“I started Rhythmics gymnastics when I was in kindergarten, so I was super young. Since then, I was training 6 days a week, 4 hours a day, I was super competitive really early in my life. From then on, everything had to be super high pressure, like ‘you have to do well ,you have to be perfect, you have to do this and that.’ Everyday after school I would go train and that would be my life. School and training everyday. From then on I developed this identity… like all my friends knew that I was a gymnastics girl and that was my thing. At such a young age I identified myself with that, that’s who I was, that’s what I was about. When people asked me, ‘what are your passions?’, it was ‘oh sports, oh gymnastics!’ And they be like, ‘what do you do?’, and I would say ‘I compete, that’s what I do.’
Growing up, I didn’t have a big opportunity to branch out to other things. People would go to parties and stuff, and be having fun and laid back when I was training or competing. I was traveling and had to balance all my studies.
I think until then, I just identified myself with that. That was my life, that was what I was doing. When I stopped in grade 11, I lost that identity. Like, who was I now, what was I going to do? Afterschool I went home and I just sat there, I had all this free time and it wasn’t filled up with what it was before. So I think that’s the biggest part of my struggle, like I’ve been this girl for so long and now who was I? What do I want to do?
I got really anxious and it felt like I just lost who I was and I didn’t know where to go from there. But a really big thing that helped me was moving on and taking where I learned, all my dedication, all the passion I had for my sports and transferring to other things. 1 of the big things was University, like how was I going to get into University? I had to work really hard. The discipline I had learnt in gymnastics really helped me with that. More than that, I transferred what I learnt from gymnastics to Volleyball. And then I can take what I learned to focusing on Volleyball, like I really wanted to motivate my team. I took what I knew and tried to help them since I was the Captain. I had to take on that leadership role. I don’t think I would be able to do that to the extent that I did if I didn’t learn it before.
The hardest part for me was figuring out what I was going to do now. I had this thing going on for literally 12 years and now it was suddenly gone and I really didn’t know what I was going to do with myself. I think the hard work, dedication and discipline that I had was something I had to really reach out to. Like I wasn’t just the gymnastics girl, I learned all these things and that’s what made me who I was and I think just understanding and realizing it wasn’t just what I did, it was what I learnt and what I can bring to my future now that defined me. That was such a hard thing for me to understand and figure out on my own because I didn’t talk to many people about it and I think I should’ve. I kept it to myself and told myself I had to figure this out on my own. But that’s not really what I needed to do.
Looking back now, I’m super happy I stopped when I did because I feel like if I I had gone any further I would’ve dug too deep in a sense. Which kind of sounds dumb. I don’t think going further would’ve done any more for me. I think I achieved everything I could’ve, I achieved 1st in BC, 3rd in all of Canada and that’s amazing. But what’s more important to me right now are the lessons that I learned. Now I can look back and see all the things that shaped me to the person I am now. I think that is way more rewarding.
Before, I just valued who I was with what I accomplished but now I realize it’s a lot more than that.
Anyone who’s lost a sense of who they are really just need to take a step back and look at the whole scope of it. You aren’t just what you do, you aren’t just what you’ve accomplished. You are who you are because of the things that make you accomplish those things. For me, it wasn’t just because I was ranked a certain level, it was the discipline that I learned that I can transfer to anything in my life. It’s just not just in the sport. What you learn in your sport is so important. I think athletes have a big advantage because they learn such important lessons early on, and they learn it in high pressure situations. I can deal with so many stresses in my life because I learned to deal with it from a competitive lifestyle. That transferred to presentations for school, interviews for jobs. I have such a big confidence in myself because I know my capabilities I have for what I’ve gone through.
As an athlete, I was at peak performance at the National level, I was training so much, I was basically ‘off the charts’ if you want to say that. When I stopped, I started thinking about different things. When I was training I was eating whatever I wanted and I was burning off everything. I was a stick then it was crazy. When I stopped I wasn’t training as much as I did. We were in the gym, we were stretching, working out, it was basically aerobic activity. When I stopped I didn’t know how to gym, I didn’t know what else to do. I knew my stretches routine and that was it. A big other issue for me was, losing my identity was also losing my body. I was really frustrated with that, not to a huge extent but I wasn’t the image that I used to be. That was another huge issue for me.
Losing my identity also meant losing how I saw myself physically. That was a really big hardship I had to breakthrough because I didn’t know how to go about fixing that. That was also what led me wanting to go in to Kinesiology because I wanted to know what I had to do to keep my fitness, eat right, maintain what I want to be in the future. That was another really hard thing I had to go through because I was seeing all the changes going on in my body and it really frustrated me. I had seen myself one way, and I was something completely different. I had to work my mindset to change the way I saw myself. Like it’s obviously going to happen that my body changed because my whole lifestyle changed now and I’m not doing what I use to do. When I started to do Volleyball because I was being active again, I was working out. Working out brings a better mentality for me. Not doing anything I feel gross. Not only was I seen differently, but I was seeing myself differently, and that was a really hard thing to go through.”
-Maria Liaskas, Former Gymnast.