If You Love ESPN's 30 FOR 30 Series, OVER THE LIMIT Is For You

“Mental toughness” is one of those sports cliches constantly recycled by basketball analysts, football coaches, on down to Little League parents. It is a cliché attached to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls teams he led to six championships in the 90s. The Last Dance, without a doubt, illustrated the perseverance required by all the members of the Bulls team as they faced on and off the court challenges. Now imagine taking on that mental toughness in an individual sport without teammates backing you. The documentary Over the Limit moves beyond sports cliche territory and demonstrates that the mental toughness of the practitioners of rhythmic gymnastics — a sport that demands a high degree of physical exertion while maintaining elegant form — is unparalleled. Polish director Marta Prus (Hot and Cold) invites the viewer to be a fly on the wall as she takes us inside Russia’s national rhythmic gymnastics team. Prus’s camera follows gymnast Margarita Mamun as she runs through a gauntlet of pre-Olympic training sessions, competitions, and tongue-lashings from her coaches.

If there is an American equivalent of Mamun’s coaches, it would have to be former Indiana Hoosiers basketball coach Bobby Knight. Knight became infamous for his explosive tirades and his abusive behavior — both verbal and physical — toward his young players. While Mamun’s coaches do not go as far as Knight did in choking his own players, the verbal abuse Mamun faces from her coaches is just as degrading. Mamun is disciplined by a hierarchy of coaches — Amina, her day-to-day coach who plays a good cop/bad cop role with Mamun, and Irina, the eccentric dark empress of rhythmic gymnastics. Irina is a machine gun of abuse. The merest imperfection in Mamun’s form during practices gives Irina an opening to unleash an assault of humiliations upon Mamun. Irina even criticizes the shorts Mamun wears. In a must-be-seen-to-be-believed scene Irina tries to squeeze drama out of Mamun’s performance by asking Mamun to imagine her father, who has cancer, dying!

Mamun’s coaches are shockingly comfortable with their cruelty given that Prus’s camera is recording every moment of the abuse. One cannot help but think that the abuse is worse when cameras are not present. The viewer feels pity for Mamun. Team sports are challenging, but at least an individual athlete can somewhat hide their failures or an unfocused performance when the scoreboard shows the collective team and not the individual losing. In individual sports like rhythmic gymnastics, your failures are all yours. In Mamun’s case there is the added pressure of a single individual representing a collective larger than a mere team, or city; she represents the Russia. National pride is on the line— one cannot help but think of Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit.

Over the Limit vividly captures the loneliness and exhaustion this young woman takes on for her sport, her career, her nation. Mamun’s grueling schedule makes her plead to her superiors for just one day off. While watching Over the Limit, one wonders why Mamun stoically takes the abuse, why she does not just talk back to her coaches and establish her dignity. The answer becomes clear when a friend asks Mamun what she will do after the Olympics. Mamun contemplatively stares into the void. She has no answer. Rhythmic gymnastics has made her sacrifice family time, friendships, and relationships. She takes the abuse because she has nothing else. Rhythmic gymnastics is her life, her identity.

One of the few joyful scenes in Over the Limit involves Mamun going to the beach with her teammates right before her Olympic competition. Her smile is unforced; it is not the rehearsed smile of a gymnast trying to score points with the judges. Her fleeting smile is contrasted with all the winces and frowns she displays in her practices. Mamun, just like those who perform despite the abuse of coaches and overbearing sports parents, seems to perform more out of fear of losing rather than out of joy of winning. It is distressing that two decades into the twenty-first century some are still killing the joy out of young athletes. One wonders if Michael Jordan would have been able to continue competing without taking a break, a breather from barking coaches and life’s hardships. Oh wait, he did. Mamun, and most Olympic athletes competing in individual sports, do not have the option to go play baseball and sort themselves out. I can only hope Mamun is sorting herself out as I write this. Life after sports requires a higher degree of mental toughness.