As many of you may or may not already know by now, I’ve been training at Champions Academy (about 45 minutes from Stanford in a town called Morgan Hill), with a former World Champ and Olympian, Jinjing Zhang for about a year now. I made this move right after I finished up my studies/eligibility at Stanford.

Even though it’s only been a short amount of time, I’m already feeling a strong attachment to the program, the coaches, and the staff at this gym.  After all they treat me as though I’m part of their family.  In fact, every Friday, Jinjing and his family has me stay at his house, in order to save the drive I have to make to get to the gym in the morning the next day.  I’ll admit that it’s difficult to replace the training environment that I had at Stanford, especially being able to train with older guys that were around the same level, and the coaching I had from my former coach, Thom Glielmi.  However, Jinjing brings a whole new perspective to my understanding of gymnastics, which I believe is a great thing for me.  Not to mention, a few of the guys that recently graduated from nearby UC Berkeley, comes and trains with me every once in a while, which totally helps with my motivation in the gym.

This summer will be an exciting one for me.  Not only will I be competing for the first time after recovering from my knee injury, but it’ll also be the first to represent my new gym, Champions!