Gymnastics

Gymnastics is a group of sports that includes physical exercises needing balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, artistry and endurance. Gymnastics movements help build the arms, legs, shoulders, back, chest, and abdominal muscles. Gymnastics grew out of exercises used by the ancient Greeks, who practiced skills for getting on and off a horse.

The most common kind of competitive gymnastics is artistic gymnastics. For women, the events are floor, vault, uneven bars, and balance beam. For men, the events are floor and vault, plus rings, pommel horse, parallel bars, and horizontal bar.

The group that organizes competition in gymnastics around the world is World Gymnastics. It used to be called the International Gymnastics Federation, or FIG (from the French Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique). FIG governs eight sports. These include gymnastics for all, men's and women's artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics (women only), trampolining (including double mini-trampoline), tumbling, acrobatic, aerobic, parkour, and para-gymnastics. Some types are not currently recognized by FIG, including wheel gymnastics, aesthetic group gymnastics, TeamGym, men's rhythmic gymnastics, and mallakhamba.

People who take part in gymnastics-related sports include young children, recreational athletes, and competitive athletes at all skill levels.

Etymology

The word gymnastics comes from the old Greek word gymnos, which means "naked." It comes from a related word, gymnazo, which meant "train naked" or "exercise." Over time it came to mean "to train" or "to exercise."

The word had this meaning because athletes in ancient times exercised and competed without clothes.

History

See also: History of physical training and fitness

Gymnastics can be traced back to exercises in Ancient Greece, especially in Sparta and Athens. Philostratus wrote about this exercise in his work Gymnastics: The Ethics of an Athletic Aesthetic. The word comes from the Greek verb γυμνάζω (gumnázō), which means "to train naked or nude," because young men exercised without clothes. In ancient Greece, both men and women valued being physically fit. After the Romans conquered Greece in 146 BC, gymnastics became more formal and was used to train men for war. At the Palestra, a training center for physical education, the body and mind were trained together.

Don Francisco Amorós y Ondeano was the first person to bring educational gymnastics to France. The German Friedrich Ludwig Jahn started the German gymnastics movement in 1811 in Berlin. This led to the invention of the parallel bars, rings, the horizontal bar, the pommel horse and the vault horse. Germans Charles Beck and Charles Follen, and American John Neal, brought the first wave of gymnastics to the United States in the 1820s. Beck opened the first gymnasium in the US in 1825 at the Round Hill School in Northampton, Massachusetts. Neal helped start the American side of the movement by promoting these early efforts in The Yankee.

The Federation of International Gymnastics (FIG) was founded in Liege in 1881. Men's gymnastics became popular enough to be included in the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. Women began to organize and take part in gymnastics events in the 1920s. Later, the Soviet gymnasts of the Soviet Union amazed the world with their very disciplined and difficult performances.

FIG-recognized disciplines

See also: List of gymnastics competitions and Major achievements in gymnastics by nation

The International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) is the group that oversees several kinds of gymnastics. Artistic gymnastics is usually split into men's and women's events. Men compete on six events, and women compete on four. In 2006, FIG started a new scoring system. Two separate scores are added together to get the final result. Rhythmic gymnastics is, under FIG rules, only for women. It combines ballet, dance, and handheld equipment. It focuses more on beauty than on acrobatics.

Other FIG disciplines include Trampolining, which has been part of the Olympic Games since 2000. [Tumbling](/wiki/Tumbling_(sport) involves flips and twists on a springy track. Acrobatic gymnastics is performed to music by groups of two, three, or four people. Aerobic gymnastics focuses on strength, flexibility, and fitness. In January 2018, Parkour was approved to develop as a FIG sport. Its first championships were held in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2022. They had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Para-gymnastics, for athletes with disabilities, became a new FIG discipline in October 2024.

Other disciplines

The following disciplines are not currently recognized by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique.

Aesthetic group gymnastics

Main article: Aesthetic group gymnastics

Aesthetic group gymnastics came from the Finnish "naisvoimistelu." It uses large, flowing body movements and bigger teams than rhythmic gymnastics. In international competitions, athletes do not use equipment. The first World Championships was held in 2000.

TeamGym

Main article: TeamGym

TeamGym is a form of competition created by the European Union of Gymnastics. It was first called EuroTeam. Its first official competition was held in Finland in 1996. Teams can be women, men, or mixed. Athletes compete in floor, tumbling, and trampette. There is no World Championships, but a European Championships has been held since 2010.

Wheel gymnastics

Main article: Wheel gymnastics

Wheel gymnasts do exercises in a large wheel. The wheel is known as the Rhönrad, gymnastics wheel, gym wheel, or German wheel. There are four main types of exercise: straight line, spiral, vault, and cyr wheel. The first World Championships was held in 1995.

Mallakhamba

Main article: Mallakhamba

Mallakhamba (Marathi: मल्लखम्ब) is a traditional Indian sport. A gymnast performs moves and poses with a vertical wooden pole or rope. The name comes from malla, meaning wrestler, and khamba, meaning pole. It can be translated as "pole gymnastics." On 9 April 2013, the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh declared mallakhamba its state sport. The first Mallakhamb World Championship was held in Mumbai in February 2019.

Non-competitive gymnastics

General gymnastics, also called "gymnastics for all," lets people of all ages and abilities take part in performance groups. Groups can have anywhere from 6 to more than 150 athletes. It is more of a sports program or performing art than a sport. Routines can use many kinds of gymnastics moves, and they may even mix in activities that are not part of traditional gymnastics, such as aerial silk. Groups perform synchronized, choreographed routines together. They may include both boys and girls and are split into age groups.

The largest general gymnastics show is the World Gymnaestrada. It is held every four years and was first held in 1939. In 1984, the FIG (International Gymnastic Federation) officially recognized gymnastics for all as a sport program. National gymnastic federations around the world later did the same. Today, many people take part. Non-competitive gymnastics is valued for its health benefits.

Scoring (code of points)

Main article: Code of Points

A gymnast's score starts with the difficulty of the routine. The difficulty depends on which skills the gymnast tries and whether the routine includes the required parts for each apparatus. This is called the D score. Judges then take away points for mistakes in how the routine is performed and for artistry, starting from a maximum of 10.0. This is called the E score. The final score is the D score added to the E score.

Since 2006, scoring has used this D plus E method. It is called "open-end" scoring because the D score has no set upper limit. In theory, the total score has no fixed top, though there is a practical limit. Before 2006, the final score was taken away from a possible maximum of 10. The rules for judging difficulty and performance, called the Code of Points, are slightly updated for each quadrennium. A quadrennium is a period of four years that ends in an Olympic year.

Former apparatus and events

Main article: Rope climbing

Main article: Flying rings

In rope climbing, competitors climbed a 6 m or 8 m natural fiber rope as fast as they could. They started seated on the floor and used only their hands and arms. Kicking with the legs was usually allowed. Many gymnasts could climb with their legs held straight out or bent at the hips, which meant they got no help from their legs. Flying rings was similar to still rings, but the performer did a series of stunts while swinging. It was approved by both the NCAA and the AAU until the early 1960s. Club swinging, also called Indian clubs, was a men's artistic gymnastics event until sometime in the 1950s. It was simpler than the clubs used in rhythmic gymnastics, with few throws allowed.

Some other events were also part of gymnastics in the past. Men's artistic gymnastics had several events that are no longer used. These included team horizontal bar and parallel bar in 1896, team free and Swedish system in 1912 and 1920, combined and triathlon in 1904, side horse vault in 1924, and tumbling in 1932. Club swinging was part of the 1904 and 1932 Summer Olympic Games. Women's artistic gymnastics also had events that were later dropped. These included team exercise at the 1928, 1936, and 1948 Summer Olympics, parallel bars at the 1938 World Championships, and team portable apparatus at the 1952 and 1956 Summer Olympics.

Health and safety

Gymnastics is one of the most dangerous sports. Many gymnasts are injured, especially girls aged 11 to 18. Some moves that were allowed in past competitions are now banned for safety reasons. For example, the Thomas salto, a twisting move that lands with a forward roll on the floor, was banned after several injuries. Elena Mukhina, the 1978 World all-around champion, broke her neck while practicing a skill when she was very tired. She became quadriplegic. The vaulting table replaced the old vaulting horse in the early 2000s. An extra mat was also added around the springboard after several gymnasts, such as Julissa Gomez, were paralyzed during vaulting.

Landing is the last part of a tumbling pass, dismount, or vault. It matters for both scores and safety. Gymnasts need good technique to land safely. They can also lower the force of impact by taking more time to land. Before a competition, gymnasts have a practice session called podium training. It mainly helps them get used to the equipment in the arena. Gymnasts are at higher risk of overuse injuries and injuries caused by early sports specialization, especially injuries to the feet and wrists. Strength training can help prevent these injuries. There have been cases of people being treated badly in gymnastics in many countries. The USA Gymnastics abuse scandal is considered one of the largest scandals of its kind in sports history. In 2022, the Whyte Review criticized harmful treatment of athletes by British Gymnastics. Gymnasts tend to be short, but the sport is unlikely to affect their growth. Their parents also tend to be shorter than average.