You do one trick at a time, all the way to the end, to the stick.

As you get to the last trick, you start thinking about the dismount, placing it in the right position, setting it high enough and getting the right rotation. Then, in the air, you start thinking about looking for the ground and going for the stick.

I feel my heels come up over my head. That's when I know I have to twist. And then I'll twist backwards, and look backwards. I twist back for the ground behind me, focus on it, and then watch to put my feet right where I want them.

I think my eyes are usually open till I let go of the bar. Then I close my eyes. I have a feeling of where the flip is, though not through visuals. I do it through a feeling of the dismount itself.

The tap. The feeling of the tap. The bar bends. If you don't bend the bar right, you know it. You feel it. You feel an extension at the bottom because you're pulling down on the bar so you can go up. Release too early and the bar pulls down too early, and you're a little low but rotating very fast. You know that the ground is going to start coming fast, and you have to turn over fast and look for it. Let go too late, you're floating, and you have to pull around and initiate the rotation yourself and get your feet around. Either way, you're pretty much at the bar's mercy until you let go, when you can regain control.

When you lose where you are in the air, you start looking around for something to key in on, the lights or the ground, or something . As long as you can find the ground, you know how to place yourself on it.

I think that the feeling, that whole flying through the air, is just numbers. The first few times I do a new trick I don't know where I am. But then, you just go through it over and over again in practice. Little by little, you start feeling what's going on, and where you are, if you need to pull harder, if you need to adjust. Six months later, I'll know how to pull it around, I'll know where I am.

You don't hear anything. You try to block everything out. But I can hear myself scream if I get lost in the air. But maybe that's after the fact, when you hear everything else. So I guess it isn't silence. Or it may be silent and it can be broken by certain things.

Jair Lynch is an Olympic gymnast and was a two-time NCAA champion at Stanford University