Missouri gymnast looks to start second season with upgraded routines
COLUMBIA, Mo. (BVM) — University of Missouri gymnastics is preparing for its 2021 season with new routines, intense training and rising stars like Helen Hu.
Hu got her start in the sport at the age of 5, after watching her siblings excel in the gym.
“Growing up, I was always at competitions,” the gymnast said. “I would watch people flip, I would go off with all of the other younger siblings and do cartwheels behind the bleachers. I always loved watching it and so when I was around the age of 5 or 6 I started taking classes at the same gym as my brother. I just got really into it.”
Hu grew up in Chicago, where she found her second home at IK Gymnastics, staying with the same coach for her entire childhood. She said she tried other sports and even played piano before finding her calling to the gym.
“My parents really had me branch out as much as I could,” she said. “I tried a lot of different things but gymnastics is what really caught my eye. There’s just so many fun, different challenges to it. There’s artistry, performance and showing off, but then there’s also the opposite with vault and floor where it’s more about power. It’s a cool balance of artistry and power within a sport.”
Even before entering high school at the Latin School of Chicago, Hu was training 25 hours a week at IK Gymnastics in hopes of going elite.
“In seventh and eighth grade, I considered trying to become an elite gymnast,” she said. “I would skip the back two hours of school everyday and get to the gym early and train for about six hours a day.”
However, it was during those two years — training 30 hours a week — where she realized that being an elite gymnast would be too much.
“I realized I didn’t really have the capabilities to go all the way in elite,” Hu said. “I stuck to JOs (Junior Olympics) and I went to nationals all four years of high school.”
The gymnast talked about the Junior Olympics as if they were any other tournament because for someone with her talent, it was just that.
Hu is a four-time Junior Olympic national beam champion and has two national bars titles — her two favorite events.
“My favorites were always beam and bars because those were the events that I excelled at most,” she said. “I wasn’t always the strongest, I’m more flexible than strong so that was really helpful in beam and bars for me to show off.”
And show off is what she has done with her skills during her time so far with Missouri Gymnastics. Her career highs at the collegiate level include a 9.875 on vault, 9.95 twice on bars, 9.975 twice on beams and 9.875 twice on floor. Hu has also claimed two Women’s Collegiate Gymnastics Association (WCGA) regular season All-American Honors and was the SEC Event Specialist of the Year in 2020.
The gymnast said she owes her quick successes to the coaching staff at Missouri.
“Since I came to Mizzou, we have strength training coaches and we do weight lifting so I have gotten a lot stronger and it really started to show pretty quickly just in my first year here.”
Hu committed to the University of Missouri for gymnastics after her sophomore year of high school. While this may seem early on for the typical high school student to choose a college, she remembered she was far behind other gymnast commits.
“Recruiting is just a really weird process in gymnastics because it happens so early,” Hu said. “As a 16-year-old, I somehow already felt behind compared to all the gymnasts my age because everyone started committing freshman year of high school. I was worried there weren’t going to be any places left for me. I was kind of in a panic, to be honest.”
While many schools did not have any more spots or scholarships left for Hu’s graduation year, her worries faded when Missouri head coach Shannon Welker invited her to participate in the gymnastics summer camps at the university. Hu’s positive experience meeting the coaching staff, team and getting to know the program is what encouraged her to commit.
“Coming here was a smooth transition and the team was really welcoming,” the gymnast said. “Columbia is a pretty small and friendly community so I felt really at home here.”
Despite the smooth transition to a new environment, Hu said her biggest challenge was the intensity of training in college gymnastics.
“Getting in shape here was hard, the hardest transition was physically,” Hu explained. “I was kind of weaker in club so when I got here and we were doing 6 a.m. lift workouts followed by intense, nonstop moving, four-hour training in the gym, I was physically wrecked.”
The gymnast said her first two months at Missouri were difficult for her to adapt to. But the soreness and exhaustion only pushed her to prove herself.
“Everything was a struggle physically, but mentally I was pretty supported here,” she said. “I came here ready to be pushed, I came here ready to grow. It was a good struggle, but it was definitely a struggle I do not want to go through again.”
The physical challenges Hu has encountered in her first year with Missouri gymnastics has been a big adjustment, but she noted that she loves every minute of it.
“I’m happy with college gymnastics,” Hu said. “It’s pretty exciting, it’s really different from club and I want to enjoy it while I have it.”
When it comes to thinking about where she will go after graduating college, Hu said it is hard for her to think about not going to the gym every day.
“It did scare me for a long time thinking what my life would be like after gymnastics,” the gymnast said. “It’s such a passion for me and it takes so much of my time. I don’t even know what I would do with that kind of time on my hands or how I would stay in shape, I don’t like normal workouts and I can’t imagine myself just going to the gym and working out.”
Hu pointed out that going elite in gymnastics is not the same as being a professional in other sports.
“There’s a strong expiration date of what your body can do after a certain number of years in the gym,” she said. “Gymnastics is not something that your body can handle for that many years, especially if you go down the elite route because of the number of skills they have to do and the level of difficulty. It’s double the impact and joint pain. It’s really easy to burn out.”
But Hu said she is appreciating every moment she has left with her sport, starting with the upcoming season this January.
With COVID-19 still causing uncertainty for whether or not spectators will be allowed at competitions, the gymnast said she is ready to perform her best with or without a crowd.
“I’m pretty good at getting into my own zone,” Hu said. “Everything around me melts away and it’s just me and the beam. Finishing my routine is probably the most exciting part because I’ll finish my dismount, I’ll stick and everything around me comes back. My team is cheering and the crowd is cheering and you hear ‘10! 10!’ It’s this great combination of calm and peace for me.”
Hu said she is looking forward to continuing to build the momentum that she found during her first year at Mizzou and hopes to leap higher, flip faster and stick stronger.
“I have made some upgrades in my routines that I’m really excited to show off with my newfound confidence from last year,” she said. “Knowing all that I was able to do last year excites me for what I can accomplish this year and I’m really excited to get back into competition and go crazy.”
