, that it was working and the x-rays proved it. Yeah. . So you guys, I know you competed till you were around 17, you said, and then is that when you got into coaching?
[00:17:25] Savannah: Believe it or not, I started my coaching career a little bit earlier. Again, being held with still some injuries. They’re not ever 100% avoidable with gymnastics, right?
[00:17:36] Savannah: Uh, it, it is like 0.001% of all high level gymnasts that are never ha have a major injury. . Um, so I believe that I broke my elbow and I couldn’t do full gymnastic practice. And my head coach was like, Hey, I have a summer camp class of five. [00:18:00] Uh, you wanna go coach it in a sling? Might I add ? Um, she was like, come on, it’s okay.
[00:18:08] Savannah: She was also Chinese and English was not her first language . So I was like, is this really a good idea? And she’s like, no, it’ll be fun. It’s okay. I was like, is it so It’s ok. So I started coaching then, but I never really thought like, yeah, I wanna coach gymnastics. It was actually always the opposite, especially after my gymnastics career ended.
[00:18:31] Savannah: When you trained at the level that we did, um, gymnastics definitely became our only. identity. Um, again, I don’t wanna speak for you to it. No, no. Yeah, I would agree with that. It’s hard when, like, you wake up, you do school, you go to the gym, you live really, it’s hard. You live in a elite card. , I don’t think either one of us own more than 10 pieces of clothing that weren’t fur, gym related gym.
[00:18:54] Savannah: Um, and even that five of those might have been like leggings and t-shirts tomorrow over [00:19:00] are Leos. Um, your whole identity is gymnastics though. So I, when I was. Uh, one, we moved across the country from California to this beautiful state of Tennessee Yeah. Where we now live in. Um, so that was a really big move.
[00:19:17] Savannah: Um, and we were just like, this is cool. We’re just kind of going with the flow of life. We haven’t had a lot of this. , but it was also one those things where I was like, I’m done with gymnastics. I don’t want anything to do with it. I’m done with it. I want, I’m my own person now. Yeah. I finally have things of like it, it’s really is crazy to think if this is something completely separate that we could even talk about on a full nother episode of just like how damaging the psychology and everything is of I, I mean, this probably goes for most professional sports and this is why you see a lot of athletes when they are.
[00:19:49] Savannah: Get into crazy things like drugs and partying and this and that, because when you put so much of yourself into a sport, you become one with that [00:20:00] sport. Yeah. So it’s like losing a loved one or having something you don’t know anything else. It’s very, very scary. Even at 17 and 16 years old or 15 when we stopped,
[00:20:12] Savannah: It was like having a midlife crisis of, oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do. But no, cooking was never on the radar. So about a year and a half after we moved to Tennessee, we found a gym by us and we were like, you know what? It’s been a little while. We both missed flipping around and we both worked on other things and we just kind of had grown apart as sisters and gymnastics was always our thing together, so we.
[00:20:41] Savannah: We’re like, you know what? Come on, let’s go. Just mess around at a gym for a few hours. And so was like, yeah, why not? Yeah. So we started going to what they call adult open gym. So just anyone over the age of 16, probably a lot of former gymnasts, a lot of, you know, people who dislike the [00:21:00] tumble and ture leading.
[00:21:01] Savannah: Yeah. Go at a gym. And, uh, we went I think about twice. Yeah. And then the third time we went in, um, . Program director and she’s the, uh, head of, uh, compulsory coach at where we work now has these two nice white porns sitting on the signin desk and she looks at us and goes, would you like a job here, ? And we go, wow.
[00:21:27] Savannah: We’re not too sure. Still. Yeah, still thinking. We’re like, we’re kinda done with gymnastics. Do I really wanna come back and coach it? And she was like, it’s great. It’s just part-time. Just come see it. We. Okay. Okay. All right. So we come in our first day, we’re actually doing a little in-house competition with them, and then what’s crazy is, oh, what, what was like a week later?
[00:21:54] Savannah: Maybe not even Covid became declared a global pandemic and everything was shut [00:22:00] down. It was Italy. Within a week of us acquiring this job of them being like, come on, come.
[00:22:09] Savannah: Became. Something could just get out of the house because we were doing everything on Zoom, but we still had to go into the gymnastics facility to teach our classes, to teach our classes. And we were like, yeah, we’ll just go. Cause everything was closed. So we were like, I mean, hey, we get something to do.
[00:22:25] Savannah: We get to go in and it’s something to do outside of our homes, so we’re not all like ripping each other’s hair out, . Um, and then we came back to in-person classes and we started working with the. and now we’re both, you know, team coaches and it, it is really fun, uh, to watch the growth happen. Yeah.
[00:22:44] Savannah: Especially now. That we’ve, we’ve started coaching. I have actually gone back to some of my coaches that I still have to contact, and I went, I’m so sorry that you had to go through this with me. , realize so many things that you did as a
[00:22:58] Avery: gymnast that drive [00:23:00] you insane now as a coach.
[00:23:01] Savannah: Yeah. But it’s also so rewarding, man.
[00:23:04] Savannah: It’s so fun to see it again, the skills that it wasn’t that long ago that we were doing the skills, and I, I, I feel more like a big sister than. You know, a coach or mom to a lot of the girls, because a lot of them are only I born of six years younger than I am.
[00:23:21] Avery: I have about a three year age gap. Yeah. Four
[00:23:23] Savannah: year age gap on most of mine.
[00:23:24] Savannah: Yeah. The biggest age gap of me, I think for my team kids at least, is about eight years. Um, It’s, it’s so fun. It’s more like a big role then. Yeah, especially at the levels that we get to teach. It’s some really big stuff where it’s like, it wouldn’t seem like big skills, but there are a lot of the skills that drop kids outta gymnasts cuz they get too frustrated to keep them.
[00:23:45] Savannah: So it is really rewarding now, kind of having the full circle.
[00:23:52] Coach Frank: Absolutely. And also some of the things that you mentioned that, that your coaches did or that you know you didn’t like or, or that you [00:24:00] would’ve done differently, now you get the chance to do that. Yeah,
[00:24:03] Savannah: absolutely. I think that that is one of the biggest reasons why I actually decided to stay a coach is to fix gymnastics culture.
[00:24:13] Savannah: Um, a lot of it has come to light in recent years, which is a very good thing. They are doing some restructuring and stuff now. I still don’t believe it’s enough because it starts at, you know, the tops of gyms and this, that, and the other. But yeah, absolutely. A lot of our coaches techniques were great technique-wise.
[00:24:36] Savannah: Their approach was very, very, um, mentally and emotionally damaging to young girls. Yeah. It was too
[00:24:44] Coach Frank: much like a military consciousness.
[00:24:46] Savannah: Yeah. Yeah. Um, again, it just stuff that shouldn’t be brought up to young girls. I remember us being lined up again with our Chinese coaches around Thanksgiving and Christmas, where it should be a [00:25:00] very happy time around family and this, that, and we were lined up and our coaches would go down the lines.
[00:25:05] Savannah: You don’t need to eat. You don’t need to eat. You don’t need to eat. You can eat a little bit. You can eat a little bit. You don’t eat. You don’t eat. You don’t eat. You’re too big. Do not eat at Thanksgiving. At Thanksgiving. That’s extreme. That’s like a huge American event. Yeah. You know, um,
[00:25:22] Coach Frank: I think that’s good that as Americans, you know, you guys are Americans, so you know, that kind of stuff where a lot of these coaches, if they’re from other countries, they don’t understand.
[00:25:31] Coach Frank: Cultures of other countries and, and, and holidays and things like that either. Yeah.
[00:25:36] Savannah: Uh, again, it doesn’t help with their, the China is very different, but I mean, we haven’t had CU coaches from like Portugal and Japan and we had some like Russian Romanian coaches and we, we’ve had it all . Um, but yeah, so we can take the.
[00:25:55] Savannah: Fundamentals that our coaches gave us. The drills and the [00:26:00] techniques of teaching without the mindset attached. Yeah. The mindset and the abuse that was inflicted onto us and, and, and actually we’re able to grow these girls in a healthy manner and start to fix this culture that has been for so, .
[00:26:19] Coach Frank: Well, that’s so important to hear that.
[00:26:21] Coach Frank: And I also think that’ll help with burnout of the sport because like you were saying, it was so intense for so long, it pushes people away from it. And I think this’ll keep girls more involved with it so that they don’t feel as much of a burnout with it because you guys know how to handle that, that stress for them and everything.
[00:26:40] Savannah: Yeah, absolutely. And that is another thing that I am very glad to say that I’m a coach. . Um, and I’m sure my sister would agree with me on this. When they’re injured, we can actually look at them and say, Hey, it’s okay. Stop. Yeah, take a break. Rest, it’s not gonna go anywhere. [00:27:00] Whereas that was, I mean, that was the opposite.
[00:27:01] Savannah: That was not .
[00:27:02] Avery: And it’s also great to have, it’s not great that we got injured, but if they, if I ever have a kid who’s having wrist or elbow issues, that’s not my area. I don’t know what to do with that. So I’ll give them to ave. To make sure I’m not gonna do something that’s going to make it worse. Right. I can do stuff that’s gonna be beneficial to the healing process cuz I don’t want to further an injury at
[00:27:24] Savannah: all.
[00:27:24] Savannah: Right. Yeah. We have experienced a lot, um, like again, savvy has, um, uh, how do you say it? I, I never massage good slaughters. I never said . Um, and I have something called severs, and I’ve had bro play injuries to my wrists and elbows. Now, we’re not saying we’re doctors, but we kind of know where general areas of pain are, and we do know how to medicate them.
[00:27:46] Savannah: And. We are able to tell the girls like, Hey, it’s okay cuz a lot of our girls, which is awesome to have girls who work this hard and want the sport this much to where we don’t have to push them cause they push themselves. [00:28:00] But it’s like, it’s okay. You can sit down, you can take a break. Let’s, let’s go and let’s tape this up.
[00:28:05] Savannah: Let’s go and let’s ice. Let’s go and let’s rest for a week so we can heal these smaller injur. Yes. Which again, people don’t understand. They’re like, oh, well it’s just a small little injury. The body has to stay in alignment. So if you start to limp and lean on one side, you’re gonna throw yourself out of alignment, which we already discussed is very important for certain events.
[00:28:28] Savannah: Yeah, especially beam. Well I even say ball. When you get up to higher level vault and you’re going backward up onto that large vault table. Right. If you’re sideways, I mean, we both watch girls go completely sideways off it and miss both their hands on the table. Cause they’re. Their heads are completely out of alignment.
[00:28:48] Savannah: Um, yeah. But yeah, it’s great to be able to have that, to tell them like, rest, take a break. It’s okay to prevent further injuries from happening because a lot of those injuries are growth [00:29:00] plate related. So resting sooner prevents the stress, fractured injuries later. Well, that’s
[00:29:07] Coach Frank: why I’m glad, you know, when I met with Deanne and, and you and and your sister about working with your gym there, because I’ve seen just young girls in general have injuries and it really derails them, whether it’s soccer, gymnastics, softball, you know, whatever sport they’re playing.
[00:29:26] Coach Frank: It’s important to just stay in alignment because it does. Help for peak athletic performance, whether it’s at amateur level or at the pro level. And all these teams now have team chiropractors, the Olympic Spring, hundreds of chiropractors over every time that they have an Olympic event. And you know, this summer we’ll have the summer Olympics finally from, from last year.
[00:29:47] Coach Frank: That didn’t happen. And I know some chiropractors that go over there. And they help these athletes almost every single day working with them and keeping them in alignment. And it really does help, [00:30:00] especially the US stay at the top of the boards on, on all the medals. So as far as coming up as a young athlete, a young girl or or, or boy trying to be in gymnastics, what would you say to them about their desire to reach that peak performance?
[00:30:19] Coach Frank: What, what are the main things they really need to do? Not only mentally, but physically to get to that high peak level
[00:30:28] Savannah: mentally first, I’d say believe in yourself, please. Absolutely. . That is one of my biggest regrets, if you will, um, is looking back and seeing now that I’m older. Dang, I was really good. . I mean, granted, this is part of the gymnastics culture I want to fix.
[00:30:46] Savannah: We were always totally, were never good enough. Yeah. Being undervalued yes. Is a big thing, but that’s one thing that I would tell any young athlete pursuing any sport. Um, even non-athletes, if you have a dream that you’re gonna [00:31:00] pursue, you have to believe in yourself. Yeah. That is the number one goal. You, you have to believe in.
[00:31:07] Savannah: No one’s gonna push you as hard as you. No one is gonna believe in you as much as you. If you can believe in yourself, you’re gonna find more people who are trying to tell you that you can’t than people telling you that you can. Good news is you only need a couple people to tell you that you can. Yeah, as long as you include yourself in one of those people.
[00:31:27] Savannah: No, don’t. I’m not saying be arrogant, but know that you can do it. It’s gonna be hard right there. There’s a saying. I can, people who say I can and people who say I can’t are both W Yep. Well, I can can be translated to, I won’t. And I can can be translated to, I will. I can do it. I may not be able to do it right now, but I will be able to do it if I keep working at it.
[00:31:54] Savannah: If I continue to believe in myself and I will. So number one, mentally, I would say [00:32:00] one, push through the hard days they’re gonna. The good days better. If you can push through a bad day, then the good days are gonna become great days. Two, believe in yourself. Really, really believe in yourself. Those are two of the largest mental things.
[00:32:16] Savannah: That I would say three would be, I mean, you can agree with this. Know when to stop. This is something that I am still learning
[00:32:25] Avery: today. , understand your limitation.
[00:32:28] Savannah: Yeah. Know when
[00:32:29] to
[00:32:29] Avery: stop. Yeah. If you’re in pain or you’re too exhausted
[00:32:31] Savannah: to make something to where it becomes dangerous. You keeping going isn’t,
[00:32:35] Avery: it doesn’t determine, oh, if I stop right now, I’m not working hard enough.
[00:32:38] Avery: I’m not pushing myself. Mm-hmm. , I’m not chasing my dreams. That’s not what that means,
[00:32:42] Savannah: right? Yes. It’s just giving yourself a break for the day. Sometimes you just need a mental reset to, you know, maybe, you know, get that last lyric of a song, or to get a new skill in gymnastics or to figure out a different play or skill with [00:33:00] soccer, right?
[00:33:00] Savannah: Mm-hmm. , our cousins did soccer for a very long time. . Um, and we’re excellent at it, you know, so that’s, that’s what I’d say on the mental side at least. And physically do, do what you can. I definitely would try and say go a more holistic approach. I mean, we’ve seen kids RA who did football, you can really attest to that too.
[00:33:19] Savannah: Yeah. Who did football? and like have gone to the hospital with kidney stones because at the level that that us hire our level athlete trade, I mean, we ate ibuprofen and Advil and pale like they were jelly beans outta, you know, the biggest candy jar in the world. We could not get enough of them. Um, anything that’s natural that you can do like an chiropractic lasering, ice, heat stretch.
[00:33:47] Savannah: Stretching is the best thing in the whole world, and if your muscles are loose, then I mean, again, I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure it’s a lot easier to adjust someone who’s got looser muscles than there are muscles that are [00:34:00] really, really tight. It’s
[00:34:01] Coach Frank: funny you say that because about 10 or 12 years ago, They changed the director of the medical department for the Olympics and then it’s actually a chiropractor now.
[00:34:13] Coach Frank: He runs the, the whole department and they’ve completely gone away from what they used to do where they prescribed a bunch of pain medications and they did surgeries and things like that. Where now, They do chiropractic, they do acupuncture, massage. Mm-hmm. , they have pt, all the natural things they do natural supplements.
[00:34:30] Coach Frank: They really avoid surgery. They avoid injections cuz they were also injecting knees and elbows and wrists and shoulders just to keep these guys on the field. But then they would get burned out or they’d get hurt again. Anyway, um, same thing with females. They, they would do that to all the athletes and it was the wrong direction and, You know, 12 years ago or so when the chiropractor took over, they’ve completely gone natural with it, and they pushed that route and the results speak for themselves.
[00:34:59] Coach Frank: We’ve been [00:35:00] crushing it in the Olympics, summer and winter for the longest time now, because these athletes are now treated better and they have better recovery, and they’re not pushing surgery, pills and injections first, they’re pushing the natural route.
[00:35:14] Savannah: Yeah. I mean, again, we had a few injections here and there, just like cortisone and, and, and things like that, that really aren’t great for the body.
[00:35:23] Savannah: Yeah. Especially at a young age. Yeah. Especially at the age that we have them. And I will say this acupuncture. Yeah. Um, you know, deep tissue massages and accu pressure, high acting lasering that has. You know, a hundred times more than those injections and the pain medications that we were taking ever did.
[00:35:46] Savannah: I mean, they were always over the counter pain medications, but still, it’s completely damaging to your body and it’s very counterintuitive. Yes. You know, because it’s like, okay, we’re gonna destroy your gut, which is like the second heart and brain of [00:36:00] like, everything needs to be happening and healthy so that you are not in.
[00:36:05] Savannah: Instead of like, I would even get acupuncture, you know, all the way even up, which is very scary. People are like, Ooh, you had needles in your face. Yeah, , I dealt with acne. Acupuncture actually fixed my really terrible acne. Um, being in a gym and like sweaty and gross all the time and having acne run the family, it fixed it.
[00:36:26] Savannah: So I can very, very much attest to getting. everything done naturally. Mm-hmm. , because it, it really does make a huge difference.
[00:36:36] Coach Frank: I completely agree, and it also sets kids off on the wrong path of more likely to be addicted to things, because growing up the first answer was a pill. So that’s where they go to every time.
[00:36:49] Coach Frank: So it, it ingrains that in their head that that’s what the answer to the problem is, which is not true health. And you know that. I know that your sister knows. But I, I think that people get [00:37:00] too caught up in, oh, this pill for this symptom, this pill for this problem, this pill for this pain, and there’s usually a natural solution, and there’s a time and a place for pills and injections and surgery.
[00:37:09] Coach Frank: I’m not saying that that’s not necessary, but if you can go the conservative route first and try these alternative health things like chiropractic and massage, acupuncture, those are the kind of things that keep you healthy for the long run and keep your body healthy and more functioning. Than pills and, and surgeries and things like that.
[00:37:29] Coach Frank: Yeah. So to wrap it up, um, I wanted to ask you guys if you could give us your social media and also where you work and just some information of how people can get in touch with you that are listening to this podcast today. Well, you, well, first of all, you guys work at Impact, right? Is that how you say it?
[00:37:48] Savannah: Yeah. Yes. Yeah. We work at Impact Sports in Franklin, Tennessee. Yeah. I would love if anyone, any, any listeners would wanna come and stop by and see us, that would be awesome. [00:38:00] Yeah.
[00:38:00] Coach Frank: Um, it’s right down the street from my office too.
[00:38:02] Savannah: Yeah, right on Seaboard. Yeah, that’s one of the best parts is I’m, if I, if, if I, I mean, again, if I get thrown outta a, at a wack, even spotting, you know, a, a girl or, or a little boy trying to save em from, from, you know, especially little boys.
[00:38:18] Savannah: I mean, you’d be more surprised, more little girls will do it than than little boys too. But they think, man, kids think they’re invincible. They’ll just jump straight backward and potentially land on their head if you’re not ready to catch them at any moment in time. Yeah, so it’s great being able to just jump down the street to get a nice quick adjustment and then be right back in the game.
[00:38:38] Coach Frank: Love it. And then what about impact? Do they have any social media or ways to get in touch with them?
[00:38:43] Savannah: Yes.
[00:38:44] Avery: They have a website. They have an Instagram page, they have a Facebook page. I believe it’s all just under Impact Sports. And
[00:38:52] Coach Frank: it’s M P A C T, right? Yes, correct. Yep. Well, ladies, I appreciate you coming on today.
[00:38:59] Coach Frank: We really got a [00:39:00] lot of good info and I think. Uh, have enough for another episode sometime too. So I’d love to do that again with you guys if you wanted to come back on.
[00:39:07] Savannah: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,
[00:39:09] Coach Frank: definitely. Well, perfect. Well thank you for being on here today and if you have any questions for me or you want to find out how far away you are from Nature’s Athletic Blueprint, I’m always happy to get them answered and help you sport good posture, any way I can, and I wouldn’t think of charging you for these recommendations, even if I have to comp you a little bit of my time in person in the process.
[00:39:31] Coach Frank: Follow me and DM me on Instagram at Sporting Good Posture or PM me on Facebook at Ideal Health and Wellness Center. Tell me what’s going on and I’ll tell you what I think. Remember, the coach’s door is always open. This is Coach Frank. I’m sporting good posture. How about you? The
[00:39:51] Savannah: Sporting
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[00:40:00] Advertisement: Executive producer Frank Sardella, coach Frank Pierce’s, courtesy of Ideal Health Wellness Center in Franklin. For more information, visit sporting good posture.com and follow Coach on Instagram at Sporting Good Posture
[00:40:14] Savannah: Bus people. Who are these purple ?