There’s no crying in gymnastics

Below is a personal account written by Canadian Gymnast Amelia Cline. We are republishing her story here with permission, as this brave testimony serves as a clear example of what abuse in gymnastics can look like, how it might happen and its lasting impact. We believe that sharing individual stories like this can help the community to understand what we are fighting to eradicate and why we need change.

We'd like to thank Amelia for sharing her account and helping to raise awareness of the signs and consequences of prioritising success, or anything else, above child welfare. May it empower others to recognise and call out abusive behaviour they see, share their own stories, and help us stop the culture that enables damaging behaviour to continue. As Amelia says, 'the time for reckoning is long past due’.

Trigger warning: This post is about verbal and emotional abuse. It contains discussions of past child abuse as well as eating disorders. Heavy stuff. Proceed at your own risk.

Once upon a time, I was an elite gymnast.

I was introduced to gymnastics when I was a toddler. My parents tired of me doing baby chin-ups on their kitchen counter and thought my natural acrobatic instincts might be better directed in a formal program. By the time I was six, I had already been “training” for several years and was quickly identified as a kid who had potential.

I enjoyed several years in pre-competitive and competitive programs with outstanding coaches. They were people who clearly had both a passion for the sport but also a genuine care for the children under their tutelage. I loved them and I loved gymnastics.

By the time I was about 9 or 10 years old, we were told that my coaches had taken me as far as they could but that my talent warranted attending a more elite program. A particular gym was suggested, which was about an hour away from where my family was living. We commuted that distance for about a year. I would attend school for half of the day and then I would be picked up in the early afternoon to drive all the way to training. I would spend a few hours in the gym, and then travel all the way back in the evening. My parents sacrificed heavily to make this happen.

At that time, I was happy. I loved gymnastics. I had a series of new coaches who were wonderful. While they certainly challenged us, they were supportive and genuinely cared for us. When we did well at meets, they rewarded us with chocolate bars, praise, and hugs. Mistakes were learning opportunities, chances to work just a bit harder to do better next time. But mistakes were never presented as personal failings. There was no yelling. And usually, there were still hugs even when things did not go well.

And then, one day, everything changed. Our beloved coaches departed. And new ones arrived. A husband-and-wife team. And overnight, this turned into a horror story.

Within the first week of training under these new coaches, I quit. He was horrid. He screamed at every little mistake. And the first time it happened; I couldn’t breathe. I had never been yelled at before. By anyone. But suddenly this booming voice filled the whole cavernous gym, and it was focused on me. I was utterly dumbfounded, wide-eyed, and speechless.

I had been training several skills on the trampoline. Later that first week, I was ordered by my new coach to perform a skill that I had never done before – whether on the trampoline or otherwise. I wasn’t offered any help or spotting, and the skill was well beyond what I knew I was capable of performing. I was terrified. I knew that a failed attempt at this skill could end with a catastrophic injury. And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could not do the skill properly. Everyone else knew it, too. One of my teammates even attempted to intervene on my behalf and was yelled at for her efforts. When I tried to speak up for myself, I was shouted down.

Just do it! Are you stupid? What is wrong with you?

I did what any 11-year-old would do when an adult is yelling at them: I obeyed. And landed on my face. It could have been much, much worse. I was grateful as I landed that I hadn’t broken my neck. But I had skinned my nose from tip to forehead. Bleeding and terrified, I started crying, because I was 11 and that is what 11-year-olds do when they’ve been injured. As it turned out, that was no longer allowed in this new world.

What are you doing? Are you crying? Let me see your face. It’s not bad. A bit of blood. What is this? Tears? Get out. GET OUT.

And just like that, I was unceremoniously expelled from the gym floor, in front of all my teammates. Assuming I was done for the day (and also having absolutely zero desire to continue training), I used the cell phone that my parents had provided me with for emergencies. I figured this would constitute an emergency.  Of course, my parents were both over an hour away from the gym, due to our commute. I sobbed on the phone to my mother and I held nothing back about what had happened. Horrified, my mom encouraged me find a sympathetic parent who would hopefully take me under their wing in the meantime, while my parents rushed to come collect me.

It was at that time that I learned that being kicked out of practice did not *actually* mean you were kicked out of practice. As I came to realize, it was more of a formality, a ritual of public humiliation that, once you had done the appropriate time in the change room, you would be allowed back into training. And under *absolutely no circumstances* were you supposed to call you parents. In fact, it became very clear that the worst thing you could do would be to tell your parents what had happened at gym that day.

My new coach found me in the change room. He told me to come back out onto the floor. All was forgiven. It was explained that crying wasn’t allowed but that I had served my punishment in the change room. And now I could come back to finish training. In fact, now I must return to training.  Utterly baffled, I then revealed that I had called my parents to pick me up, given that I had been kicked out of practice.

You kicked me out. I thought I was supposed to leave.

The reaction was swift. There was more yelling and public shaming. It became extremely clear that, of my long list of offences that I had committed that afternoon, calling my parents and telling them what had happened had been the worst. Despite the outrage and anger being hurled my way, I somehow mustered up enough defiance to walk out of the building to wait in the parking lot for my parents. There was no way I was returning.

And so, I left. For about three weeks, I trained at my previous gym. As far as I was concerned, I would never set foot in that hellish place again. I was content to train with coaches that were not as “elite” as those I had just come from, if it meant I did not get screamed at for being injured or being scared or just being.

Three weeks later, we received a phone call with an offer we could not refuse. The head coach of the Canadian women’s artistic program called us personally. He knew what had happened with me. He explained that yes, these coaching techniques were harsh. Yes, they were not generally the norm in Canada. But. They would produce results. They would get little girls to the Olympics.

Don’t you want her to go to the Olympics? 

That was always the dream. The Olympics. And we had the head coach of the women’s artistic program calling us directly, saying that if you return, your dreams will come true. All I had to do is go back and train with them. And things will be better, we were assured. These people just need some time to adjust to Canadian ways. It won’t be so bad this time.

Go back and go to the Olympics. 

When the head coach of Canada tells you to go back, you go back. So, I returned. At first, things were okay. There was no more screaming, no more humiliation, all of the behaviour I had seen early on was seemingly gone, just as promised. I stopped walking on eggshells and began to believe this could be good. And I almost started to feel as if I had imagined it all.

But then, a few months later, it returned: the screaming, the belittling, the humiliating, the name calling. At this point, I was training 30 hours per week. I went to school in the morning and then I trained from 1pm – 6pm, catching up on my homework when I got home, well into the evening, only to repeat it all the next day. It was all-consuming. But that is how you trained if you wanted to go to the Olympics. I was fully invested. My parents were fully invested. Leaving was not an option.

There is a certain culture that exists within elite gymnastics (and I imagine all elite sports) that places significant pressure on an individual athlete not to be a quitter. However terrible things get, you push through. Quitting is a weakness. It is an unforgivable moral failure. It demonstrates a fundamentally flawed character. Of all things, the last thing you should ever be is a quitter.

And so, I stayed. I would not be a quitter.

The training was so intense that severe injuries were common. In the three years I trained under these people, I broke my hand in three places, tore a muscle from my spine so badly that I had a baseball-size blood clot in my back, and had a full tear and avulsion fracture of my hamstring off of my pelvis. With that particular injury, I remember with excruciating detail the blinding pain and the primal scream that I could not hold back when it happened. I also remember my coach yelling at me afterwards, blaming me for the injury, even though it was him that had grabbed my leg and stretched it forcefully into a standing split, pulling my leg past my ear, without any warning.

Pain was a way of life.

When I broke my hand, although I both felt and *heard* the sickening crunch of my bones shattering, I refused to allow myself to cry. By this point, the philosophy of my coaches that there’s no crying in gymnastics was fully drilled into me. Crying, like quitting, is weakness. Crying is unacceptable. And, more than anything else, crying will just make you a target for more yelling and abuse.

I was 13 years old. The bones of my hand were shattered. But crying about it was not an option.

The more severe injuries resulted in time off from regular training. You were still expected to show up every day, but you usually given a conditioning routine to do rather than a full practice. That is, unless the coaches disagreed with your doctors. Or they felt that your healing time as prescribed by the specialists was too long. Or they had found a different doctor who could assess you and that doctor said you were fine.

You were probably faking your injuries, anyway. Get back to work. 

As a result of this attitude, being forced to train on injuries, even severe ones, was quite common. Because training was so intense, overuse injuries were also commonplace. It was rare for any of my teammates to be in good health at any given time and most of us were nursing some type of ailment. Broken toes and fingers? Hands ripped to shreds? Shin splits? Stress fractures in your wrists? Those injuries were nothing. They would hardly register. Those injuries were the price we paid for our dreams. And we wouldn’t dare complain about the pain. No one would sympathize, anyway. We were taught to push through, always.

There’s no crying in gymnastics. 

On any given day, if you sat in the lobby of the gym, you could probably hear every single derogatory word being screamed at a child for falling off beam or stumbling during their floor routine. It was loud. Mistakes generally resulted in you being dubbed worthless, useless, or the worst word of all, rubbish. A particularly bad mistake or one made more than once would have you kicked out of the gym, relegated to the change room to contemplate your personal failures. But even that would not save you: being kicked out was only a temporary reprieve, after all. You always had to come back.

At some point, our coaches instituted weekly weigh-ins. On the designated day, we would line up and step tentatively on the scale. Our weekly weights were logged on a chart. *Any* upward movement was not only documented but publicly announced, loudly, for all to hear.

What have you been eating? they would ask. Too many cookies this week? The sneering and fat shaming were devastating.

In reality, any weight gain was muscle. We were all training 30 hours per week, and we were generally not permitted to eat during training times. There was no way that any of us were gaining fat. But that didn’t matter. Any weight gain was an evil. We were counselled extensively on what we should and should not eat. Our waistlines were measured. We were told how to limit our food intake, how we should politely refuse food from our parents when they tried to feed us and how to do so without raising suspicion, and how to eat just enough so as to avoid passing out during training sessions.

At the time, my training group was between the approximate ages of 11-15. Puberty was viewed as the ultimate enemy. Development might just spell the end of our gymnastics careers. As a result, we did all that we could to stave it off, including starving ourselves to the point that our periods wouldn’t start. But we weren’t the only ones subjected to these weigh-ins. The younger competitive groups were also inducted into this ritual. In my time training with these coaches, I saw girls as young as six being counselled on how to diet and admonished to suck in their tummies. The focus on weight and extreme thinness started very early.

Despite the daily abuse, I stayed because the head coach of Canada was apparently personally invested in me training with these people. After that initial phone call, I no longer felt able to leave. This was my future. Walking away would mean walking away from the dreams that I had built since I was too young to even understand what they meant. The Olympics. And then a scholarship to a U.S. university. Walking away was not an option. Walking away meant throwing away dreams and expectations and goals that I had worked towards my entire life.

I became an expert at hiding what was happening from my parents. Every day, when they asked how training went, I always said it was fine. Maybe I would throw in some details about a new skill I was learning. It was very clear that we were never supposed to tell our parents what was happening. And the coaches ensured that the parents stayed in the dark as much as possible by banning them from watching practices. They took us at our word that everything was fine. Meanwhile, I ignored the heart palpitations that I now recognize were probably panic attacks, and I concealed the bald spots on my scalp I developed from pulling out my hair. I later realized this was an actual disorder with a name: Trichotillomania – an obsessive compulsive disorder usually brought on by extreme stress and anxiety. Unsurprisingly, this condition disappeared as quickly as it had come on after I quit training.

But despite the trauma, I was succeeding. I was a medallist at Nationals. I had a promising future. I was well on my way to maybe an Olympics and a full-ride U.S. scholarship. To an outside observer, I was thriving. So long as you did not look too closely.

And it wasn’t just me. My teammates were winning as well. We were all qualified as elite national-level gymnasts and were part of one of the most successful elite programs in Canada. This served as justification for the abusive coaching methods being employed. While most parents were not fully aware of what was actually happening during training, the results were something no one could argue with. We were winning, so it must be working. 

I endured this daily treatment for three of my most formative years. I was between the ages of 11 and 14 when, for 30 hours per week, I trained with people who screamed at, belittled, humiliated, and fat shamed me.  At 14 years old, I weighed 85 pounds. And yet I was grilled about my weight on a weekly basis. I’m not sure I can adequately put into words how damaging that is to a young teenage girl, particularly when she is at the absolute peak of physical fitness. It entirely skews a person’s reasonable expectations for their body shape and causes any weight gain to be viewed as intolerable. To this day, the threat of developing an eating disorder looms large, even after 15 years. I still can’t weigh myself, lest I spiral into obsession about the number I see on the scale. I am continually on guard for old habits of restricting my food intake, which I seemingly am still vulnerable to at times. At the age of 12, I was taught to scrutinize my body to the highest degree, and I’ve accepted that un-learning those behaviours will be lifelong work. To say that the long-term effects of these coaching practices are profound is an understatement.

The day that I quit gymnastics for good was a day like any other. In the grand scheme of the previous three years, it was unremarkable.

It was a Friday. The next day was a qualifying meet for Nationals. I was rehabilitating my torn hamstring. I hadn’t yet returned to full training. I would be competing the next day but only on beam and bars due to my injury. I thankfully could still qualify for Nationals on the basis of my other results from meets before I was injured.

Out of nowhere, one of my coaches demanded that I perform a vault that I had only recently begun trying using mats and spotting. And he said I was to compete it the following day. I was shocked. I protested. I knew that me attempting this vault unprepared, and while still injured, could be disastrous. I was gripped by a very real fear that this could result in a truly life-changing injury. My protests fell on deaf ears. My coach screamed at me to do it. And suddenly, a scene that was almost identical to the very first time I was ever kicked out of the gym under this man’s authority began playing itself out.

It wasn’t unusual. Over the previous three years, my teammates and I were repeatedly pushed to perform skills that we were unprepared to attempt. Elite gymnastics is dangerous at the best of times. But it becomes exponentially more so when skills are tried without proper preparation and training. It was terrifying every time and it often did result in us suffering serious injuries. That I was being ordered to try something dangerous without adequate preparation, in itself, was not unusual.

I attempted the vault twice. And twice I landed on my neck. After the first attempt, I laid on the mat for several seconds, assessing whether I could still move my limbs. Breathing a sigh of relief that I could feel my toes and my fingers, the screaming began to register in my brain.

Rubbish! What is wrong with you? Get up. Do it again! Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish!

As I rose off the mat, my brain began a monumental shift that would, moments later, propel me into a decision I never imagined I would make. I walked back up the vault runway on shaking knees, barely hearing the booming voice still yelling at me, listing my various personal failures and shortcomings. I knew that I could not do this vault and I knew that my second attempt would be worse than the first. There would almost certainly be no escaping some type of injury if I tried it again. But I was still being screamed at. So, I would do it again, because refusing was never an option. As I started to run down the runway, I simply prayed that I would survive and be able to walk afterwards.

As expected, the second attempt was worse than the first. One of my hands completely missed the vault. I did not have enough leverage to push myself through the rotation that I needed to land on my feet. Once that happened, it was assured: I would land on my head. And as I was flying and falling through the empty air, not knowing if I would be able to get up off the mat after landing, something in my brain finally snapped.

I was finished. No matter the outcome, I would land and never be a gymnast again. I was 14 years old. I was too young to die or become paralyzed or be mentally debilitated by an eating disorder. And for what? The Olympics? A scholarship? Suddenly, none of it mattered anymore. I realized with piercing clarity that if I survived this fall and I chose to stay afterwards, the price that I would pay for those dreams would be far too high. And I was no longer willing to pay it.

I landed hard. My neck hurt but I could move my limbs. The screaming was impossibly louder than before. Unsurprisingly, he kicked me out of the gym. He should’ve saved his breath: I was already gone.

I never stepped foot in that gym again. Like so many years before, I called my parents to pick me up early. And then I told them everything.

They were naturally horrified. We reported everything from the previous three years to Gymnastics BC. Disappointingly but perhaps unsurprisingly, almost none of my teammates or their parents were supportive during this time. Many outright denied that any abuses had taken place in that gym at all. These coaches were still seen as a ticket to the Olympics and valuable scholarships. And very few people were willing to speak out and jeopardize those opportunities.

There was an investigation that brought about some mild consequences A one-year ban from the National competition floor. Anger management courses. Child development classes. A slap on the wrist. And then it all went back to business as usual.

A few years later, when I had thoroughly distanced myself from the sport, my family was contacted by a concerned parent. She told us that one of my former coaches was going to be hired as the next head coach of the Canadian national women’s program. Though a stranger to us, this parent somehow knew of me and my efforts to have some justice done years before. She was fearful for her daughter and for the future of women’s gymnastics in Canada if this person was allowed to take over the entire national program. She asked me to write to Gymnastics Canada and to implore them to reverse their decision. So, I did. It’s the only other time I have written these details down. The decision was reversed and someone else was appointed instead. But the fact remains that Gymnastics Canada, fully aware of this person’s discipline history and reputation, was more than willing to hire a known child abuser to run its programs if they could get away with it. It sent a clear message: abuse is fine so long as it wins medals and gets girls to the Olympics.

By definition, psychological and emotional abuse is much harder to pin down and prove than other forms of abuse. There’s no way to document it objectively. There are no visible bruises, no broken bones, no scars that you can photograph. As a result, its victims are much more vulnerable to gaslighting. This is even more true when the victim is a child, and the perpetrator is an adult in a position of significant authority.

That didn’t really happen.  You were just too sensitive. That’s just how they communicate. They just want the best from you. You’re exaggerating. It didn’t really happen like that. That’s not what they really meant. That’s just gymnastics. 

This is perhaps why it has taken me so many years to write this story. Especially in the initial months afterwards, and with so many of my teammates having gone silent or refusing to publicly validate what we all knew to be true, I had moments where I doubted my own memories. Moments that felt seared into my brain, that I could not forget even if I wanted to, suddenly became suspect. The gaslighting effort from so many different sources to protect these abusers and to maintain the status quo felt overwhelming.

But it is the truth. It happened. And it was wrong.

And the reality is this: if these behaviours were being inflicted by a parent on a child at home, we would call this what it is: child abuse. Emotional and psychological torture. And that parent would likely lose custody of that child.

But when it happens in a gym or in a hockey rink or in a ballet studio, we call it coaching. We say it’s tough love. We deem it to be harsh but necessary to produce winners.

Why is it so hard for us to say things as they really are when it comes to child athletes and abuse? We continue to allow behaviour from adult coaches that would never be tolerated of parents towards their children at home. It is behaviour that in any other context would be easily recognized as illegal and immoral and all around monstrous. And yet it’s all allowed in the name of winning medals. But the long-term consequences can be devastating. Is a gold medal really worth that child suffering a lifetime of eating disorders, chronic pain, anxiety, and PTSD? Those are the results we should be worried about.

Ultimately, the line between pushing a child towards excellence in a sport and child abuse is actually very clear. It’s only those who wish to see these behaviours continue that allege the line is blurry. We know this is wrong. And we know it has to stop.

While my story is from over 15 years ago, these abuses sadly continue. Recently, prominent US gymnastics coach, Maggie Haney, was suspended for 8 years by USA Gymnastics for emotional and verbal abuse of her athletes. As far as I’m aware, this is the first serious disciplinary action taken by a national body against a gymnastics coach for psychological abuse. This result was, in large part, thanks to the testimony of Laurie Hernandez, who bravely shared her story for the discipline panel four years after she left her abusive situation.

In coming forward, Laurie reminded me that I had a story of my own to share as well. And I hope in doing so, it empowers others to share theirs. Because I certainly know my story is not unique. There are unfortunately far too many people who will find that my story is also their story. And there are far too many children who are still living this story right now.

In closing, I will say this: We have allowed far too many children to be sacrificed on the altar of winning at all costs. It must end. I hope to be a small part of the change that is surely coming. The time for a reckoning is long past due.

If you have been affected by the content of this blog post, support is available. Please see our guide to healing resources, or reach out to our team if you'd like help acquiring legal support in the UK - you may be entitled to compensation. If you'd like to share your personal testimony, including anonymously, or to contribute your own thoughts, experiences and opinions regarding Gymnastics culture to our blog, please get in touch via hello@gymnastsforchange.com.