Jordan Chiles was one of five women of the United States’ artistic all-around gymnastics team to win a gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, and a silver medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. She also boasts another team gold and two individual silvers from the World Artistic Gymnastics Championship, and two additional NCAA golds and a silver from her time with the UCLA Bruins.
But even after all that, Jordan’s greatest challenge had yet to come, and it was hiding behind the double doors of an elementary school gymnasium.
Indeed, the latest episode of Julian Shapiro-Barnum’s YouTube series Celebrity Substitute required a guest who knew a thing or two about staying in shape, but perhaps wasn’t quite used to wrangling the attention spans of elementary schoolchildren, and Chiles proved to be the perfect candidate.
The school day at P.S. 9 kicked off with enthusiastic hellos, a tumble demonstration from Chiles, a routine muscle check just to see what sort of athleticism she was working with here, and one kid who asked her if she was afraid of cracking her head open when she first started gymnastics (which, in a room full of children who were ostensibly about to start some gymnastics, could have derailed the lesson). Luckily, Jordan handled it like the literal champ she is.
She didn’t even need to spend time explaining why physical fitness is so important, because the kids had all the answers locked and loaded (adults, you see, need to be strong in order to fight any giant robots that start attacking planet Earth, or to run away from tsunamis).
Then the workout began, and Jordan made the critical mistake of kicking things off with push-ups. Now, anyone whose memories of gym class are still fresh in their head knows that the quickest way to get your pupils to check out is push-ups. Sure enough, the room devolved into utter chaos shortly after, complete with rogue students, broken basketball expectations, and lots of impulsive sprinting. At the end of the day, we suppose a workout was had after all.
The final exam for Jordan and the P.S. 9 kids was to film a workout video, the news of which caused one of the kids to enthusiastically do his best Goku impression. Indeed, things were back on track.
And so, armed with a full-motion synthwave aesthetic, Jordan and her Olympians-in-training gave us all the lowdown on how to keep our bodies nimble and healthy, whether it’s by jogging, weightlifting, balancing on one foot, drinking water like an absolute maniac, or hyperfocusing on dribbling a basketball to the point where you block out the world around you. Ball, as they say, really is life.
Suffice to say that the 2036 Summer Olympics will see the United States packed to the absolute brim with hungry champions-to-be, raw athleticism, and probably the best world-threatening robot task force we will ever see in our lifetime. Such are the things you reap when you have a teacher like Jordan Chiles sowing her wisdom in the youth of today.