She trained at Exxcel Gymnastics and Climbing through Level 8, when she moved to Brestyan's American Gymnastics Club under coaches Mihai and Silvia Brestyan. There, she trained alongside Alicia Sacramone, of whom she said: "She's kind of like my older sister. I can ask her about anything because I know that she's been through it all." Raisman graduated from Needham High School in 2012, after completing her senior year via online classes while training for the Olympics.
In September 2012, Raisman was injured during the Kellogg's Tour of Gymnastics Champions in Ontario, California. She fell while performing a Maloney on the uneven bars and landed off the mats, bruising her knees. This occurred shortly after teammate McKayla Maroney injured herself performing a flyaway dismount on the same bars.
On the second day of competition in the team final, Raisman competed on vault, balance beam, and floor exercise to help secure the gold medal for the U.S. team and defend the title she earned with the Fierce Five in 2012. Individually, she scored 15.833 on vault, 15.000 on beam and 15.366 on floor. At the end of the competition, she and her teammates dubbed themselves "The Final Five", because they were the last Olympic team Marta Karolyi would name before she retired as team coordinator. These were the last Olympics where the teams would consist of five gymnasts, as it was announced earlier in the year that, starting with the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, that competing teams would be reduced to four gymnasts.