- Hey, it's Margzetta Frazier.
I'm a professional gymnast,
and I'm gonna take you through everything I do in a day.
To be an athlete means to have an un-ordinary amount
of discipline and sheer will and determination.
When you're putting in thousands of hours into something
that truly is what makes you, you.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
My alarm wakes me up at 6:30.
I think I need to hit snooze one more time.
See you in like 10 minutes.
I try not to look at my phone.
When I look at my phone and I don't have any notifications,
I get sad that no one likes me
so then I flip it over really fast.
As soon as I get out of bed,
I walk over to my spiritual center.
I have like my crystals and my list of affirmations
and things that I say to myself every morning,
things like: I am beautiful, I am valuable,
I love myself, I'm proud of myself.
I grew up with horrible acne and it would always relocate,
and I never understood why.
It would start on my forehead
and then it would go away,
and then it would go to my chin but then it would go away.
I realized that less is definitely more.
I will use benzoyl peroxide base wash, morning and night.
On the days where I need a little more exfoliation,
I will do either this one or this one.
I'll do a nice light moisturizer that already has SPF in it,
and then I'll make a cup of tea or maybe a smoothie.
I'll cut up the bananas in a Ziploc bag and I'll freeze 'em.
Put that in a blender with some coconut milk
and some honey and some peanut butter.
Coconut milk, oh, but the power went,
the power went out yesterday.
[bouncy music]
It's fine.
It just tastes good.
And it makes me excited to wake up in the morning.
So I'll get to physical therapy around 7:00 to 7:10.
I'm working on everything because this is
almost my near 20th year of gymnastics.
And that's a really long time to be pounding on your body,
so I have to take really good care of myself
and physical therapy has been helping me a lot.
I'll start with maybe some lymphatic massages on my legs
because I find when I am stressed,
I carry that in my legs to where I remember crying
because I couldn't walk up the steps of my house
when I was younger.
I try to relieve that with Tracey
who's our trainer and she'll work on us.
I'll do a lot of cupping, especially on my back
because my back gets really tight.
I have really strong shoulders
because the uneven bars is my forte,
so the cupping along with sitting in a cold tub
and alternating between cold and hot, cold and hot,
toe raises and just things to stabilize
my hips and my knees and my ankles
because those are my problem areas right now.
So right now it's 7:40.
I'm walking to the gym.
We start practice at 7:45.
I'm a former US national team member.
I'm a World Cup medalist.
I won the uneven bars
and I got a silver medal in all around.
And I'm now a gymnast at UCLA.
When I was training for elite gymnastics,
I trained I wanna say seven hours a day, six days a week.
And now that I'm in college,
the rules are a little different because there are rules,
so now I only train am about three and a half hours a day
maybe four days a week.
Stretching is very important to any athlete.
I would say gymnastics especially,
because being flexible is part of what gets you high points.
If you try to do a split in the air
and you are not over 180, you get a deduction.
I love to roll out the bottoms of my feet with a golf ball.
I really try to keep my calves pliable
and I do stretch them all the time.
Even in the shower, I stretch them.
I'm always stretching them.
When I'm in the grocery line I'm stretching them.
Practice usually lasts until 10:30.
I can't film too much of practice
because it's very serious.
After we warm up and we stretch,
we will do pre strength, press handstands,
which is where we will start in a sitting position
with our hands on the ground in a straddle,
press all the way up to a handstand.
And we will do like 10 of those.
We'll do leg lifts where we're hanging on the bar,
and we will lift our toes to our hands.
We'll do a lot of band work.
Glute activation is really important for landings,
really activating your muscles
so that you can absorb the floor on impact safely.
I do all four events,
so I try to work not as fast as I can
but as efficient as I can.
I try not to do floor and vault in the same day.
But if I do floor,
I'll try to do as many passes as I need,
and I will not take slop as a turn.
Every turn needs to be good so that I don't have to do extra
because my body cannot afford to.
My favorite event when I'm competing is the uneven bars.
And everyone is always so shocked by that
because I guess I'm most known for my floor exercise.
But I just love bars, I don't know why.
I guess I just love the mechanics of it
and the swing and how something so abnormal
feels so normal to me.
I just understand it the most.
I would say for me to feel confident enough to know
that I am going to hit a bar routine every time,
it's gonna take probably a few months.
When it comes to specific skills and perfecting those skills
it can take years.
I have skills that I've been trying to do for five years
and I finally have mastered it.
It's definitely worthwhile, but it's frustrating
especially when you bring in the mental aspect
if the skill is scary,
or if you're afraid you're gonna hurt yourself,
or if you hurt yourself on it previously.
Getting the courage to get up and do it again
takes a really long time.
I would consider gymnastics the hardest sport in the world.
Yes, because of all of the training,
but I don't think people put into consideration
how young we are.
I started when I was three.
Especially when you're doing ballet bar
in front of a mirror all day,
and you're comparing yourself to your teammates,
and you did something that you thought was good,
and then you're getting told by coaches
or by fans on the internet, that it wasn't good,
or that you didn't deserve to make a certain spot.
To get more personal because it's not a secret anymore
and it's not something I'm ashamed of,
I have struggled with bulimia in the past.
and especially with gymnastics,
you're wearing skin tight clothes.
And I don't know, it really took a dig on me growing up
but I've realized that this body is capable
of extraordinary things.
And if it wasn't for this body,
I would not be one of the best gymnasts in the world.
That self love it had to come from a really deep place.
And I am so thankful for my body and I love it.
And as far as the bulimia,
I've been open and honest with my family,
I've been going to therapy, seeing dieticians.
I am healthy, I'm on a good track.
And for anyone go going through it
you're not alone and you can do it,
and there's nothing wrong with asking for help.
So as far as self-esteem,
it took me a really long time to develop that.
And that's another big thing.
I keep using terms like I applaud myself
and I'm proud of myself,
because it took me a really long time to admit those things.
Instead of looking for validation
in another person to tell me they're proud of me,
I will always from now on be the first person to say
that I deserved it and that I'm special
and that I'm proud of myself.
As soon as I finish practice,
I'll grab a protein shake,
and I will take a nice hot shower, put my hair mask in.
This leotard I'm wearing now is very special.
It is part of our Black excellence competition
which supports equality
within all races and racial acceptance.
We're not just watching athletes do gymnastics,
you're learning about past Black Bruins
who have scored the first 10 ever,
or who have gotten the first scholarship ever.
So a lot of history and a very important cause.
Competition day, we gotta saddle up,
we gotta get the troops ready 'cause we're beating face.
I would say that the makeup is definitely more intense
for competition because just like theater, just like ballet,
you want to stand out to the audience
even if the camera's not on you.
And I love to do dark colors on my lips
because I just feel like when you smile
the audience can see it better.
I found YouTube drag queens such as Willam Belli,
just really watching how they do their makeup
to look more artistic.
Like they really made makeup art.
It's always been a really big part of me.
It's another way for me to express myself.
And that definitely makes me feel
like I am confident and ready to take on anything.
I'm a huge believer in when look good, you feel good.
I prefer not to get my callouses removed
because they help stay on the beam
so that your feet are rougher than the beam material
and you can really feel what you're doing.
on bars when I'm swinging
it helps my hands not burst in the flames
when I'm on there going around and around for 30 seconds.
But I do love a good manicure and pedicure.
It's part of that look good feel good process.
I do get acrylic or gel nails,
but not too long, but it's definitely doable.
Gymnastics is definitely a full body workout.
It's a full everything work out.
You're working your mind.
You're working your muscles.
You're working your toes.
For example, balance beam,
because you are standing on something
that is probably the width of your iPhone,
you have to use your feet as hands.
And that means you have to use your toes as fingers.
And I am grabbing onto the beam with my toes
and I'm a not even thinking about it,
it just naturally happens.
And then you have to have such core engagement
with what is going on here, which is why we do all
of the weighted work and staying stabilized.
Because if you have a loose core,
it doesn't matter how straight you are
you're gonna fall off the beam.
If you bring your arms forward
both arms have to go forward,
both arms have to go back.
I know some crew girls who like to land things like this.
Most of of the time, that's a mistake.
And because they're so good at using their core to fix it
you don't know that they messed up.
And then I don't think people understand
how hard it is to do a dismount when you're already tired.
So having that core work and having that mental stamina,
you have to be so mentally
and physically engaged everywhere.
Typically I'll have two classes a day,
and some are in person, some are online.
I would say my longest class is about a minute.
A minute, I wish.
I would say my longest class is
probably an hour and 50 minutes,
which isn't that bad if you have like a snack.
I love to take an Epsom salt bath
because I don't know what it does
and I'm not gonna pretend that I know what it does,
but I know that I do feel so much better when I step out
as far as my hips and my joints, my back.
Dinner, the possibilities of dinner are endless.
I do enjoy cooking.
I love pizza.
Okay, here's the thing.
And don't get mad, but the pizza here.
I haven't been able to find a pizza place
that resonates with me
so I just end up going to Trader Joe's
and getting an oven pizza because
I expect it to taste like oven pizza.
Incorporating my personal style into my gymnastics
has definitely been very awarding for me.
As far as the dance moves I do,
to doing an elbow drop onto the mat
after I stick a routine.
Who knows why I came up with that,
but I didn't because I wanted to.
And I'm not hurting anybody,
I'm just making the environment fun.
My relationship with gymnastics
has definitely changed a lot.
I love that I'm reinventing the sport
for myself to make it more enjoyable.
It's important for me
to push those boundaries within gymnastics
because I just want it to be a safe and healthy place.
My little sister is on the national team.
She's my favorite gymnast, so incredibly talented.
The fact that she is now able to be a goofball
at national team camp and have floor music that she loves
because it's her favorite song at the moment
as a result of people like me, that means the world to me,
and who knows what the sport will look like in 10 years.
I know it's gonna be so much fun.
It's gonna be like Disney on ice.
It's just gonna be entertaining
and fun for the audience to watch
and so much more creative and artistic as the sport evolves.
And I'm excited to have a hand in that,
and I'm not gonna stop having a hand in it anytime soon.
I would say that gymnastics has really been
a catalyst for my self growth journey,
and It's really helped me look deep within myself
and find my strengths and weaknesses.
I have really turned into
what I've needed the most when I was younger.
And I would say that that is a huge accomplishment for me.
Thank you so much "Self" magazine for coming with me today,
but it's time to go to bed.