8.8 Chilhood story
When I was a kid, I used to live in an apartament building (3th floor), in
the 4th was a girl called Ana, she was a friend of another girl who lived
next door to me (Natalia). Sometimes those girls used to meet in the hall
between the apartaments in order to play games for girls of their age (8).
Once after school I arrived home and found Ana and Natalia playing
gymnastics outside the building, I stoped for a cuple of minutes to see
their skills but they were beginners, they could barely a hand stand, so I
went home. At that time ( my 10 years old ) I was very interested in
gymnastics, but particulary in the gymnasts flexibility, I was very
impressed about how those people could stretch their bodies so much.
After an hour i was in my bedroom with nothing to do, so i went to the
window to see if my friends were outside playing football or something, but
in spite of them i found those two girls who were still doing gymnastics,
this time they were stretching. At the begining they were frontbending,
Natalia could barely touch her toes with the point of her fingers, a big
diference with Ana, she layed her hands on the floor as if it were nothing,
then she showed to Natalia some kind of backbend (been layed face down she
touched her head with her toes), after that she stood up and started to
spread her legs sliding her feet on the floor, falling in an almost perfect
side split. Natalia was very impressed and tryed to do it but not with the
same resoults. I was impressed too, I had seen harder flexibility moves but
there were natural flexibility in Ana, she had no previous training in
gymnastics, i could see that for her moves.
In that epcot i had my first internet access computer (a cheap 486), but it
was very usefull for serching information about gymnastics and how to train
your flexibility. It was there when i discovered that what i realy like is
contortion in spite that i never could do any contortion move in my life.
During a couple of days Ana and Natalia used to practice their gymnastics
moves in the hole between the apartaments, they both were very exited about
the new game, but specialy Ana, she started to have a great interest in
gymnastics after discovering her flexible skills.
One day when i was leaving the elevator i found Ana in the hall doing her
stretchings, i told her that she had great skills, and comented her my big
interest in flexibility and that i had information and pictures from
internet that she could be intersted on. There was here when she discovered
contortion,at the time she saw those pictures she was having sparkles in her
eyes, she couldn′t belive that those girls could stretch theirselves so
much. After looking those pictures a couple of times she told me that she
whanted to be a contortionist, and i guess it was here when i asumed the
roll of "trainer".
The next day we accorded to meet in the hall after school in order to start
her contortion training. We started with warming up: runing on the building
stairs, jumping, doing those things that a couple of kids could do in a warm
up, then we pass to her splits. In the first one she was laying on the wall
and i was pulling her right leg in to a stand front split, then we switched
legs, at the begining she was not very flexible in front splits (+ or -
150o), but she was really flexible in the straddle split, once warming up
she could lay in a perfect side split, even with her chest on the floor.
After doing that perfect split she realized that the side split was her
favorite move. Then we continued whit frontbending, i made her sit on the
floor whit her legs straigth and pushed her chest to the front, after
several times we did that move, and with a big efort, she could touch her
legs whit her face. In backbending she showed to me that move she did with
Natalia last time and told me to push her legs for a deeper stretching, so
with a lot of pain she could touch her shoulders with her feet. After, that we
meet in the hall two days a week, sometimes more, in order to increase her
flexibility.
At the begining we did the same stretching positions as before, but after
several days we started to train with harder moves, in frontbending she
could put her head between her legs, now her rigth spagat was almost
complete, she did deeper backbends and a perfect straddle split without
warming up. Once she was in a spagat position, and realising that she wasn′t
at her limit, she told me to pull up one of her legs, the first time i could
raise it around 5cm, but this distance increased with the time. Some weeks
later she had alredy learned all the information i got from internet, so she
could practice a big part of her stretches without me, she used the building
stairs for her oversplits, but eaven that she often knock on my door in order
to do assisted stretching.
At this time she meet a girl in school who was a gymnast, her name was
Lucia, she could do very good gymnastics moves, and she had a great
flexibility too, not as much as Ana, but it was still great. Lucia was a
great influence for Ana, she teached her lots of gymnastics movement as cart
weel and harder ones. Often they used to practice together in school, they
used to begin with artistic gymnastics moves and some minutes later they
started to do their stretching. I saw some interested moves like on who
consisted in: both of them in a frontbend position pulling each other for a
better stretching, or the same with side split. It was great to see the
improvement Ana had in less than two months, not only in flexibility also in
gymnastics skills and also in her executions grace.
Sorry for my english, is not my language.
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