Not many people knew what “twisties” were prior to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2021, but they quickly learned when women’s gymnastics phenom Simone Biles withdrew from several events because of it, making the star’s mental health a pivotal part of the Olympics commentary this time around.

Biles has been open about going to therapy, and this summer in Paris, the GOAT (if we’re using formal titles), won gold medals in the team final, all-around final and vault final. She also won silver on floor.

And it isn’t just Biles. Several other moments at the Paris Olympics this summer have put a positive spotlight on mental health:

Stephen Nedoroscik, “the pommel horse guy,” had a viral moment when he was seen meditating before his event. Plus, high jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh of Ukraine sought out a different sort of rest. Mahuchikh was seen climbing into a sleeping bag during her event, taking a nap between jumps. And sprinter Noah Lyles, the newly crowned fastest man in the world, said in a social media post: “I have asthma, allergies, dyslexia, ADD, anxiety and depression. But I will tell you that what you have does not define what you can become.”

All those athletes took home coveted metals for their countries.

Yet, athletes haven’t always spoken very openly about their mental health or how it’s impacting their performance. It has been a refreshing change to see that shift, shaking off the apparent stigma around it.

And this openness can be important, experts say, not just for athletes, but for fans, too.

Why elite sports are also a mind game

Mindfulness – the cognitive ability to be fully present and being aware of one’s thoughts and feelings – is helpful in combating stress, but honing the skill could be what separates a great athlete from an even better one.

Gretchen Schmelzer, a licensed psychologist who was a U.S. national champion in rowing and trained for the U.S. women’s rowing team alongside those who would go on to the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, says often, training harder than competition is “a mind game, not a physical game.”

“At the level of elite athletics, it is your mind that distinguishes you from the person sitting next to you,” says Schmelzer, who is also an author and co-founder of the Center for Trauma and Leadership.

And developing and maintaining mental capacity could be key in competition.

“Being able to regulate your physiological response to stress is how we perform at the highest level,” says Peter Economou, assistant professor of applied psychology at Rutgers University and director of behavioral health and wellness for Rutgers University Athletics.

When the conversation about mental health shifted

In the years since Biles withdrew in Tokyo, athletes are more publicly open about their mental health, but something that happened before that may have spurred the shift, Schmelzer says.

The Larry Nassar sex abuse case may actually have been the “defining moment about mental health and sports,” Schmelzer says, with so many gymnasts coming forward, testifying and being open about getting help for the trauma.

Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics team doctor and Michigan State University doctor, was arrested in 2016 and found to have sexually assaulted hundreds of women and girls, including Olympic champions, under the guise of providing medical treatment.

‘A person can only take so much’

Other factors could also have influenced athletes’ attitudes to encourage more openness about mental health.

Athletes are sharing more with the public in general, like on social media, about many aspects of their life, such as training, diet or sleep habits. On TikTok, it’s easy to find athletes giving tours of the Olympic Village and showing off their pre-competition preparations.

This cultural shift has helped more people, like Lyles, feel comfortable posting about their personal struggles.

Aside from that, not only has stigma about mental health lessened in the U.S., but the world has gotten more stressful over time, too, and “a person can only take so much before they need support,” Schmelzer says.

So how can we take the lessons from this Olympics and apply it to our own lives? For starters, we can follow these athletes’ lead and speak openly with those around us about what we’re feeling.

And as for our own mindfulness? Schmelzer says, try “taking 10 minutes in the morning, sitting outside and just looking at a tree, or going for a walk or talking to a therapist.” It can be as simple as that.

Backflips off the bed. Front tucks onto the couch. Handsprings in the hallway. My 7-year-old daughter’s life has been thoroughly overtaken by gymnastics and her hero, Simone Biles.

“I want to be just like her and go to the Olympics when I grow up,” she told me Monday, her hands emulating Biles’s gestures. “She does cool flips and dance moves. But she works hard.”

With Biles, now the most decorated U.S. Olympic gymnast, clinching a gold medal Tuesday in Paris in the women’s team final, her performances this week have been, by far, the most important ones to watch in our household. Her every move has a profound impact on my daughter’s own journey into the sport, as if she might be one of her coaches. As I watch her fingers slide back and forth on her iPad to get the slow-mo of Biles executing moves that have upended the norms of women’s gymnastics on a global scale, many named after her, I am in awe of her commitment to be like Biles, who was introduced to gymnastics at the age of 6.

But on Sunday, when Biles injured her left calf muscle while warming up for a floor exercise routine, I winced along with most of America, fearful that her historic run might be over in an instant. My daughter, however, was much calmer.

“I love hard days,” she said, having little doubt that Biles would go on to notch the day’s highest scores. I’d gotten used to such confidence, having watched my daughter cry through warm-ups on the vault, her “worst event,” only to go on to win gold in regional and national competitions.

Her confidence does still give me some pause, however, if only because it developed so fast.

Three years ago, I first realized that my daughter had potential as a gymnast. After spending most of her ballet classes doing cartwheels, we traded in her tutu for a gymnastic leotard, and during her first formal class, the coach asked me if she’d be interested in moving up to a more advanced level. Before I knew it, we’d joined a gymnastics club in Atlanta and I was promptly informed by the coach that her skills were “exceptional.”

Soon, my friends had a nickname for her, “Baby Biles,” and she ended her first season winning first place in vault and floor exercise at a national competition.

She now calls gymnastics her “gift,” and I have to keep reminding myself that she’s just 7. The truth is I’ve been nervous about my child’s physical abilities since she climbed out of her crib at 9 months. At the age of 2, she jumped off a bed to try to land in an open drawer, hitting her head on a metal knob and requiring three stitches. At 3, a scared teacher had to explain to me how she jumped out of her playpen and broke her elbow, an injury that required surgery.

The work ethic required to get good at a gravity-defying sport is no small thing — for both the young athlete and their parents. There are the daily practices, the drives to and from the gym, the daily emails from her gymnastics club, the travel to meets across the country.

The financial costs involved have been significant enough to make me reconsider whether it’s worth it. There are endless fees: monthly tuition, thousands to cover the costs incurred at meets, organizational dues, coaches salaries and more. In just one year of competing, we’ve dipped into our savings more times than I care to admit.

Our whole family — including our daughter’s two siblings — has made sacrifices, including fewer shared meals. When my daughter gets home from a three-and-a-half-hour practice at 8:30 p.m., she heads straight to the shower then to bed.

As a mother, it’s especially hard. I can’t interrupt practice to kiss her bloody calluses because she’s now a competitive athlete who is being trained to endure that pain. I’m filled with anxiety when I think that my little baby could one day leave me to live in another state to train with a renowned coach or at a famous gym, as is so common for top gymnastic prospects. Normal educational routines are already disrupted because of the demands of practice, and her new coach has mentioned bringing in a tutor to maximize the time that she can spend in the gym.

When the demands of training grew, Simone Biles was homeschooled during her high school years, as I learned while assisting my daughter on her Black history project in first grade. The poster she made that accompanied her report read, “Simone Biles, the greatest gymnast of all time.” We also learned that Biles was diagnosed at an early age with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and used gymnastics as a way to help steady her.

“I get really distracted easily, but gymnastics helps me focus,” my daughter told me when I asked her about the similar attention challenges she and Biles may face. “Whenever I do my dance-throughs or my tumbling, my mind is thinking of how tight I should be. I also have to listen to my coaches. But when I don’t go to gymnastics, I’m all over the place.”

It’s statements like that that help me allay my own fears, but it’s also seeing the pride she has for the 30-plus medals that are displayed on the walls of her room, and the smile on her face when I pick her up from practice.

So, as we watched Simone Biles’s performances this week, we viewed them not just as fans, but as fellow competitors, and maybe someday, fellow Olympians.

Simone Biles said she closed her time at the Paris Olympics “bawling my eyes out” to her teammates after a glorious run in which she secured four medals — three gold and one silver.

America’s gymnast sweetheart had called this year’s competition her “Redemption Tour” and did not disappoint, leading this year’s team to a heart-thumping performance and a team gold after it took second at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

Biles, 27, bowed out of the Olympics on Monday after having won silver in the women’s floor exercise final following multiple penalties and after she fell on the balance beam.

Speaking about how she felt ending her stint at the world’s greatest competition stage, Biles, an 11-time Olympic medalist, said it hasn’t quite sunk in.

“I don’t think I will until one day I decide to retire. But yesterday, once we got back to the village, I looked at Jordan [Chiles] and just started bawling my eyes out,” she said Tuesday on NBC’s “TODAY” show. “And she was like, ‘I knew it was going happen — I just didn’t know when!’”

“I think I was just so full of emotion and I finally released all of that. I was so proud, happy, bittersweet that the journey’s over. It’s so crazy. It happened too quick. My third Olympics!” she added.

But she may not be done with the Games just yet.

“You know, you never say never. The next Olympics is on home turf. I’m just going to relax and see where life takes me,” she told Hoda Kotb about the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.

Biles reflected on her star career, saying: “If not for my parents and adoption, I wouldn’t be here today.” Ronald and Nellie Biles adopted her and her younger sister, Adria, when she was 6.

Biles appeared for the interview with a boot on her leg, as Kotb noted she had a calf injury during the Games that had been bothering her.

“Right now it’s just precautionary. We’re resting up as much as possible; we have a tour in a couple of weeks. I’m just going to rest and heal,” Biles said.

Biles, who has been vocal about mental health, also spoke about how she handled self-care during the competition, revealing she kept up her routine sessions with her therapist.

“I saw her about three or four times throughout this whole entire process, and it didn’t matter if it was before all-around or after qualifications. I went back to the village and I got on a call with her and did my therapy session because that’s routine for me now,” she said, noting that it made her feel “comfortable and confident to compete.”

Biles took a two-year break from competing after the Olympics in Tokyo, where she grappled with the “twisties.” She cited the emotional toll at the time and became a mental health advocate.

She said that in her future outside the mat, she’d like to have kids with her husband, Jonathan Owens, who was seen in Paris cheering her on.

“He was so excited. He was more excited to pin-trade,” she joked. “Obviously, he loved seeing me complete. He was still keeping score. For him, it meant the world to him because he’s seen the amount of hours that I’ve put in. So to actually see in person, he was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing’ and he was just so excited to be there.”

Biles said she wants to be remembered for more than the gold and the glory. Instead, she simply wants to be remembered as “someone who loved the sport, had fun doing it and was just authentically herself.”