'Full-circle moment': Olympian Shawn Johnson East brings daughter to West Des Moines for first gymnastics class

Look out, Simone Biles and Suni Lee. There may be another future U.S. Olympic gymnast in our midst.

Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson East, 30, returned with her husband, Andrew East, and family to her former training gym in West Des Moines. Only this time, it was her daughter Drew's turn to take center stage on the balance beam.

Drew, 2, and Johnson East's son, Jett, who turns 1 this month, also met their mother's Olympic gymnastics coach Liang Chow in what Johnson East called a "full-circle moment."

Johnson East shared the 10-minute vlog with her 1.4 million YouTube subscribers Monday. By Thursday, the video had been watched nearly 300,000 times.

Johnson East grew up in central Iowa and trained at Chow's Gymnastics & Dance in West Des Moines for 15 years. Chow was Johnson East's first and only gymnastics coach; he trained her for the 2008 Beijing Games, where she took gold in the balance beam and three silver medals.

Photos:Shawn Johnson’s gold medal moment at 2008 Beijing Olympics

Chow and Liwen (Zhuang) are both like my second parents," Johnson East said in the video. "I trained with them for 15 years. There are truly some of the most special people in my life."

Drew and her brother bounced, skipped, zig-zagged and tumbled for hours across Chow's gym just as their mother once did.

Drew, sporting a bedazzled black leotard, experimented with bars, vaults, and the tumble mat. But Johnson East said her daughter found her "happy place" on the trampoline.

"She really opened up on the trampoline ... because she found her little happy place, which — full-circle moment — was the reason I started gymnastics," Johnson East said.

"The trampoline made me believe I could fly and that's when I fell in love with the sport."

Holding her mother's hand, Drew also attempted an impromptu routine on the beam.

"Drew naturally took to the balance beam, which you were pretty good at," Andrew East said to his wife, jokingly, on the video.

Johnson East replied: "I was OK."

Previous: Shawn Johnson East: 'If I had a daughter right now, I couldn't' put her in gymnastics

Johnson East, who now lives in Nashville with her family, said she will encourage her children to pursue whatever they're passionate about in life.

"But if either of them chooses gymnastics, there is nobody else in the world I would want to coach them than Chow," she said. "Chow, you got to move to Nashville."

Virginia Barreda is a trending and general assignment reporter for the Des Moines Register. She can be reached at vbarreda@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @vbarreda2.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Shawn Johnson East brings daughter to Chow's Gymnastics & Dance