If you looked carefully, you may have seen some signs that Simone Biles’ calf was bothering her a bit. But from a gymnastics competition scoring standpoint, it didn’t seem to hinder her that much. That’s if you consider first helping the U.S. win the women’s gymnastics team gold model on Wednesday and then winning gold in the individual all-around competition on Thursday to be successful results.
Yep, it’s hard to have a more more successful gymnastics week than Biles did. The week didn’t start off great as during the qualifying rounds, she suffered what had appeared to be an injury to her right lower leg, as I had reported for Forbes. Even though medical staff did attend to her, her coach Cecile Landi offered reassurances later, calling the injury “a little something.” A little something presumably meant that she had suffered a minor calf strain, which is when you pull, stretch and potentially tear one or more of your calf muscles.
Now, your calves are pretty important. Without them your feet would connect directly to your knees, making it hard to wear most regular pants. Additionally, the muscles in your calf support you while you stand. So one concern was how well Biles would be able to stay standing still after landing from a jump or a dismount. After all, too much wobbling or falling over would result in point deductions.
Another concern was how well Biles would be able to balance herself on the balance beam. As you can imagine, standing still on a 10 cm wide piece of wood ain’t the same thing as standing in kitchen while eating guacamole. The balance required to keep your knees locked while on the former demand much more from your calf muscles than when you are lounging around in the latter.
A second key role of calf muscles is to “plantar flex” your ankle, which is a medical term for bending your foot at your ankle so that the front of your foot moves downwards. This is the opposite of dorsiflexion, which is when your point your foot upwards. Plantar flexion is how you push yourself forward when you walk or run, both of which are kind of important in gymnastics. Therefore, one question was how much speed Biles could generate when running towards the vault or on the floor exercise mat.
Additionally, plantar flexion is how you propel yourself upwards when you jump. And guess what, gymnasts have to do that too. Thus, a calf injury could have limited the power with which Biles could leap into the air. So, while a minor calf injury may not affect your ability to go to work in an office, file TPS reports and schmooze with the boss, it could have made a significant difference in Biles’ performance.
Well, did it? Since the incident, Biles has shown signs of favoring her left leg. For example, during the vault, she would first land on both feet and then quickly shift her weight off her right leg. But ultimately the injury didn’t seem to hinder her much. On the first rotation of the all-around event, she earned the highest score of the day—a 15.766—on the vault after completing a Biles II, named after guess who.
And even though she was in the bronze medal position halfway through the competition, Biles ended up vaulting ahead of eventual silver medalist Rebeca Andrade from Brazil and eventual bronze medalist Sunisa Lee by performing high degree of difficulty routines on two events that do use the calves quite extensively: the balance beam and the floor exercises.
Of course, Biles is not your everyday person when it comes to gymnastics. She’s not even your everyday gymnast. She has now won a total of six Olympic gold medals and is the first American ever capture gold in the all-around gymnastics event more than once. She is the first any country-an to repeat in this event since Larisa Latynina of the Soviet Union and Věra Čáslavská of Czechoslovakia did so in the 1960’s.
So if you do strain your calf, assuming that you aren’t Biles, don’t immediately jump on the gymnastics floor and start jumping and tumbling. No one is going to give you an Olympic gold medal for doing that, especially if you are doing so in an office. Instead, give your calf enough rest—usually a week or two at least—until you’ve been pain free for at least a couple days.
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