“Breathe,” he whispered.
I groaned in the back of my throat as he lowered my foot to the floor, where I began to melt and release the tension in my muscles. It felt so good, but not for long because he switched to my other side and applied the same amount of force. This took stretching and flexibility to a whole new level for me.
“Girls, sit across from the low beam, put your toes on it and wait for me.”
Opening my eyes, I was faced with two large knees just inches from my nose. He may have been wearing workout shorts, but I could see the width of his thighs and the muscles surrounding his knees. They were huge and his legs were free of hair.
Not to mention, he smelled really good. Too good.
Twenty years later, Konstantin lowered my leg but I was stuck and stiff. Slowly, I sat up by walking my hands toward me.
“Partner up and take turns stretching out your knees. Bounce lightly, girls. We don’t need any broken knee caps.”
That accent...I was quickly realizing I liked his accent a hellava lot. Every time he opened his mouth, it begged attention. Maybe it was an American thing to like someone else’s enunciation, but then I wondered if foreigners liked American accents too. Probably not. There was nothing exotic about an American dialect. We didn’t roll our r’s the way Russians did. It would come off as a speech impediment if anything.
Moving behind me, Coach’s fingers grazed delicately down my forearm. He grasped my wrist, then reached for the other one. He carefully extended both wrists back, stretching my arms out behind me.
“Do not drop your chest. Shoulders back, back straight.”
“What are they doing?” I found myself asking as my eyes drifted over to the girls on the low balance beam just a couple of feet away.
“It is a stretching technique that overextends your knees. It helps with jumps so your legs are bowed. You have never done them before?”
“No.” I watched the girls lightly bounce on their teammates’ kneecaps. This had to be something he picked up in Russia. I could actually see their knees bending backwards as they sat like soldiers taking it. Never in my life had I seen this and I began to worry my knees would pop out.
“What happened to using two mats and putting our feet on them in splits?”
“We do that too, but I change things up and like to use my background. It is things a lot of other coaches do not do. It is a little intense, but it gets the job done.”
He let go of my arms and said, “Shake your legs out.” I bounced them lightly to a closed position so I could stand. My legs were stiff and now I had to overextend my knees even more?
A hand appeared in my vision and I reached for it. Coach helped me up, and I automatically fixed my leotard from the slight reposition.
Gymnasts picked wedgies out left and right without a second thought and kept walking. Which is what I just did. Hey—it came with the territory. Sometimes it got stuck up in there, so we had to remove it or our ass hung out.
“Reagan, please work with Adrianna, yeah?”
Reagan glared at me for some bizarre reason as I got i
nto the same position as the other girls, my toes elevated on the low beam. I ignored her. When she sat down, she didn’t hold back and bounced on my kneecaps like she was bouncing on a giant yoga ball.
It took everything in me not to scream at her and call her a bitch. I didn’t see the other girls jumping this hard, but I knew better than to complain. So I rolled both my lips between my teeth and took the newfound pain being delivered to my body.
We switched places, but I didn’t go as hard as she did. Honestly, I didn’t want to injure her.
“Harder,” Reagan demanded. “You won’t hurt me.”
I stopped and looked at her, because I was really worried I would. “You sure?”
“Yup. Just do it.” I followed her command, all the while smiling internally and taking way too much delight in inflicting a fraction of the pain she just handed to me.
After group stretching, we split up amongst the different apparatuses: vault, balance beam, floor, and the uneven bars. Coach walked over to the bars.
“Do a few warm ups and when you are ready, let me know so I can see your routine.”
“Okay,” I said, tightening my grips. Then he walked to another part of the gym.
Taking a deep breath, I watched as one of the girls warmed up on bars, doing light release moves where she flowed freely from bar to bar, giant after giant, an overshoot that involved a half-twist mid-air to the low bar, clear hip circles, where the gymnast circles backward without touching the bar to her hips, and then an easy dismount, like a back tuck. The other two girls went and then I was up. We all pretty much did the same warm ups, some adding pirouettes and other elements, but the real fun was about to begin.