Chalked Up: My Life in Elite Gymnastics

This is an excellent book that reveals the challenges, dangers, and commitment required by elite gymnasts.

I just finished reading "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes," and "Chalked Up" is written in a similar vein. Both books are withering attacks on the gymnastics industry and its emphasis upon winning at all costs. However, whereas "Little Girls in Pretty Boxes" serves as a call to action, having been written with an eye towards reform, "Chalked Up" is a memoir with no apparent aim other than personal catharsis. It is Jennifer Sey's story of her years as an elite competitor, an experience which left her with ambivalent feelings about the sport and a lasting and "profound sense of inadequacy."Jennifer Sey was the 1986 U.S. National Gymnastics Champion. To attain that goal, she sacrificed any semblance of a normal adolescence, spending seven hours a day in the gym and alternately starving herself and downing laxatives to keep her body in a state of prepubscence. She had few friends outside the gym. Her friendships with gymnasts "centered on trading weight-loss tips" and were marked by "a cloaked but vicious competitiveness." Sey's family also made sacrifices - too many sacrifices, some might say. Whenever Jennifer advanced in her skills and "moved up" to a new gym, her brother was forced to switch schools and gyms (he too was a gymnast, but perennially in his sister's shadow). When Jennifer became a member of the Parkettes, a prestigious gymnastics squad based in Allentown, Pennsylvania, her mother drove the children two hours each way to the gym, five days a week. After a while, the commute became too onerous, so Jennifer's mother and brother moved to Allentown, leaving Jennifer's father alone in their home in New Jersey. Jennifer's mother took a job working in the front office at the Parkettes' gym and her life came to revolve entirely around her daughter's gymnastics career. Although Jennifer's father ultimately sold their dream home in New Jersey and joined the rest of the family in Allentown ("this godforsaken town"), the years of living a separate life from his wife and children had done their damage; years later, Jennifer found out that he had been having an affair with his office manager. Sey is acutely aware of the heavy toll her years in gymnastics exacted on her family.Sey was unable to derive any lasting satisfaction from her win at Nationals. As she makes clear in her book, it's the nature of the elite gymnast to always be looking towards the next thing: the next skill to be mastered, the next competition to be won. No sooner had she won Nationals than she began anticipating with dread the training that awaited her in preparation for the 1988 Olympic games. Even on the day of her triumph, there were whispers that she hadn't really deserved it, that she had only won because other competitors fell, that the real victory belonged to the junior champion, Kristie Phillips, who had put in a spectacular performance that day. Having battled serious injuries, an eating disorder, and mental agony to claw her way to the top, she realized that she lacked the desire to continue -- but no one would let her stop. So, she began eating. As Sey writes, "I used my body to assert control over my life...I proclaimed my adulthood by gaining weight." Reaction was immediate and vitriolic: "My mom lost control, threatening imposed starvation. `I won't let you eat! I'll lock the cabinets! You're not going to throw this away after all the time and money we've spent!'" Her coach, Donna Strauss, owner of Parkettes, laid on the guilt: "I can see the fat on you! Can't you see yourself? After all this. All we've done. You're gonna give it all away. You're nothing!" As an aside, one of Mrs. Strauss' favorite mantras was: "I don't coach fat gymnasts!" To inspire her gymnasts to remain emaciated, she would belittle those who had gained weight over the intercom system at the gym: "Hi, everyone! Look at Lisa there on the mat. She gained two pounds today. Lisa, at this rate you'll look like your mother in no time. Is that what you want?" Click. (Lisa's mother, who was morbidly obese, sat in the balcony during this tirade and said nothing.)I liked this book much better the second time I read it. The first time, I was put off by Sey's personality. She comes across as so critical, so self-absorbed, so shallow and grasping. Also, as she tells the story, her victory at Nationals does seem like a bit of a fluke. She had not been a consistent top-ten competitor prior to that event, hampered by injuries and nerves. However, upon re-reading, Sey becomes a more sympathetic figure. This is an autobiography, after all, and it's written by a person who is filled with "boundless shame" and "a colossal sense of failure." Sey's less-than-flattering depiction of herself reflects the years of being berated by her coaches, of equating self-worth with performance at competitions. Even as an adult, she carries a "self-eradicating, desperate need for recognition with me in everything that I do." She is critical of others because she was trained to view every peer as a potential competitor. She is self-absorbed and grasping because those are the traits it takes to make it to the top. She is shallow because she never knew a world outside of gymnastics until she was twenty years old. Sey goes out of her way to highlight her adolescent selfishness, which may be a form of atonement: it's clear that she harbors bitterness towards her "emotionally neglectful stage parents," especially her mother, but it's equally clear that she feels guilty about having such bitterness. In the end, the portrait of Jennifer Sey that emerges in these pages is poignant, revealing as it does the long-term emotional damage that the world of elite gymnastics can inflict.

The book Chalked Up by Jennifer Sey gives the reader a sneak peek into the world of elite gymnastics' merciless coaching, overzealous parents, eating disorders and elusive Olympic dreams. It is a collection of the authors and her gymnast friends' hard memories from when they were top-ranked gymnasts. What is truly impact full of the book is that coaches dream of the Olympics even more than the gymnasts themselves, the better their gymnasts are the more money they are able to get out of them and this isn't just 40 years ago- it is happening today. This is evident when the author states "You're not even trying! What the hell is the matter with you!.. Jesus, Sey! You're throwing it all away. No wonder you can't do anything. You're fat!" Sey's coaches fit perfectly the stereotypical thought of people who are willing to sacrifice their gymnast's life to get some good money out of them; sometimes pushing them so far that they'd risk potentially life-threatening injuries not only from the sport itself, the mal-nutrition they were all suffering from, but from the intense verbal abuse they had to go through daily, being told they weren't good enough, they were never going to make it, being threatened to be kicked out of the gym if they didn't do a skill on time, being told they were as fat as cows; when we all know and their coaches probably did too that they were very thin. On a daily basis, Sey's coaches would try to "sugar coat" everything; from an injury to a weight gain to a skill that that wasn't quite ready for a meet. "I awoke to a full leg cast, hip to toe, and the "good news" was that it was not my knee. The knee injury was death to a gymnast. The fabled anterior cruciate tear, which required endless reparative surgeries was what id feared. Tammy Smith, a former Parkette, had been forced to retire from this injury. I had broken my femur, one of the largest and strongest bones in the human body, nearly in two. The doctor had reset the bone while I was anesthetized, and luckily, there was no internal fixation requited to align and fuse the fracture. It was a supracondylar break, just above the knee joint, which would likely result in knee arthritis later in my life. My coaches, who dome to Montreal to watch the competition and lend support, railed around me "it's not your knee" John cheered. "it's only broken" Mrs. Strauss rejoiced." How could her coaches possibly been so cheery? Were they aware that their top ranked gymnast in the country had broken her femur and would probably never be the same gymnast again? Yes, a femur break is "better" than a knee cartilage tear but it hurts twice as much... It seems as if Sey used this book as a way to tell others about difficulties she experienced while an elite gymnast. People can argue all day long about if Sey's parents should have been more pro-active and less focused upon their child's potential Olympic medal but that is something only the author can have a say on after all, she was the rising star of the sixties. This book teaches us a lesson, when to push yourself and when to stop and ask: How strong do you think I am? How much can I take of this?

Wow, just wow. I was expecting to read a book about the horrible abuses in elite gymnastics, but don't feel that's what I read at all. First of all, I can tell you it wouldn't have mattered how much talent I would've shown as a child, there would be no way my parents would have allowed me to order them around at 8 years old or even 17! Everything revolved around this girl and her "future" in her sport. Everyone sacrificed everything for her.Secondly, it seems there was certainly no lack of self confidence about crushing her opponents or "friends". Even towards the end she was quick to inform the reader that the few gymnasts who might actually have appeared to be better than her failed miserably. Give me a break. So arrogant.Thirdly, what abuse? She wanted all of it, whatever it took for her to be the best. Everyone around her complied to all her demands and then when she placed first in 1986 and would actually have a shot on the Olympic team , she just doesn't want to do it anymore and can't understand why everyone isn't empathetic and understanding, are you kidding me? After everyone worked so hard and sacrificed so much for YOUR dream.Most of the book all about her training from a young child which was fine but it was much too rushed at the end, I would think that's where a lot of the story would begin. It really seemed no substance to the story after the 1986 championships. Very disappointing in that regard. I really didn't see the "abuse".

Jennifer Sey was a world class gymnast in the 1980's. This autobiography is the story of her rise and fall. It takes us from when she was a little child, right up until she retired and also gives us some glimpses of her life as an adult.The book was definitely interesting. I knew very little about Sey, or the gymnastics club Parkettes, before reading the book. Sey suffered some awful abuse at the hands of her coaches, including being forced to train on broken bones, constantly being told she was fat and regularly being emotionally manipulated. She also speaks about other issues in gymnastics such as the politics behind winning and the scandal with Don Peters (who was sexually inappropriate with a number of his gymnasts). It is a heart-breaking story as even at the height or her success Sey still doesn't think she is good enough and despite signs that she was desperately calling out for help she never seemed to get any.However, like Little Girls in Pretty Boxes, this autobiography is a very stark, very negative view of gymnastics. Sey seems to have forgotten why she loved the sport so much. She says that she often wanted to quit the sport, said she hated it, but she never gave a reason as to why she didn't other than she wanted to win.Sey comes across as being very bitter, which is understandable, but didn't endear her to me while reading. She has something negative to say about everyone: her team mates, coaches, judges, friends... everyone, whether it was about their hair or make up or fashion choices. She also makes sweeping generalisation about the sport such as "most of the male coaches...came to gymnastics either as a business opportunity...or through an unseemly interest in being around little girls in leotards". This simply isn't true and it makes gymnastics seem like something it isn't, especially to anyone reading the book who hasn't spent time in the sport.I also found it hard to believe everything Sey says in the book. This is partly because of what I have read online - team members disagreeing with what she has written - and partly because some of what she has said doesn't match up to the footage I have seen of the events. This just means that I would take parts of the book with a pinch of salt.Despite the negatives I would still say this is a fascinating book. It's interesting and really in-depth. Unlike some other gymnastics autobiographies (such as Dominique Moceanu's) it really focuses on gymnastics as opposed to anything else. I think stories like Sey's need to be told because gymnastics during the 80s did come under a lot of criticism and it is important for people to know about it to prevent it happening again. But just because of how bitter Sey seems, and because of other sources, I think maybe some of her memories aren't quite true to fact. Well written and definitely worth a read, but take it with a pinch of salt.

This is one of the saddest and most poignant books for gymnastics in this day of age. This book makes me want to cry for all the gymnasts that are from the US.This deals with the life of one of the USA national champions. She talks about her life and she shows that her mental difficulties are not of her own making but she has made something of her tragedy.With all the negative press that comes out about gymnastics this book shows that there are good coaches as well as bad ones as well.Jennifer Sey is a great rolemodel for many gymnasts myself included. She isn't shy about telling her story and showing how her life went after she failed at her dreams.I am so happy to have read this book and I think that this is one of my favourite books by gymnasts that I have had a chance to read. Yes it's sad and it frustrates me so much to see just what happens or has happened in the US and really other parts of the world. I hope that by more women putting their story out their that we will learn from the horrific past and just maybe these remarkable women will be able to find peace and heal.

Muy bien escrito. Mejor de lo que esperaba de una gimnasta, la verdad. Sí, es muy interesante para cualquiera que quiera saber cómo se sienten los que están al otro lado, los niños dóciles, los atletas que se esfuerzan sin quejarse para que nosotros podamos disfrutar viéndolos pero además es un libro completo, con sentimientos complejos como la autoexigencia y la ambición que se salen un poco de lo habitual. Eso sí, los que tengan un hijo en la alta competición y quieran seguir cerrando los ojos...¡mejor que no lo lean!

J'ai adoré ce livre, je l'ai lu en quelques jours. Très contente de l'avoir trouvé sur amazon car il n'était pas disponible ailleurs.Tres bon rapport qualité prix

Great seller on amazon, disappointing author. I was a gymnast for years and trained daily yet this girl made the sport I dedicated my life to come across as a daily battle that had to be fought. It was an interesting read in that it was perplexing to see what extremes the human body can be pushed to, but I'm terms of gymnastics I would reccomend Nadia Comaneci or Olga Korbut's book instead. This author came across as an ungrateful brat who even now as an adult, didn't appreciate what had been done for her.