Gymnast Ellie Black in Two-Piece Workout Gear Shares "Tour Life"

Ellie Black is a very successful gymnast. She is a four time Olympic athlete, having represented Canada in the 2012, 2016, 2020, and 2024 Games. In 2019, Black became the first woman to win back-to-back titles at the Pan American Games. She is also the most decorated gymnast in them, winning five gold medals, three silvers, and two bronzes. Black is on the Gold Over America tour, and recently shared a video of herself shooting hoops with her castmates on Instagram. She captioned the post, “What really goes on backstage.”

1. She Loves Eggs

Black talked about her wellness secrets in an interview with Best Health Magazine. She says that she makes sure to eat healthy. Black says that she loves eating eggs. “My day starts around 8 a.m. I get up and prepare my breakfast, which is usually hard-boiled eggs. Nutrition is a really big part of my everyday training routine—I need to fuel my body with the proper foods to be at my best, which means making sure I’m getting nutritious foods and high-quality proteins.”

2. She Values Recovery

Black shared how she recovers in her Best Health Magazine interview. “When I head home in the evening, I make sure I get good recovery work in, within 30 minutes of finishing practice, because that’s the optimal time. I may go to physio, but if I’m at home, I’ll make sure I’m doing leg compressions, having an ice bath, or icing a specific area of my body. Then I have some time to relax. It’s really important that I’m taking care of my body—resting, recovering, and fuelling properly. I love cooking and baking, going outside to get fresh air and ground myself—that’s a recovery in itself. It’s about finding the little things that make you happy and allow yourself to recover.”

3. She Takes Care Of Her Mental Health

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Black also makes sure to take care of her mental health. She shared how she does so in her Better Health Magazine interview. “I rely on meditation, breathing exercises, visualization, pilates, listening to music and communicating with those people around me—my team, coach, family, friends, support staff—to stay focused,” she says. “I also work with a sports psychologist who helps me with my mental performance. We talk about every aspect—the ups, the downs, the preparations, the success, the failures, the different scenarios that could come about and how I’m going to handle those.”

4. She Does A Variety Of Workouts

Black broke down her training routine with Best Health. She says that she does a variety of different things. “At practice, we do a warm-up—I do rolling, injury prevention, stretching and mobility exercises, we run the stretching warm-up lines—and then we go to events [i.e. beam, bars, floor and vault], which each range from 20 minutes to 40 minutes. Then, we finish off the training with conditioning and flexibility for 30 minutes to an hour.”

5. She Sets Goals

Black tells Optimyz that she likes to set goals for herself. “I think goal setting is fundamental for everybody – athlete or not – to be able to see progress and feel accomplished. You can have large goals that might be years away, but you need to have so many other small goals set along the way, whether those are daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. That way you can have a plan for achieving those huge goals – because those big ones can be very daunting.”