The Olympic gold medalist shares how she’s taking care of her mental and physical health while continuing to recover from the knee injury that sidelined her for the 2021 games.
During the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, Laurie Hernandez was flying high.
She earned a silver medal on the balance beam and was part of the legendary “Final Five,” helping the United States win gold in the team event. After a whirlwind break from competition that saw her in television appearances on the likes of “Dancing with the Stars” and as an author of two New York Times Bestseller books, she returned to competition with her eyes set on Tokyo 2020.
An injury changed those plans. In June, during warmups for the 2021 U.S. championships (one of the competitions en route to the Olympic Games), she suffered a hyperextended knee,when your knee bends back to a straightened position.
Hernandez told Healthline in a Zoom interview that she landed on her straightened leg from a high distance when she dismounted from the balance beam.
What resulted was a bone bruise, fluid buildup, a torn meniscus, and a cyst. She persevered to compete in the beam routine on the first night but ultimately withdrew from competition and will not be competing with the U.S. team in Tokyo this year.
“It’s just been a lot of being mindful about it all,” Hernandez said when asked how she’s managing the injury and her thwarted Olympics goals. “When I first landed, the muscles around my knee, so, my quad and my hamstring completely stopped firing, because that’s what your body does when there is trauma to a physical area. Everything around it seems to shut down, so, during competition I still tried to compete, but it was bad because I was so out of it — I don’t know how I did it.”
Source: healthline