by blackbootz

Gymnastics has to be one of the most difficult sports. The separation between a couch potato and a pro football player is, if not surmountable, at least discernible: quick feet, coordinated hands, a lot of time spent lifting weights. The mental model we use to gauge how replicable a physical feat is—the simulator that imagines our body going through the motions—breaks down when confronted with a breath-taking tumbling pass. Even if we get the nerve to try a cartwheel, the brain flabbergasts at adding backflips at the end of it. In short, gymnastics seems like a sport that, if we hadn’t hopped on it at a young age, is completely beyond us as adults.