With the support of a club behind him an injury at a bad time is just a bump in the road for an Okotoks gymnast.
Airborne’s Zayden Rabie heads into the Canadian Championships in Trampoline Gymnastics with Team Alberta this month in Ontario with a renewed focus and determination.
“He’s had an amazing competition year, probably the best competition year he’s ever had,” said Airborne coach Kennedy Imler. “He has risen to be one of the most advanced athletes and I think he really likes having people look up to him.
“He wants to set a good example and he’s just stepped up to be that leader in the gym and to take the extra turns and really focus on executions.”
The 14-year-old injured his foot just one month ago and ranked his health at about 70 per cent with just three weeks left before the championships.
“It does definitely impact my training, it’s difficult to persevere through even though I know I need to because I have big competitions coming up,” said Rabie, a Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School student. “It’s really helpful when everyone in the gym is so supportive and I honestly couldn’t have done it without everybody in the gym. With me I don’t have that strong of will power so it really helps having Kennedy and the entire gym pushing me and keeping me motivated.”
The impact from landing, and sticking a landing, has proven to be one of the biggest hurdles from the injury.
“That set me back quite a bit, I lost a couple of skills so it’s been an ongoing process to get them back, but overall it’s been pretty good,” said Rabie, who called landing the twisting double on trampoline his highlight of the season. “That was a really fun process to get to and really fun learning and getting that sense of accomplishment once I actually got it on the trampoline.”
Rabie will be competing at Level 5 in the disciplines of trampoline, double-mini trampoline and tumbling at the national event.
Competing his routines, many of which have seen recent additions in degree of difficulty, is job number-one in Ontario.
“Specifically on trampoline I’ve been raising my DD (degree of difficulty) quite a bit,” he said. “In my previous competitions this year I’ve had only four doubles and (now) I’m adding an extra one and it has a twisting in it.
“I’m excited to try it in a real competition situation and just want to stay on the trampoline and make it as far as possible.”
In tumbling, the routine has also seen some modifications with the addition of a double-flip to close off the performance.
“I’ve had lots of troubles with these, the list goes on and on,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get them on the floor for probably a year and a half now.
“I’ve been doing them consistently on floor so we’re going to try and put them into routine and see how it goes.”
His routine in the double-mini trampoline has Rabie particularly excited as the components are there — if executed — for him to mobilized from Level 5 to 6 in the event.
“It’s just a matter of completing them and making them nice enough to hit the score,” he said. “If we mobilize that would be amazing and maybe next year we could try and go in Level 6.”
Rabie has been to half a dozen national level events before and has a knack for performing his best with the pressure on.
“He knows what to expect so we haven’t spent as much time mentally preparing him as we do physically,” Imler said. “The hardest thing is his last competition was about mid-May so he’s had a long time off. Everybody else is done competition season.
“So it’s been keeping him in that mind frame of he’s still competing.”
With the injury so fresh, the training has altered slightly.
The Okotokian is still going in four days per week, three hours per session to sharpen his routines.
“He’s actually quite a good competitor and competes really well under pressure,” Imler said. “Even in training, when he knows people are watching him, he’s always putting that extra effort in.
“He’s had such a good year that I have a lot of confidence he’s going to do really well.”
The 2019 Canadian Championships in Trampoline Gymnastics run July 25-28 in Oshawa, Ontario.
For more information on Rabie and the Airborne club go to airborntandt.com
