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9th out of 67 books
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15 voters
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Chalked Up: Inside Elite Gymnastics' Merciless Coaching, Overzealous Parents, Eating Disorders, and Elusive Olympic Dreams
by
Jennifer Sey
The true story of the 1986 U.S. National Gymnastics champion whose lifelong dream was to compete in the Olympics, until anorexia, injuries, and coaching abuses nearly destroyed her
Fanciful dreams of gold medals and Nadia Comaneci led Jennifer Sey to become a gymnast at the age of six. She was a natural at the sport, and her early success propelled her family to sacrific
...moreHardcover, 292 pages
Published
May 1st 2008
by William Morrow & Company
(first published April 22nd 2008)
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Well, that was horrifying. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch a gymnastics routine without feeling a little sick to my stomach. I've never thought much about the sport, except watching the Olympic competitions every four years with mild interest -- and probably only if nothing else was on television at that. I never thought about how young the female competitors are or what happens to the ones past their prime, at the ripe old age of nineteen or twenty. Many athletic careers just begin to ...more
stephanie
rated it
Recommends it for:
anyone who loves gymnastics.
Recommended to stephanie by:
ainsley davis-kutschera
it was a good look inside the world of gymnastics, and showed both the good and the bad. it's heartbreaking to read about how worried jen was about getting older, knowing that the clock was ticking.
jennifer sey was the 1986 national champion.
the way weight and puberty become so ingrained in you - how you actually want to retard your growth because growing in any way changes the way you can move through the air.
it's a good look inside in the world of young g...more
jennifer sey was the 1986 national champion.
the way weight and puberty become so ingrained in you - how you actually want to retard your growth because growing in any way changes the way you can move through the air.
it's a good look inside in the world of young g...more
The title makes it sound as if this is going to be one of those muckraking, voyeuristic looks at the sport in general (which are, you know, awesome), but it's actually essentially a memoir. The merciless coaches, overzealous parents, eating disorders, etcetera, are by and large her own. Unlike most sports memoirs, it appears to actually have been written in its entirety by Ms. Sey, which definitely has an upside as well as a downside. Just to get the down out of the way, she's obviously a gym...more
This started out a promising book - a behind the scenes look at elite gymnastics. What it turned into was some of that and then the author saying repeatedly, my family sacrificed everything for me and that was perfectly normal followed uo my family wouldnt let me quit when I wanted to so I cut them out of my life. She just came across as petulant. She kept talking about how much stress she was under, how driven she was to succeed without her parents pushing her and how she abused her body to mak...more
This is the story of Jennifer Sey, the 1986 U S National Gymnastic Champion. The book tells us of her mindset, what drove her to compete and what it took for her to reach that level of competition. It begins at the age of 3 when she learned her first cartwheel, and takes us through to the present. What she went through on a mental and physical level to reach a goal is both inspiring and upsetting, as is what's next for a person, still so young, who has spent their entire life in training for a s...more
I enjoyed Chalked Up very much, and I think that the whole narrative was told in an enjoyable and simple fashion. My only real complaint is Sey's very repetitive language - she will use the same phrase again and again and again, and never deviate from it even when common synonyms are available. However I don't hold this against her as, simply she is not a writer, she is a former gymnast, now mother, and I didn't particularly expect her to have a stand out style.
I'm very aware of the...more
I'm very aware of the...more
“You were a gymnast?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make it to the Olympics?”
“No.”
This is the conversation pattern that haunts Jennifer Sey, who was the 1986 US gymnastics champion, but by the time the next Olympics rolled around, she was too stricken, physically and mentally, to compete for a spot on the Olympic team. Her body’s desire to weigh more than 100 pounds – to grow up from a skinny child into an adult woman – and her brain’s unravelling ability to focus so completely on a sin...more
“Yes.”
“Did you make it to the Olympics?”
“No.”
This is the conversation pattern that haunts Jennifer Sey, who was the 1986 US gymnastics champion, but by the time the next Olympics rolled around, she was too stricken, physically and mentally, to compete for a spot on the Olympic team. Her body’s desire to weigh more than 100 pounds – to grow up from a skinny child into an adult woman – and her brain’s unravelling ability to focus so completely on a sin...more
Gymnastics is always my favourite sport during the Olypics, so I loved getting all the goss on how they get there. Pretty snappy read, tells the story of her gymnastics career.
I guess the pushy stage mother and chronic eating disorder are pretty standard, but this book goes beyond that to give the readers a sense of just how her family completely revolved around her focus on gymnastics until it split up her parents. Also evokes the extremely punishing physical demands and makes you reali...more
I guess the pushy stage mother and chronic eating disorder are pretty standard, but this book goes beyond that to give the readers a sense of just how her family completely revolved around her focus on gymnastics until it split up her parents. Also evokes the extremely punishing physical demands and makes you reali...more
The two stars don't indicate a bad book, just that I didn't enjoy reading it. It's a chronicle of Sey's path to success in competitive gymnastics, and how quickly she fell out of that world once she decided to quit. Most of the time, it's not a fun world to be in. Sey brings up the complicated question of who's responsible for seeing child athletes (or a child who excels and competes in anything else) through their decisions. A national champion gymnast with a shot at the Olympics has opport...more
There are plenty of books written by elite gymnasts (or other elite athletes) who talk about how their training was difficult, but it was ultimately all worthwhile. Jennifer Sey, former U.S. National Gymnastics Champion, has come to the conclusion that it was NOT all worthwhile. Her memoir details her injuries which never had time to heal before coaches were pushing her to compete again, self-abuse with laxatives and anorexia, and a splintered family that gave up all semblance of normal life i...more
I picked this up on a whim from the library. Probably not the best choice, considering that my younger son just got invited to join the competitive team at his gym, but I like to torture myself sometimes.
I learned that women's gymnastics should really be called girls' gymnastics. And this girl was particularly driven from a very young age, and was aided and abetted by all of the adults who surrounded her. She blames them a bit for this. It reads like a "why didn't you protect m...more
I learned that women's gymnastics should really be called girls' gymnastics. And this girl was particularly driven from a very young age, and was aided and abetted by all of the adults who surrounded her. She blames them a bit for this. It reads like a "why didn't you protect m...more
This was a good time to read this story with the Olympics starting. It is a look behind the scenes from a perspective on a national champion who struggled with the stress, pressure and demands of the sport of gymnastics. It is an eye-opening look at what lies behind the glamor and the pomp. Teen girls who like Patricia McCormick's Cut will like this one.
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This book takes you through the struggle of an Olympic level gymnast. It starts when she is young and develops her first interest in gymnastics to when she is older and has the opportunity to go to the Olympics. She deals with eating disorders, hard training, moving, making friends, and the pressure of her coaches, her parents, and herself. I would not recommend reading this book because it was a constant snooze fest. I couldn't concentrate on the book for more than about 10 pages at a time with...more
As with most memoirs I've read, I got a bit over Sey talking about herself about halfway to two thirds through, but being that as a kid I was hoping to be a competitive gymnast, the subject matter was compelling to me. The book itself was decently written and well-organized though through the second half of the writing seemed to get a bit tired-- stories were condensed, details left untold, and months at a time skipped with barely a mention. Perhaps that was for the best, but it didn't match up ...more
Bought it for the salacious cover and subject matter as a weeknd read. Was surprisingly well written and so interesting I didn't put it down until I was done. Jen was a maniacally driven child of ambitious upper middle class parents in suburban PA. What began as an after school hobby starts steam rolling at a fevered pace until Jen's mom is driving her daughter 3 hours to and from an elite gym, letting Jen dictate the family's lives, and ignoring het physical pain and the emotional toll the spor...more
overall it was interesting, but i sort of felt like there were gaps where there shouldnt be, especially as she got older. but maybe thats just me.
After reading almost 300 pages of Jennifer Sey's journey from a pig-tailed preschooler to a national gymnastics champion, one question still plagues me -- Why did she stick with it?
I understand the urge to be the best at something. But what Sey never successfully conveys for me is that inner drive, that almost-manic obsession with being The Best. I know she wanted to win -- but I never understood where that drive came from, or exactly what she got from the sport.
The pay...more
I understand the urge to be the best at something. But what Sey never successfully conveys for me is that inner drive, that almost-manic obsession with being The Best. I know she wanted to win -- but I never understood where that drive came from, or exactly what she got from the sport.
The pay...more
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This book really gave an inside look at elite gymnastics, some of which I was familiar with and some that I never really knew. I thoroughly enjoyed it, having been deeply involved in the competitive element of the sport from the age of about eight until I was about fifteen/sixteen. It sort of made me glad I stopped when I did, that I had the experiences I had but quit before it became as intense as it did for her.
For me, this book was a good read because I was so familiar with the ...more
For me, this book was a good read because I was so familiar with the ...more
Sila
added it
A great memoir! Very much worth sharing with the world. I am amazed by how hard-working and focused the little gymnast Jen was. Sure, there are many bad sides of being that competitive, and although I love watching the sport, I don't think I would wanna see my kid going through so hard training, and injuries. But still, I, for myself, got the lesson of there is nothing you can't achieve once you set mind on it, in a very strong way. This book will be in my library to remind of this lesson, and m...more
Mainon
rated it
Recommends it for:
anyone interested in gymnastics or overcoming-obstacles biographies
Shelves:
kindle-books,
nonfiction
If you don't know who Jennifer Sey is, she was the 1987 US women's gymnastics champion. I don't want to ruin anything else about her bio, but it's a first-person tale of the same type as the ones Joan Ryan explored through the third person in Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters. Quite well-written and enjoyable.
I was a bit mislead by the title. I went into the book thinking it would be a journalistic overview of the competitive sport of gymnastics, when it's actually a memoir. That's fully my fault for not reading the jacket, though.
Anyway, it was a pretty good read, but I got annoyed with how Sey repeats herself throughout the book. She'll make an aside on one page, and then fifteen pages later make the same comment, maybe with a slightly different word choice (something that should have ...more
Anyway, it was a pretty good read, but I got annoyed with how Sey repeats herself throughout the book. She'll make an aside on one page, and then fifteen pages later make the same comment, maybe with a slightly different word choice (something that should have ...more
With glittering sparse prose and clear-eyed insight, Jennifer Sey recounts the harrowing tale of her pursuit of gymnastics glory in the eighties. From the moment 7 year old Jennifer Sey watched Nadia Comaneci during the 1976 Olympics, she too dreamed of Olympic glory. At the time, she was just an everyday gymnast at a no-name gym in New Jersey, but by the time she was 11 she was competing on the elite gymnastics circuit which culminated in her becoming the U.S. National Champion gymnast in 198...more
My brother-in-law gave this book to my husband as a "just because" gift during the last summer Olympics. Mike has always been a huge Olympics fan, and that's caused me to become a fan as well. We enjoy watching the gymnastics, and last year's Olympics was no different.
Jennifer Sey was the U.S. champion in 1986, and she writes an honest expose of the sport and the traumas she endured to become a champion. When she finally walked away from gymnastics, her parents (her mom in ...more
Jennifer Sey was the U.S. champion in 1986, and she writes an honest expose of the sport and the traumas she endured to become a champion. When she finally walked away from gymnastics, her parents (her mom in ...more
The title seems like it'll be a general look at gymnastics' with perhaps a few anecdotes from various gymnasts. Reading what the book was really about, it's a memoir.
I have to say, this book does not have florid language, which was a bit of a relief, though there were several cliche's sprinkled around (unavoidable, I think), and repetition of facts, especially as Jennifer Sey advanced through the competitive levels.
Though I have done PE presentations on gymnastics and lo...more
I have to say, this book does not have florid language, which was a bit of a relief, though there were several cliche's sprinkled around (unavoidable, I think), and repetition of facts, especially as Jennifer Sey advanced through the competitive levels.
Though I have done PE presentations on gymnastics and lo...more
Most gymnasts and gym fans seem to hate this book because it just sheds even more negative light on the sport. And I see where they're coming from but it's really not that bad on the whole. She does admit at the end that she has a love/hate relationship with gymnastics, and that's completely relatable and honest.
People have also accused the book of being "full of lies" and I don't know how true that is, but she insists this is how she perceived her experience and I believ...more
People have also accused the book of being "full of lies" and I don't know how true that is, but she insists this is how she perceived her experience and I believ...more
Abby
marked it as to-read
I BEGGED to be put in gymnastics when I was a little kid. My mom never signed me up. Maybe it was because I had BEGGED to be a ballerina, but then quit after 3 months of ballet class. (I only quit because my teacher was 30 and a little overweight, and I had dreamed of a skinny beautiful ballerina teacher.)
I can still do cartwheels to this day. And that is with zero formal gymnastics training. Imagine what I could have done if I'd had lessons.
I met a girl on Saturday at th...more
I can still do cartwheels to this day. And that is with zero formal gymnastics training. Imagine what I could have done if I'd had lessons.
I met a girl on Saturday at th...more
Amber
rated it
Recommends it for:
Anyone interested in the world of gymnastics
Shelves:
read-in-2009,
non-fiction
I'd like to give this more like 3.5 stars, but since I'm a bit enamored with world of gymnastics and have been since I was a little girl, I'll round up.
This is one former elite gymnasts' memoir of her time in the world of gymnastics. Jennifer Sey was the 1986 national champion and this book details her rise and fall in the sport. Even though I've always heard stories about how young gymnasts with the potential or the hope of making it to the elite level are treated, seeing it spelle...more
This is one former elite gymnasts' memoir of her time in the world of gymnastics. Jennifer Sey was the 1986 national champion and this book details her rise and fall in the sport. Even though I've always heard stories about how young gymnasts with the potential or the hope of making it to the elite level are treated, seeing it spelle...more
Even though I never advanced past roundoffs and bridges in my age 5-6 gymnastics classes, for some reason I absolutely LOVE gymnastics, particularly elite gymnastics. I am riveted the rare times that the events (Olympics, national and world championships) are televised. In her book, Sey does an impressive job leading us through her entire life as an elite gymnast. It took courage to write this book, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Solid writing.
An incredible story from the inside, this mind-boggling journey of a young girl with the pressure to be the best from the age of 7 grips you. The things we would never allow people to do to our own children get pushed aside at the idea of a shiny gold medal, allowing the chance of a championship win to corrupt young children's innocence. Truly a story of a childhood lost, the ramifications of this sport at an elite level linger on for life.
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