Beth Welcome to The English We Speak, with me Beth…
Jiaying And me, Jiaying.
Beth We’re going to look at an expression that is all about doing hard work with your brain – ‘mental gymnastics’.
Jiaying ‘Mental gymnastics’. So, gymnastics – that’s showing off your flexibility and strength doing different exercises with bars and ropes and other equipment, but what are ‘mental gymnastics’?
Beth Well it can be the effort we spend trying to work out something difficult. This weekend, I need to go to three different places, at more or less the same time, and I’m doing mental gymnastics to try to find a way I can do it.
Jiaying So, you thinking about the different possibilities and coming up with a plan – that’s mental gymnastics.
Beth Yes, because my brain has got to do a lot of hard work.
Jiaying So when I try to speak a new language, one that has lots of complicated rules, that would involve a lot of mental gymnastics?
**Beth
**Yes, exactly! Let’s hear some more examples.
Examples
To get a good score in a maths exam, you need to be good at mental gymnastics!
This plan is too complicated, and I’m too tired for the kind of mental gymnastics I’d need to work it out.
An orchestra conductor needs to be good at mental gymnastics, to work out what each musician should be doing.
Jiaying You’re listening to The English We Speak from BBC Learning English, and we are learning the expression ‘mental gymnastics’, which is a way to talk about your brain doing hard work.
Beth There’s actually another, more negative, way that we use it. When people try to justify saying something that they don’t really believe – we can say that they are doing mental gymnastics.
Jiaying Right, so when I tell my children not to use their phone so much, it takes some serious mental gymnastics to justify why I can still do it.
Beth Yes, it’s hard work trying to come up with an excuse that you don’t really believe!
Jiaying I think we need to stop here, and you should go and write the next episode – that’s going to take some mental gymnastics, isn’t it!
Beth Luckily, I’m full of energy today, so mental gymnastics won’t be a problem!
Jiaying Bye!
Beth Bye.