There was a notable addition to Max Whitlock‘s podium training on Friday (20 March) as he prepared for the weekend’s action at the British Gymnastics Championships in Liverpool.

His own video camera and tripod combo.

This is the first time he’d used his own kit to record his routines, he acknowledged, and it’s in a concerted effort to document his return to artistic gymnastics, having initially retired after Paris 2024.

After announcing his comeback at the end of 2025, Whitlock hopes the footage will culminate with an outing at the Olympic Games LA28 in little more than two years’ time.

“It’s important to me to do it,” Whitlock told Olympics.com at the Liverpool Arena ahead of competing in men’s pommel horse, parallel bars, and high bar qualification rounds on Saturday, with the aim of making Sunday’s apparatus finals.

“I’m trying to show the process more, of everything I’m doing,” said the six-time Olympic medallist. “This two-year journey towards LA means a lot to me, and I also think being able to show that is really valuable for people and hopefully will help people [see the reality of the journey], but also, for me, it’ll also be really nice to look back at that last stint of my career and have some good memories from it. Hopefully.”

Whitlock has made British gymnastics history time and again, but came oh so close to making world history at Paris 2024.

In line to become the first gymnast from any nation to medal at four successive Games on a single apparatus, having won bronze on pommel horse at London 2012 and gold at both Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 in 2021, a minor error kept him off the podium in France.

Finishing an agonising fourth at the Bercy Arena, Whitlock didn’t medal at an Olympic Games for the first time in four editions.

“Before I marched out for the Olympic final in Paris, it was really hard, because that was the end of my career,” Whitlock told Olympics.com, reflecting on the experience.

“I’d said before that I was retiring after that moment, and that was my last competition in my head, and that’s quite a lot mentally to deal with before you’re about to perform in an Olympic final.

“So I’m gearing up to that moment where I can be in LA, and that’s my target, and it is my last competition, but I want it to feel like a bigger thing rather than the be-all and end-all on that last chance.”

So, it’s the journey rather than the destination, or the journey and the destination, that is important at this stage of the 33-year-old’s career in gymnastics.

But it’s a “mega, mega busy” time, he said, what with training, family time, publicity duties, launching a gymnastics family card game, and filming and editing videos.  

“For me, it’s just making sure I can manage everything building up to (LA) because, like you say, I’m trying to film, I’m trying to do all this, and try to show the journey, trying to manage everything outside of sport, trying to make sure I’m pushing boundaries in the sport. It’s good fun, and it’s always better to be busy than not, and I’m loving it.”