I set my phone with motivational quotes to go off on random days and times. Like, ‘You’re stronger than you think you are.’ I’ll forget about it, then one will pop up and it’ll give me a little boost.
I get less and less sleep these days, so when I have any down time all I want to do is sleep!
I fell in love with running, and I finally have time to do it now.
When I was younger, my coach, Liang Chow, made all the decisions. I would go to the gym for practice, do exactly what Chow told me to do, go home, come back and start all over again. If Chow told me to do 50 squat jumps, I did 50 squat jumps.
I don’t want to be all power and muscle.
I always have someone to look up to, and I think it helps me with motivating myself.
It sounds funny, but the 2008 Olympics were something that just kind of happened, and I was lucky they came at a point when I was uninjured and well prepared. As a gymnast, you can’t ask for much more.
I have a chaperone everywhere I go – my mom.
I think about my goals. There were a lot of times in gymnastics when I really didn’t want to go in and train, but you can’t make it to the Olympics if you don’t train!
With literature, sometimes a book is presented in the media as being say, a Muslim story or an African story, when essentially it’s a universal story which we can all relate to it, no matter what race or social background we come from.
Were taught at such a young age that you can always be better and that youre never perfect and that youre never good enough.
I always feel like I’m the young one, I’m the small one.
Well-I don’t know if anyone would really ask me to prom.
Gymnastics has made me strong. I feel like it broke me down to my lowest point, but at the same time, it has given me the greatest strength anyone could ask for.
I have a lot of expectations and a lot of goals I want to fulfill, but the biggest dream is still to make the Olympic team for London.
Gymnastics is so complex.
Everything is about your movements and precision and timing, which is what gymnastics is about.
It might have been easier to retire, to say my knee couldn’t handle it and let that be that. At the same time, the prospect of not being able to compete in gymnastics anymore was heartbreaking.
Retiring was scary and it was tough to give up gymnastics, but so many great opportunities have come from it that I never expected.
My other life keeps me calm and grounded and normal.