For­mer na­tion­al artis­tic gym­nast The­ma Williams, who has of­fi­cial­ly re­tired from com­pe­ti­tion, but the 25-year-old has now found a way to still in­cor­po­rate some of its pos­i­tive in­to her very ac­tive dai­ly life and has now opt­ed to fi­nesse it.

Speak­ing to the Olympic Chan­nel (olympic­cha­n­nel.com web­site) Williams said, “I start­ed gym­nas­tics when I was six-years-old be­cause my old­er sis­ter used to do gym­nas­tics, and my mom was wor­ried I would get hurt, so she took me to Tots n Tum­blers which is where my gym­nas­tics jour­ney be­gan.

Re­flect­ing on her ca­reer, Williams, who rep­re­sent­ed T&T for 14 years said the most dif­fi­cult part in start­ing the sport of gym­nas­tics for her was go­ing from an in­for­mal en­vi­ron­ment at home to a for­mal en­vi­ron­ment in the gym with oth­er kids and line ups and hav­ing to wait my turn.

“It was an en­tire­ly dif­fer­ent so­cial en­vi­ron­ment for me,” stat­ed Williams.

In de­scrib­ing her sport, Williams said, “Gym­nas­tics is the per­fect com­bi­na­tion of grace, el­e­gance, strength, agili­ty and of course men­tal­ly de­ter­mi­na­tion.

She added, “Re­silience in gym­nas­tics lit­er­al­ly means de­cid­ing on your worse days, to have the best day that you can, get­ting up and try­ing again.

Williams, who was the first lo­cal gym­nast to com­pete at a World Cham­pi­onship in 2011, but was con­tro­ver­sial­ly axed from the Rio Olympic Games trav­el­ling con­tin­gent said she be­came par­tic­u­lar­ly in­ter­est­ed in the Olympic Games af­ter watch­ing Car­ly Pat­ter­son per­form and when I saw Nas­tia Liukin do it I def­i­nite­ly knew I want­ed to be an Olympian.

With re­gards to her present-day ac­tiv­i­ties, Williams stat­ed, “Right now what I do is take the tech­niques and the skills that I have learnt from my years of prac­tice and I make it in­to some­thing fun and free­ing and some­thing al­most ther­a­peu­tic for me.”

“What I like to say is that I am tak­ing the sport of gym­nas­tics and I fi­nesse it. I used what I have learnt in a cre­ative way,” she boast­ed.

“Any­where I see a nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment where I can do some­thing or do a skill I al­ways take the op­por­tu­ni­ty, it’s all about fun and free­dom.

Williams al­so point­ed to the fact that there are a lot of mis­con­cep­tions of the sport, one be­ing you need to have a cer­tain phys­i­cal ap­pear­ance to get in­volve.

She ex­plained, “One of the most com­mon mis­con­cep­tions about the sport of gym­nas­tics world­wide is that gym­nas­tics re­quires a body type, the re­al­i­ty is that gym­nas­tics cre­ates a body type.

“The train­ing regime that we en­gage in is what sculps and moulds our bod­ies to be able to per­form the skills and tech­niques that we do

“I like to keep mov­ing, I like to get on my feet and I love be­ing out­doors and gen­er­al­ly I en­joy liv­ing an ac­tive lifestyle and I will con­tin­ue to do so.

“I will en­cour­age oth­ers to take care of their bod­ies in a sim­i­lar way, get out­doors, get ac­tive and in­cor­po­rate the things that you love in­to your work-outs and def­i­nite­ly make sweat­ing part of your lifestyle.

The for­mer top T&T ath­lete in end­ing her in­ter­view said, “What I hope to ac­com­plish is to in­spire pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes who have stepped off of the floor to use their tal­ents to em­pow­er and in­spire oth­ers to re­alise that when we step off of the com­pe­ti­tion floor it’s not over, it’s the be­gin­ning of some­thing new.