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Suni Lee Says This Mental Trick Helps Her Crush Gymnastics Competitions
Suni Lee visualizes her routines every night before bed, she tells Women's Health.
The 21-year-old explains that gymnastics "is a very, very mental sport."
She's looking to defend her gold medal in the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Suni Lee has been through a lot in the lead-up to the Paris Olympics, but she’s back and ready to compete. The all-around gymnastics gold medalist has been training hard for her upcoming competition, both on and off the mat.
In fact, Suni has a unique competition ritual: She likes to visualize her routines before bed.
“I love visualizing before I go to sleep, my routines and all the possibilities of things that can happen,” she told Women's Health at the Team USA Media Summit in April. “Gymnastics is very, very mental sport.”
When she’s laying in bed, the 21-year-old goes through every event in her mind. “It's funny because I'll do some routines—it's not intentional, it just happens—but it's me splitting the beam or crashing on my head and I'm like, ‘Okay, this is not good,’” she said. “So then I start over. I start over until I get the perfect routine and then I go to sleep.”
Suni says having a good mindset is "half" of what it takes to excel in gymnastics. "If you're focused on the one wrong thing or that little hint of doubt, it can send you off," she said. "If I were to do this in a competition, then I know exactly what to do, because I did it in my head already. Then it just kind of comes naturally."
Another one of Suni's practices? She gives herself keywords for each skill so she can easily remember them during a routine.
"Then if I'm on the beam, I'm like, 'Okay, legs!' Just something like that, so then I can think, 'Oh yeah, activate your legs or finish your takeoff,'" she said. "It helps me because then I don't have time to think about anything else."
Over the years, Suni has frequently discussed her mental health. In April, she told Women's Health that she also journals and speaks with a therapist to clear her head.
“That's been something that's super important to me lately just because it is a lot of pressure, [and] is very nerve wracking,” she said. “It just feels good to talk about it.”
And that isn't the only time that Suni has been open about her wellbeing: In 2023, the Minnesota native revealed that she was diagnosed with two incurable kidney diseases. She's currently in remission.
“There were so many times where I thought about quitting and just giving up because I was so sick,” she told Hoda Kotb on a June episode of TODAY. “But once I had those people around me who lifted me up and supported me and just made sure that I was good, I knew that this is something that I wanted.”
Good luck, Suni!
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