The weekend’s here and if you’re like me, you have 48 hours of freedom ahead of you but finished binge watching “Orange is the New Black” last night. What’s a girl to do!? When I’m all out of Netflix ideas and can’t be bothered to walk the ten feet between my bed and the living room couch to watch cable, that’s when I turn to YouTube. I mostly watch a lot of old competitions, but every so often I’ll turn to the movies and documentaries that defined my childhood. It’s surprising how many made from bad VCR recordings to the YouTube spotlight, but you can actually find hours and hours of entertainment just a click away.

1. Little Girls in Pretty Boxes (1997)

The Lifetime movie to end all Lifetime movies. Actually, was this even on Lifetime? I don’t remember, but it has all of the makings of a Lifetime classic. Based on the book by Joan Ryan, this film takes every 80s and 90s gym stereotype – eating disorders, abusive coaches, painkiller addictions, “Dance Moms” drama in the viewing room, crushed velvet leotards – and uses them to teach parents that only 0.0001% of gymnasts make it to the Olympics. The rest all break their necks when they miss their hands on their front handspring front tuck vaults. Your kid would be better off in a street gang.

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2. Reach for the Sky (1990)

I actually don’t think this movie is terrible, shockingly. It’s a Romanian film (dubbed pretty seamlessly with English voiceovers) about a young girl from rural Romania who wants to train at Deva. It has its moments (like when Corina, the central character, is told she needs to take a week off from gym because she gets rips on her hands) but also showcases some real gym – a gymnast at a competition does a couple of whips through to a real live double back.

3. Aly Raisman: Quest for Gold (2012)

NESN – the New England Sports Network – produced this great documentary that focuses on Aly Raisman in the six months or so leading up to the announcement of the 2012 Olympic team. Be warned – this is before she really had media training, and I actually laughed out loud at how monotone and long-winded that opening monologue is. But that aside, it’s actually pretty well-done and paints a nice picture of the pre-Olympic process in the U.S. system.

4. Nadia (1984)

It’s sacrilegious to watch gymnastics movies without watching Nadia. It’s basically the bad gymnastics movie that paved the road for all other bad gymnastics movies, and I wouldn’t be able to live without it. As you may have guessed, it captures the early life of Nadia Comaneci before, during, and after her perfect 10 with a little bit of Teodora Ungureanu drama on the side in case you get antsy. Nothing beats their choreographed first meeting on the FX mat. True cinematic glory.

5. Perfect Body (1997)

What a great year for made-for-TV gymnastics movies. More eating disorders, more abusive coaches, more crushed velvet…though this one’s clearly far superior because it stars the Pink Ranger, Cathy Rigby makes some cameos, and the near-death happens on bars, not vault. This one’s a little more intense with the body issues – thus the name – but when you get past the Lifetime drama, it’s…nope, never mind, it’s somehow even worse.

6. Achieving the Perfect 10 (2003)

The infamous Parkettes CNN documentary following a handful of gymnasts through their daily training regimens, including the athlete-coach relationships, dealing with injuries, and mentally preparing for competitions. Even though this came after the 90s red scare era, I remember it being a bit controversial because of how ‘extreme’ it makes the coaches and parents look, but of course the Strausses say they were misrepresented and that in real life, everything was peachy keen.

7. “Afterschool Special”: The Gymnast (1980)

Your typical “girl moves to a training facility to become a world class gymnast but has PROBLEMS!” formula…she has no difficulty, she needs to diet, and everyone’s mean. It takes quitting the sport and a thousand balked back tucks at the beach to realize how much she loves it, and then whaddya know? She’s suddenly amazing and – SPOILER ALERT – wins regionals. So many valuable lessons learned.

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8. Gymnast (2011)

A beautiful documentary done by the BBC focusing on Great Britain’s selection process leading up to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. Definitely a tearjerker at times, as it gets pretty deep into the lives of the girls as actual human beings outside of the gym and what their success would mean for their families/countries. Plus, Baby Hannah Whelan is just about the cutest thing in the world.

9. “Quincy M.E.”: The Winning Edge (1980)

This is a bizarre one, partly because it’s a TV show about a medical examiner with gymnastics death this episode’s little featured plot (just ignore the side plot about the M.E. buying clothes), but mostly because there’s a whole lot of “ummm, what?” going on, like when a bunch of gymnasts drug their teammate’s orange juice so she’ll die on beam? There’s lots of drugs in general. Basically all gymnasts are on speed and kids, you should never do speed and then do a bar routine because you will die instantly.

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Do you have any favorites that we missed? Let us know in the comments!

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Article by Lauren Hopkins