Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:00:00) – The views, thoughts and opinions expressed by hosts and guests on this podcast are their own and do not represent the views, thoughts and opinions of UCLA Athletics or UCLA gymnastics. The content of this podcast is strictly for informational purposes only and should not be considered professional advice.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:00:18) – The skills are always there for me. It’s having that fighting confidence in myself, not thinking about the other girls, stepping into who I am as an athlete and knowing that pressure helps me on the competition floor and it helps me in practice and just like owning that.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:00:46) – Welcome to the Bruins on Deck edition of the Resilience to Brilliance podcast, where you’ll be inspired by riveting behind the scenes stories from current members of UCLA gymnastics. I’m your host, Kim Hamilton Anthony. Here we go. Super senior Chloe Lashbrooke came to UCLA as a freshman walk-on in 2020, and she thoroughly impressed us by entering into the number one floor exercise lineup in the nation. Not only that, but she also scored career highs of 9.9 on floor exercise to make a strong contribution to the team.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:01:26) – As one can imagine, between 2020 and now. Chloe has had a lot of opportunities to be resilient due to circumstances, but in addition to that, she also had an Achilles’ injury that sidelined her for a while. Well, I had a chance to sit down with Chloe and have a little chat with her, and we talked about her resilience journey as a Bruin and what she’s looking forward to in her future. Let’s listen in. Hey, Chloe. Great to see you. Thank you so much for sitting down and having a little chat with me today. I really appreciate that.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:02:07) – Well, thanks for having me, Kim.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:02:08) – You know what? Let’s just go ahead and jump right into your resilience story. How have you been able to demonstrate resilience while you’ve been at UCLA? And I do know that a lot of us have read the articles about what you’ve gone through, but I want to hear it straight from you.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:02:24) – Yeah, I’m sure if you’ve been following UCLA gymnastics, you’ve seen that I had a bit of an Achilles’ injury my sophomore year.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:02:33) – That was particularly difficult, I think, for me, because I had like a dream freshman season for myself. I didn’t have the expectation that I was going to be competing almost every meet in a number one floor lineup in the country. It was like an absolute dream scenario for me as a walk on also. It was just like incredible and it was so devastating to be sent home from, due to Covid the week of Pac 12, that was super devastating. And so every single day of Covid, I was so excited just to like, get back with my team, get back to training so that I could feel that feeling again of like competing for UCLA gymnastics. It was like so unreal.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:03:17) – All right, Chloe, I want to push the pause button on that one because you talked about being in this great lineup, the number one lineup in the country as a walk on. And evidently you didn’t expect yourself to be there. So tell me what it was like when you first heard that you would actually be a part of that group.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:03:35) – What was that like for you?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:03:37) – I knew I was really talented and I knew I was good, but I knew I was on a team with even more talented and like, crazy Olympians. Like, we had like, two Olympians at the time, several national team members. I think I felt like all my hard work had come together. My passion for the sport had come together. I felt very honored to step on the floor with these very talented ladies. It was absolutely amazing.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:04:06) – And you looked amazing as well. And I was just looking at some of your routines and yeah, absolutely beautiful. So we can jump back into that resilience story. You found yourself in a situation where you were sent home due to Covid, so let’s pick it up from there.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:04:21) – So we’re all quarantining for quite a while and I think October rolled around. We got cleared to come back, and start training to try and put together a season in January. And unfortunately it’s just that’s quite a quick turnaround for gymnastics, especially if you’re, like taking six months off.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:04:39) – Like, that’s almost unheard of for this. Like even a week off for vacation is like almost crazy to think about.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:04:47) – Not many people know that. Chloe, I remember those years when I was competing. We never got a vacation from gymnastics. It just didn’t happen.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:04:56) – Yeah. It’s weird. Just taking even more than a week off, you’re just kind of thrown off you don’t, it feels like you don’t have the same strength. It’s just like it’s so much work to work back to where you were. So taking six months off is just, like I said, unheard of the gymnastics world. And then trying to get ready for a whole season in two months is like insane. But I was super excited to be back. And like I said, every day I was just like, hoping and wishing I could be back with my team and back training again so I could have that feeling, once more like on the competition floor. And so maybe a week before our first meet, I unfortunately tore my Achilles’ just due to, like, you know, pushing myself too much.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:05:37) – I wasn’t quite in the shape I needed to be to be doing those, that level of skills yet. And then that was a really difficult time. I mean, we were still really deep into like the pandemic. It wasn’t quite solved yet and so there wasn’t a lot of things to distract me. It was very like low time in general for everyone. So that was just an extra blow to me personally. And then coming back the next year, I was like, all right, super excited, let’s go. I’m ready to compete. I’m so excited. And then we had quite a few issues. Just the environment was not super nurturing for me. And I was having some like a little bit of fear of tumbling and just really scary. I tore my Achilles’ while tumbling.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:06:29) – Coming back from an injury like that, I could imagine that there would be this level of fear. And maybe you’re wondering if you’re tendon, if you’re muscles, your ankles are strong enough, and maybe you’re even wondering if it’ll happen again.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:06:44) – I can’t even imagine. So how do you work yourself back into performing those high level skills again?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:06:51) – Yes, I put a lot of my focus into the weight room, which is, I think, interesting because most gymnasts have never walked into a weight room before they go to college. It’s very common thing in college, and it’s honestly a game changer in terms of injury prevention. And when you’re competing in college every single weekend, you need to be just extremely strong, extremely precise in your conditioning. And so that really helps give me the confidence to do those skills again. And I’m the strongest I’ve ever been as a gymnast. So that helps me get over those fears a little bit.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:07:33) – That’s good.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:07:34) – Yeah.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:07:35) – Now, how are you parlaying what you learned when you overcame your injury into this year’s season?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:07:41) – I’ve learned a lot of things. I think appreciating every moment that I’m in the gym, just with Covid and the injury, it’s it’s not a given that I get to be with my team every day, it’s not a given that I can flip every day. And also just coming in with the same passion I had on the first day that I walked into Yates Gym.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:08:00) – I try and bring that with me every day to practice, some of my competitions. I try and spread that to my teammates to help them get through as well, because gymnastics is, as we all know, it’s really hard and it’s not always as fun as it looks on the competition floor. They’re not, every day isn’t like that, we’re not all screaming jumping up and down.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:08:22) – That’s a really good point Chloe. There’s a lot of hard work that goes on behind the scenes that nobody else sees.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:08:30) – As we like to say, competition Day is like the celebration of what you’ve put in. We’re celebrating all the hard work that we’ve put in during that preseason and the in-betweens, like during the week as we get to the weekend.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:08:41) – Now I want to go back to what you said about how tomorrow’s not promised in the gym. You may not be able to flip again one of these days, and you want to take advantage of being able to do gymnastics while you can. So is that one of the reasons why you decided to come back as a super senior?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:08:59) – Definitely.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:09:00) – I was just thinking, I cannot end on this note one and two, we, I’m not able to do gymnastics forever. I think other sports soccer, volleyball I could always play. I can always play soccer maybe not the level like a D1 level, but gymnastics is like once you’re retired, you’re just you’re really retired. And you or just, it’s never going to be the same again. I couldn’t imagine putting the sport down forever, so I might as well do it while I can.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:09:35) – I like that. So how has it been for you this senior year? What has it been like for you? How are you performing? Are you where you want to be right now?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:09:46) – I would say this has been one of the best years I’ve had at UCLA for many different reasons. I think my freshman year was my other favorite, but this year I feel a sense of like maturity, wiseness and I’m like savoring every moment. I know which moments I would like to savor. I feel the strongest I have been.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:10:06) – I don’t feel like I’m like rushing myself through every moment. I’m right on track to where I’d like to be. You haven’t seen me yet on the competition floor, however, I’m looking great in the gym and I’m right on track to be on the floor soon. And I’m very excited to be back again for another season.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:10:28) – Now tell me about your goals for this year. What do you want to accomplish this final year of your competition?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:10:35) – I think I just, I really just want to have fun. I had no expectations my freshman year and I’m trying to adopt that into this year. I think having no expectations allows me to be free in the gym, and it frees my mind a little bit because I can tend to overthink. I think on a different year, I would be in a different mental state that I am now if I hadn’t. If we were two meets in and I hadn’t competed yet, I’d be like a little like stress. And I feel I feel very like free about it and I know that like when my time comes, my time comes and I’m ready to go.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:11:18) – So yeah, I think just overall just have fun and celebrate my gymnastics career.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:11:25) – What is it you need to do in order to consistently be in the floor lineup?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:11:31) – The skills are always there for me. It’s having that fighting confidence in myself, not thinking about the other girls, stepping into who I am as an athlete and knowing that pressure helps me on the competition floor and it helps me in practice and just like owning that. I think every once in a while I still have a bit of fear due to the Achilles’ injury. I tore it on a double pike, and that’s my last pass.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:12:06) – And it’s so beautiful.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:12:08) – Thank you. Which can be a little scary if your’re fatigued as well, so I just I have to kind of tap into trusting my training. I’ve been doing this floor routine, the exact same floors for, like, almost ten years, so.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:12:25) – Oh goodness.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:12:26) – I know, so just. Yeah, having fun always helps as well. Just kind of takes my mind off of fear.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:12:36) – Now, you said something about not looking at other people. Can you lean into that for me and help me to understand what you mean by that?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:12:43) – Like I said about my freshman year. Every single person on the UCLA gymnastics team has an incredibly insane resume. Just national team everywhere, Olympians everywhere. And then I sometimes have a tendency to look at myself and I’m like, yes, I had a very successful club career and yes, I have competed on this team. But it’s still it can be intimidating when you’re competing in a spot, like competing for a spot against one of these incredible ladies. Can make me doubt myself a little bit. I just have to remember, I have to give myself credit because nobody’s lucky. Like no one just is lucky to be on this team. You’ve really earned it. I had to remind myself that sometimes. So sometimes before my floor routine, I just have to say to myself, like, just relax, you’ve earned this. And then. Step into it.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:13:39) – Chloe. It’s kind of fun listening to you analyze yourself. You are very self-aware in that you know what’s going on internally. You’re assessing why these things are happening. So I want you to think about the individual who is listening to you right now. They’re hearing your story, and maybe they have some struggles or some challenges that they’re facing. And they need to be resilient. So based on your own personal experience, how would you encourage them to be resilient?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:14:09) – This might sound cliche, but like take it day by day, celebrate the small wins my mom asked me every day. She’s like, what made you smile today? So I always try and do something so that I can tell her what made me smile and something that I’ve learned in college, which is probably it’s very important, is that you can’t rely on other people to give you validation or, or happiness. It really has to come from you in the first place. And it’s just a cherry on top of like someone else comes up to you and says something, but that really is I think that’s confidence at its core is when it can come from yourself that little wins take it day by day. It’s not a sprints a marathon, all of those cliches. That’s really helped me the last couple of years.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:15:05) – Oh that’s good. I appreciate you sharing that. So after you finish competing this season, you will graduate from UCLA. Have you made plans? What are you going to do afterwards? What are you thinking?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:15:18) – I have some tentative plans. I’m filling out some graduate school applications right now. I’m wanting to do, as of now, I want to be a sports psychologist. I was a psychology major here at UCLA, and I just absolutely loved every single one of those classes. And in order to do that, I have to get a doctorate degree for psychology. So quite a bit more school, but I’m so passionate about psychology, it’s like so fun for me. So I, I think that’s the right path. And I’ve noticed that I get really excited talking to my teammates and like trying to help them out.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:15:56) – And it’s like, this would be so cool if it could be a career. You know, like, I just feel like with all of my experiences, I’ve experienced like such high highs and low lows and like everything in between, I feel like I have so much to give to a young athlete. So it just seems like a really cool option for me that I’d love to explore.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:16:15) – Yeah, Chloe, I was thinking the exact same thing. You know, the highs and lows. You know how to be resilient firsthand. So it’s not something you’re just reading in a book and trying to communicate to these athletes. So you are going to have an amazing career and you’re going to enjoy it. I just truly believe that. So to close us out, I have one last question to ask you. And that is what does living in brilliance mode look like for you?
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:16:43) – For me, that’s taking care of myself so that I can take care of the people around me. And that goes for being on a gymnastics team.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:16:54) – You know, just going through life in the workplace with your family, you can’t help others if you’re not taking care of yourself. So. Yeah. That’s walking through brilliance for me. Yep.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:17:07) – That sounds pretty brilliant to me. Well, Chloe, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule. I really appreciate it and I just wish you all the best this season and beyond.
Chloe Lashbrooke (00:17:21) – Thank you Kim, for having me.
Kim Hamilton Anthony (00:17:28) – Thanks for listening. If you want to learn more about Chloe Lashbrooke, check out our show notes at InBrillianceMode.com/Podcast and to connect with UCLA Gymnastics on Instagram, follow them @UCLAgymnastics.
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