Just before her dazzling gold-medal victory at the 2024 Paris Olympics, Simone Biles nurtured a pre-game routine. The secret? A fine balance of mental tuning and physical revving-up.
While catching up with Hoda Kotb on Wednesday, July 31 via her podcast Making Space, the 59-year-old host highlighted that Biles, 27, seems much more open about her mental health journey than she did when she made her first appearance at the Olympics in 2016. "You don't bury things anymore. You speak them out loud. You talk about therapy, where you are, where you're going. Tell me about this part of you," Kotb asked.
"I've always tried to stay authentic to myself, so I feel like the new me, I'm a little bit older, more mature, so just being unapologetically me," the world champ responded. "I feel a lot more free, especially going to therapy and doing those sessions so that physically and mentally I feel better, and I know that's an important part of my routine," Biles added. "So just staying on top of that, it lightens the load a lot."
Digging deeper into their conversation, the Ohio native recounted her battle with the "twisties" during the tumultuous 2021 Tokyo Olympics — a situation where gymnasts lose track of their position mid-air, risking severe injury. "Sometimes I can't even fathom twisting. I seriously cannot comprehend how to twist. It's the strangest and weirdest thing, as well as feeling," she shared in a July 2021 Instagram post.
The challenge led Biles to take a step back from the games — a move that put her mental health firmly in the spotlight. Unfazed, she didn't shy away from seeking help through therapy to sort out her struggles. "I think, before, I was pushing down my trauma, and now I've learned to speak on it and kind of release that," she admitted to Kotb, adding, "I think we used to think of therapy as a weakness, and now I think of it as a strength. And if there's somebody that can help me deal with what I'm going through, then that's what I need to do. And now it's a daily part of my routine."
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