After breaking or damaging nearly every part of her body except for her elbows, gymnast Cara Forster's main hope for the New Zealand Masters Games 2023 is to avoid injury.

The New Zealand Masters Games 2023 – being held from February 3-12 – is the largest multisport competition in the country.

Whanaganui will host this year's games, seeing thousands of participants compete in more than 60 sporting codes.

Among them will be local gymnast Cara Forster, who is head coach at Argos Gymnastics Club in Tauranga.

The last time the 24-year-old competed was three years ago.

Getting back into the wild world of competition, Cara says: 'Its mixed emotions. I'm excited for it but also after the competition I'm always so sore and tired but I'm looking forward to getting back into it and seeing everyone again”.

Taking up gymnastics at the age of five, today Cara's main hope for Master Games is to return unscathed. 'I have way too many injuries,” says Cara.

'The only body part I haven't injured doing gymnastics is my elbows, otherwise, everything else has been injured.”

She will compete in the women's intermediate artistic category, showing her skills in beam, vault and floor. Cara says that ‘floor' is her top pick for competing in.

'You just get to dance around on the floor and do flips. It's so much fun.”

She will dance to the Harley Quinn remix of famous song ‘Sway with me'. 'It's a lot of sass.”

Cara will head to Master Games with three others from Argos Gymnastics – NaNyce Johnson, Brad Foster and Katharina Kersten.

'A lot of them haven't competed in 10 or 15 years so they're coming back to it quite new, so it's going to be nice to enjoy that experience with them,” says Cara.

'We've been training gymnastics but we haven't had something to work towards in a while so we just kind of want to go out, have fun and enjoy competing again.”

Next year Cara plans to compete in the advanced category and says she thrives off the way you have to push yourself in gymnastics.

'It's just the challenge, and coming across a skill or technique that you don't get quite straight away and just working hard and then finally overcoming it.”