After stellar spring season, U.S. gymnast Joscelyn Roberson marks herself one-to-watch following struggles with the twisties

For U.S. gymnast Joscelyn Roberson, the last few months of her competitive career have been surreal.

“This has always been my dream to do this sort of stuff,” Roberson said last month during a USA Gymnastics press availability. “Being able to do it and just having the experience of going all over the country, all over the world – really – has been really fun.”

The 17-year-old has made a splash in her second season as a senior elite, helping Team USA to gold medals at the DTB Pokal Team Challenge and Pan American Championships, while capturing three medals – including two golds – at the International Gymnastics Federation’s Cairo World Cup 2023.

This successful early season has been part of her and her new coaches’, Laurent and Cecile Landi, plan to make a statement.

“Our plan was to hit it hard in the beginning of the season at Winter Cup and be ready for that because I really wanted to make Germany [DTB] and Pan Ams,” she explained. “I didn’t even think about Egypt as being a possibility. I didn’t even know that was a competition that I could do.”

Roberson making moves

Roberson’s surge comes on the heels of a cross-state move from northeast Texas’s Texarkana to Houston in the south .

“I made the move after [2022 U.S.] championships,” recalled Roberson. “Like early September, and I really love it here. There’s so much more to do and I meet so many more people. It’s been a really great move for me, I think, mentally just because in Texarkana, there’s not really anything to do.”

There also isn’t the renowned coaching duo of the Landis. The pair coached Madison Kocian to Olympic gold and silver at Rio 2016 before joining up with Simone Biles in 2017 at her family owned gym in Houston: World Champions Centre.

Today, they coach five members of the U.S. senior and junior national teams, including Roberson.

That’s a literal atmospheric change for Roberson who trained without peers for years before the move.

“Being in Texarkana, by myself, [I was] the only elite,” she said. “The next level was a Level 9. It was really hard for anybody to understand what I was doing, what I was going through, the training.

“And so, when I moved here and I had five or six other girls going through the exact same thing,” the American continued, “it was really good to have that support system. It’s really good to have someone to lean on when you’re having a hard day because they know what you’re going through and they can understand it.”

Working through the twisties – with Simone Biles

The Landis have also provided a mental boost.

“Just in general, I have improved the most mentally in my gymnastics because before I used to be so scared of everything, especially on floor and bars,” admitted Roberson. “Laurent really broke it down in a way where it wasn’t as scary for me anymore, and I got to get past those boundaries that were keeping me back for so long.”

One of those boundaries was the twisties, the gymnastics condition where the body and the mind fall out of sync, made face by seven-time Olympic medallist Simone Biles. Biles withdrew from several finals at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in 2021 to priortise her mental health as she dealt with a bout of the twisties.

She and Roberson have connected on their struggles with the mind-body alignment.

“We’ve talked about the twisties a lot because I’ve gotten them countless times,” says Roberson. “She was just telling me how it was the weirdest feeling and how she didn’t feel she could control her body.

“I was like, ‘I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve done that so many times'.”

For Roberson, the twisties manifested themselves most recently on her double-twisting, double backs on floor exercise. It got so bad, she says, that just a mention of the element could ruin her practice.

But at World Champions Centre, Laurent Landi helped her understand the skill better and – quickly – conquer it.

“When I moved to WCC, probably the second day I was there, he was like, ‘Do a full-in into the pit.’ And I was like, ‘I can’t do those,’” recalled Roberson. “He was like, ‘Just try. It’s a standing full, stand up.’… I do a full-in and I’m like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I just did it!’

More boundaries pushed

Landi also helped her to better understand the double-double on floor, a move Roberson now competes a variation of.

Like so much of what Roberson has done over the last few months, putting that element out in competition wasn’t something she expected.

“I never thought in a million years I’d ever compete that, and he actually told me I wasn't going to compete it until [U.S.] Championships,” said Roberson of her layout, double-double tumbling pass. “Then, when I get to Winter Cup, he was like, ‘I want you to warm up your double, double.’ I was like, ‘Okay.’

“Then, the competition day comes and he was like, ‘You should compete it,’” she continued.

She did – and finished second on the event at the meet. Since Winter Cup, she’s added even more difficulty to her floor routine with a layout, full-twisting double second line.

It’s part of a level of confidence that’s emerged in Houston.

“When I was a junior in 2021… I was super confident that whole year,” said Roberson. “Then, at the end of it, somehow, it was like something switched and I just lost all my confidence on everything.

“After I moved to WCC, it really was a big confidence boost for me getting over that mental block of the double-double because it had been a mental block for year and years,” she said. “I never thought I would ever do it.”

It’s an emerging theme for an emerging gymnast with just over one year to go to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.