Senior LSU gymnast Olivia Gunter can be described with one word: passion. She cares for her sport and her teammates through injuries and a heavy course load as a Mass Communication student. Everything she does, she does wholeheartedly.
When the gymnastics season abruptly ended in March due to the coronavirus, Gunter found herself back home in Mandeville, La. The team was sent home in the middle of preparations for the postseason where they hoped to earn a fourth consecutive conference championship. Their hours-long daily workouts came to an end with no real answer to when they would be back in Baton Rouge.
"Especially in gymnastics, your body changes fast. You go a month, two months without doing gymnastics and all the sudden you're like 'I do not look the same as I did when we were on our way to nationals every single day,'" says Gunter about the beginning of quarantine. She started getting her teammates to work out with her over Zoom, but wanted a wider reach. In a poll of her twelve-thousand Instagram followers, she was shocked how many people were interested in working out with her. @UnathleticAthlete_ was born shortly after.
Inspired by other Instagram fitness gurus, Gunter holds weekly every-minute-on-the-minute, or EMOM, workouts as well as core and other specialized workouts. She uses Instagram's live feature to interact with her followers and give tips throughout the circuits. At the end she always checks in with a strong "How ya doing?!" and talks about everything from school to a stuffy nose. In between workouts, she shares candid stories about her struggles with body image and mental health. A recent post reads:
"Hey. This is your reminder that you're allowed to have bad days and have no explanation for it. Sometimes we just have to be a lil sad. Keep pushin tho, something good may be just around the corner."
This passion for sharing workouts has sparked an interest for Gunter, who admits that she "doesn't know what she wants to be when she grows up." Now, after her graduation in May, she has her sights set on opening a workout studio where she can encourage people of all shapes and sizes to be active.
"I always say to be active. I feel like working out has such a stupid stigma, so I'm just like, getting your body moving is what I like to refer to it as, and so I wanted [the account] to be a space where anyone felt like they could go to. I wanted to be a person that anyone could talk to about these things," she says about beginning to create a space of positivity. She hopes to stay in Louisiana after her graduation and be close to her family and the LSU community that she has grown up around. Until gymnastics season starts in January, she will continue to share her workouts and positive messages to a growing crowd.