MyKayla Skinner Olympic participation

[falcon9]

Excellent that MyKayla is back in the gym! The edit at 44 seconds in this video is killer… never seen Wonder Woman do a double double before.

 

[Terry]

Mykayla has really matured recently and become very likeable. I wish her only the best in terms of health and the gym and everything else!!!

 

[flicfliclay]

Love her! I wish her much luck and that she can pull it off!

 

[Passion]

Summary for those who don’t have time to watch the video:

First part of the video is a conversation between Skinner and her physical therapist.

• First day back at PT after being out for a month from the pneumonia.
• Heel feels fine so far but is just doing basics, no heavy tumbling or running yet.
• Did a full-in on the regular floor in a resi-pit landing and the heel hurt slightly but the pain went away quickly.
• It took about 3 months to have everything together going from NCAA to Elite in 2019. She has about 5 and a half months until Olympic Trials, she feels she can be peaking by then.
• Needs to regain strength and endurance.
• PT says he thinks her body can bounce back quick “just don’t go from zero to a hundred.”
• PT says her heel is looking better, he doesn’t feel any thickening in the heel, says “it looks like a normal foot.”

She moves on to warming up:

• No pain jogging then sprinting up and down the hallways. No pain jumping rope.
• He records her feet while she does box jumps to check if she is favoring her good leg.
  They review the videos of her jumping and he breaks everything down. Overall she is
  only very slightly favoring the good leg but her alignment is good and he isn’t concerned.
• She does “three way heel rises” while holding weights, her calves and heel feels good.
• He asks if she dropped weight while sick. She says she was 112 and went down to 108.

Walking out of PT, she says therapy went really good and she was happy.

• Having to take a break when she was sick gave her foot more time to heal.
• She says it’s feeling a ton better and her motion and pushing off feels much improved.
• Says hopefully having all this extra time will really help her foot last for the next five months so she can push through.

 

[irichluck21]

I am wondering if she has enough time to come back fully.
She faces even more competition than 2019 when she was just an alternate and also had help from various athletes being injured or having a rough World Trials with multiple falls.

 

[KristyJ]

She looks like she will make it back. The question is how many of her upgrades she can bring with her.

 

[irichluck21]

Let us see.

She has only 5 months until Trials. While she only needed 3 months from NCAA to elite in 2019 it was a huge difference and can’t really be compared.
She was in tip top shape in 2019, arguably the best she has ever looked while at the NCAA. Full floor routines without even gasping for breath. However, once she added difficulty it was noticeable on her endurance the difference difficulty makes.

She has 2 more months than she had in 2019, but she was also out for 6 weeks (that didn’t happen in 2019). She still isn’t at 100% yet. No running yet. She did a full in into a pit which is nice but think about all the tumbling and running she will need to do on her FX routine, which is already insanely difficult and aerobic. We also don’t know what Covid complications she might have with intense exercises and numbers. Many athletes have had issues coming back from Covid. Many have not.

I think she should really focus on getting her VT back, quick, easy, clean UB sets (like in NCAA), a consistent BB hit cold, and tumbling that is clean and can be executed well. That is her best route, but I think it is not going to be her plan of attack.

In 2019 she had the physical abilities but she also had the consistency from having all the numbers in NCAA.
She has to get the physical ability back to get the difficulty AND get the numbers in to get the consistency.

But good that she feels confident. Also good that she seems to not have any after effects of Covid. My colleague still can’t walk up two flights of stairs without getting winded and has to stop for a break. This is the same person before Covid that would go up the steps two at a time and not even strain. It’s been 4 months since getting Covid. She was an active person who went for daily walks and runs.
Everyone is effected differently.

ETA- two more factors: double the competition for the Olympics than 2019 Worlds AND there is one less spot on the team. (Carey secured one spot, I don’t see the other individual spot going to Skinner)

 

[KristyJ]

I think they’ve been doing the anti-gravity treadmill in PT, which helps. Also they okayed sprinting in the latest appointment. I’m also glad she’s not having after affects. I had something Nov of 2019 that I’m not entirely convinced wasn’t COVID before we knew about COVID. It took me two months to be able to walk up stairs without being extremely winded, as well, and I don’t even know what it was that I had.
I am interested to see where she goes with bars. Oddly, she might show the most upgrades there.

 

[cats]

Well, one point sort of in her favor is that she noted that unexpected competition anxiety was a big part of her endurance woes in her early return. She was doing massively better fairly quickly, so that does seem kind of true.

I hope she doesn’t have lasting complications, and I do actually hope she makes some kind of non-Olympics FIG meet and gets her bars dismount named. I don’t enjoy her gymnastics but I do support post-NCAA elite, gymnasts getting to do what they want in the sport, and YouTube channels that let us see some of the day to day… so I want her to have something tangible to take away to inspire future athletes.

 

[jorge29]

i was seeing her videos and is nice her return and is a merit because isn’t easy returns later of some years being out of gymnastics. i hope she be part of the Olympic team and be everything sucessful

 

[Sasha]

I think she’s effectively out of the running at this point, but weirder things have happened in the past year.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

As I understand it, with the usual caveat that I’ve been wrong at least a third of the time about stuff relating to the individual Olympic spots, they haven’t yet decided what’s going to happen if they can’t hold the final event. The IOC requires an alternative plan in case a qualification process isn’t completed as planned, and in this instance the (idiotic) one offered was to allocate the spots based on AA performance at 2019 worlds instead. I’m not sure where they’re up to with that now, but imagine if all of a sudden the EF spots went pouf. Based on how things are at the moment, you’d obviously take Carey rather than Skinner anyway, but what a headf**k.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Yeah, I’ve never been a fan, but I do very much want to see gymnasts having the option to structure their careers in something other than the traditional model. Not having to choose between pursuing elite goals and NCAA if that’s what they want. Lots of gymnasts have talked in the past about feeling a sense of sadness at finishing collegiate sport and not seeing anywhere else to go with competition.

If Skinner can pull that off, which I think is more likely to come in the form of a worlds spot than the Olympics, hopefully that example could be a positive thing. And this goes beyond just the combination of NCAA and elite too: it would be great to see more careers going on into adulthood, combining elite competition with marriage and/or motherhood if that’s what the athlete aspires to, coming back after time out doing other things… just generally expanding horizons. It would be an incredibly powerful thing if the worlds team were to include at least one of Memmel, Skinner or Hernandez.

 

[irichluck21]

Based on the fact that they have already conducted 7 meets and based on the fact that several athletes are essentially guaranteed a spot, I don’t see the FIG throwing out the series qualifications. They can simply not count Doha if it cannot take place and go with the standings as they are.

They modified Baku’s results and counted the qualification round results as the final results, for example.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Is that definitely correct about being able to not count Doha, is it written down anywhere?

 

[Passion]

It’s not written anywhere, mostly just everyone hoping FIG uses common sense and changes the rules to use 7 meets, because like Rich said, they already changed it once to count Baku quals as finals and that wasn’t written anywhere beforehand.

Hopefully the competition will just go on as planned in June and we won’t be subject to FIG’s decision making at all.

 

[cats]

It would really suck for the athletes who opted out of a Worlds in order to use this path to have it pulled out from under them.

 

[Dex]

How did she get infected?

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

Although I’m not sure how far that constituted a common sense approach. The fact that their reserve option for if the series can’t finish is an AA based method is cruddy though. They could’ve used individual standings at 2019 worlds

 

[irichluck21]

If you are talking about Skinner, her husband gave it to her.

Her fans came down on him because they had posted pictures of being with others without masks and no social distancing.

She tried to defend him calling him “an essential worker” (not sure how essential a home alarm system sales representative is during a pandemic but hey…) however, people clapped back and showed screen shots of pics Jonas posted to social media during Covid. Including some sort of dinner banquet where there were about 20ish of his colleagues. No masks on during the event and they all were in a big group to take the photographs.

She changed her perspective after these “receipts” were shown and then stated it was accidental and now they are pro-masks and pro-social distancing and not participating in super spreaders.

Her parents also both contracted Covid but luckily recovered. Her mom had a major scare with breathing and had difficulty breathing, not sure how long she was hospitalized.

Then again they are both pro Trump and supported his 2020 re-election. We know that Trump was very anti-mask, keeping businesses closed, held large maskless rallies, and maskless events and parties so not surprised they were not following safety protocols either.
(Not meant to be political- just stating things that have been documented on the former President’s Twitter/ his family members Twitter accounts.)