Since childhood, Suni Lee has lived with eczema that cannot be fully cured, alongside which she suffered from two kidney diseases, which affected her health and forced her to step back from training after the Paris Olympics. And after the 2x Olympic gold medalist returned to training in 2025, she made sure not to compromise hygiene at all.

On April 23, during a “Ride or Die” episode with Complex, Lee discussed the importance of hygiene in gymnastics. The six-time Olympic medalist, who trains at Midwest Gymnastics Center in Minnesota (where she first started as a junior), said she prefers a separate foam pit for recovery.

In the clip, Suni Lee said, “The reason I love having my own is because the one in the gym is so gross. Little kids will like pee in it, throw up in it, there’s Band-Aids, dead skin cells. Kind of gross.”

Foam pits are soft cube-filled landing areas commonly used as landing areas for vault, uneven bars, and floor routines, especially when athletes are learning new skills or recovering from injury. Lack of hygiene in training facilities has always been a glaring issue, since it also depends a lot on individual awareness in addition to maintenance.

Lee, who has been dealing with health issues, is now more cautious about hygiene. However, she also understands that it is not always the fault of the gym facilities, drawing from her own experience.

In 2023, when Suni Lee was diagnosed with two rare kidney diseases, she experienced visible swelling, discomfort, and a sudden drop in strength that made basic gymnastics skills difficult. She said to PEOPLE magazine that there was a time in bars when she “kept peeling off the bar. I couldn’t hold on.”

But she eventually regained her strength and, soon after, she began training again in late 2023 and went to qualify for trials in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where she helped Team USA win gold in the women’s team event.

Now, Suni Lee is in better health and continuing her return carefully. She also showed a lighter side when she added about foam, “Sometimes when I get tired, I just like to come and sit in my foam pit and maybe take a nap, just chill, throw the blocks around, throw them at people. If you make me mad, I just might flip out. And I do mean that literally.”

While hygiene is often discussed in NCAA gymnastics, especially around shared training spaces like foam pits, this is not the only issue that athletes face in training facilities.

Major issues Brown gymnasts faced in the training facilities

In 2022, Brown University women’s gymnastics team members spoke about how their training environment impacted their performance and safety. The team practises on the second floor of the Pizzitola Sports Center, but doesn’t have access to foam pits or Resi-Pit mats. As a result, they were forced to travel off campus multiple times per week.

One athlete, Asta Farrell, explained how time affected her training and eating habits. She sometimes had to train “on an empty stomach”  because of the early sessions.

But the biggest issue for the athletes was the lack of soft landings for skills. A lack of foam pits or other soft surfaces meant gymnasts were practising high-level skills on a harder surface. Abby Walsh, who is also a gymnast there, said that this caused more stress on the body. “We’re doing very, very high level skills,” she said. “If a gymnast makes a mistake on a regular, harder landing mat, it’s unforgiving and risks injury.”

The team also pointed out about having limited space for training. Walsh said the training room was “super cramped,” and athletes had to wait or avoid training at the same time. “There’s 23 of us, so where do we go? Where are we supposed to stand?” she said. “We’re always going to be in someone’s way.”

The absence of mats also led to increased injury risk. Farrell spoke about a severe injury she suffered in bar practice, explaining that when she landed badly on her back after a release skill and ended up injured. She said if the gym were equipped with more mats, she could have used them to cushion her fall. “But at Brown’s practice facility, we don’t have any space… we also don’t have that many mats,” she said. “Even if we did have mats, there’s nowhere to put them anyway.”

Overall, the athletes described a system where equipment and space limitations shaped everything from training routines to injury recovery. As Walsh summed it up, “We cannot live up to our full potential in the facility that we’re in now.”