A Complete Guide on Gymnastics and The Competition

Gymnastics is an international sport, recreational and competitive both.At its most basic level, gymnastics is designed to increase strength and flexibility through the practice of a broad range of specified exercises and movements done both on floor mats and various apparatus. As a competitive sport today, artistic gymnastics includes six events for men (floor exercise, high bar, parallel bars, pommel horse, rings, and vault) and four for women (floor exercise, uneven bars, balance beam, and vault). Modern rhythmic gymnastics is a women’s sport in which light hand apparatus is used to accompany dance movements.

Gymnastics is one of the most popular Olympic events. Once nearly exclusively a European sport, gymnastics has become universally practiced, although its development is still minor in Africa and much of Latin America and Asia. International competition in artistic gymnastics since 1952 has been dominated by men and women of the former Soviet Union, Japanese men, and Romanian women, with additional top performances from Germany, Czechoslovakia, and other European countries and more recently from China and the United States.

History

Some form of gymnastics has existed since the earliest known sport activity. Tumbling and balancing activities were performed in China and Egypt before 2000 B.C.E. In the second millennium B.C.E. Minoan athletes on Crete not only tumbled and balanced, but grasped the horns of a charging bull and vaulted with a front handspring to a landing on the animal’s back. As part of their practice of skills needed in war, the ancient Romans used wooden horses to practice mounting and dismounting. This apparatus evolved into the gymnastics vaulting and pommel horses, early models of which were built to look like horses with saddles or at least had one end curved upward like a horse’s neck. The three sections of the gymnastics horse still retain the names neck, saddle, and croup.

It was not until the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries that a modern form of gymnastics began to take shape. Around that time many pieces of gymnastics apparatus were invented, mostly by Germans. Danish, Swiss, and Italian educators also promoted gymnastics activity. In the early 19^th century, important contributions to gymnastics originated in Sweden, and gymnastics activity began in the United States.

In the United States,German and Swiss immigrants established Turnverein clubs (American Turners) and Czechoslovakians established Sokol clubs (American Sokols).The American Turners promoted the introduction of physical education classes in American schools, and most early school physical education activity involved gymnastics. In the late 1800s many schools favored Swedish gymnastics, a highly structured system of exercises that used specialized apparatus and was advocated as having healthful benefits for both men and women. The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) has also been an important force in promoting gymnastics.The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) held its first national gymnastics championships in 1888 and controlled the sport for the next half century until conflicts with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and other considerations eventually led to formation of the U.S. Gymnastics Federation in 1962. College gymnastics competition grew after that time, and the NCAA held its first national gymnastics championships in 1938. However, NCAA competition was for men only until 1980. A national gymnastics championship for women was first held in 1969, sponsored by the American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation’s Division for Girls and Women’s Sport, and the Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women sponsored championships for women from 1971 until 1982, when the NCAA gained control of this function.

Gymnastics Festivals

A remarkable European tradition is that of gymnastic festivals involving huge numbers of athletes of all ages, the emphasis being on participation rather than competition. In the Gymnaestradas, Turnfests (Turnverein associations), and Slets (Sokols), thousands of performers participate in mass demonstrations, team and individual competitions, and workshops involving rhythmic and artistic gymnastics, acrobatics, folk dancing, and related activities. In the 1965 Gymnaestrada in Vienna, more than 10,000 athletes from over 30 countries (perhaps 80 percent women) participated. In 1975 in Berlin, even with a boycott by Eastern Bloc countries,over 12,000 athletes (including a 2-yearold and a group from Sweden averaging 50 years old) from 36 countries presented 312 Gymnaestrada performances for the enjoyment of 250,000 spectators. Turnfests and Slets are also held in the United States. In the fourteenth American Sokol Slet, held in 1977, more than 3,000 athletes from 70 American and Canadian Sokol units took part and over 1,000 competed.Reports of this event noted that the last Sokol Slet in Czechoslovakia had 275,000 athletes and 350,000 spectators. In most countries competitive gymnastics is organized and administered under the control of a national federation.World Gymnastics Championships and World Cups offer opportunities for international competition at the highest level, as do the European and U.S. Championships and multisport festivals such as the Olympic, World University, Goodwill, Commonwealth, Pan American, and Central American and Caribbean Games.

Rules and Play

The rise of international gymnastics competition after World War II generated a great need for rules standards and improved judging. The first Code of Points was formulated by the International Gymnastics Federation in 1949 in order to have guidelines for use at the 1950 World Gymnastics Championships. Subsequent editions of the code added more specific rules and defined difficulty levels of skills.

The word gymnastics once connoted almost any form of exercise, including calisthenics and the use of light and heavy apparatus. Today the terms developmental or educational gymnastics still refer to a broad spectrum of basic movement and manipulative activities for children and young people. Educational gymnastics activities promote the development of strength, flexibility, balance, coordination, and agility, as well as courage and self-reliance.

Competitive gymnastics includes two distinct sports: (1) artistic gymnastics, consisting of six men’s and four women’s events, and (2) modern rhythmic gymnastics, an activity for women that makes use of light hand apparatus such as hoops, balls, ropes, clubs, and ribbons.

Artistic Gymnastics (Olympic Gymnastics) In artistic gymnastics competition, individual skills are combined into routines that are evaluated by a panel of judges (five, at the higher levels). Gymnastics judging has evolved from strictly defined traditional ideas of good form to greater emphasis on higher difficulty, with less concern about details of form. The marks of four acting judges are reported to the head judge, who discards the high and low marks and averages the two middle marks to determine the gymnast’s score. The head judge also evaluates the exercise, but that score is used only if it differs significantly from the average of the two middle scores or unless the two middle scores differ from each other by more than a set amount. Competitions may include compulsory and/or optional routines. Compulsories are prescribed routines that all gymnasts at a particular level must perform. Judging then becomes a task of evaluating each gymnast’s execution and form in the prescribed exercise (since difficulty and composition are the same for all competitors).

Optional routines are composed individually by each gymnast, which complicates judging.Women are scored on difficulty, combination (or composition), and execution to arrive at a score of up to 9.4; an additional 0.6 points may be awarded if they include especially difficult skills.Men are judged on difficulty, presentation, and special requirements for 9 points, with up to 1 point awarded for additional highly difficult skills.Ten is the maximum score. Deductions or ranges of deductions are prescribed for each type of error. For optional vaulting, each vault has a predetermined point value based on its difficulty, similar to compulsories.

Standard positions for somersaults and twists include:

(1) pike (straight legs with body bent at hips); tuck (bent legs with body bent at hips); and (3) straight or layout (body straight).Rotations become more difficult as the distance from the rotational axis to each part of the body increases. Thus, twists are easiest in layout position and somersaults are easiest in a tuck, and judging of difficulty takes this into consideration (e.g., a layout double back somersault is worth more than one done piked, which in turn is worth more than one in tuck position).

International championships have three forms of competition: (1) team competition (compulsory and optional exercises; 6-member teams with low score omitted), (2) individual all-around finals (optionals by 36 best gymnasts from the team competition), and (3) individual event finals (optionals by 6 best gymnasts on each apparatus in the team competition). Gymnastics judging evaluates routines as objectively as possible, but some subjectivity is inevitable. Each judge views a performance from a somewhat different position, and personal criteria come into play when ranges of deductions are allowed for specific classes of faults. Judges’ scores have also reflected their political allegiances,and in international competitions, judges have been removed for giving biased scores.

Men’s Events

Men’s artistic gymnastics consists of horizontal bar (high bar), parallel bars, floor exercise, rings, pommel horse, and vault. An additional category, all-around, is treated as an event, and awards are given to the top finishers in all-around.

Horizontal Bar (High Bar). The horizontal bar is a flexible steel bar, about 2.8 centimeters (1–1/8 inches) in diameter and 2.4 meters (7 feet, 10 inches) long, mounted approximately 2.6 meters (8 feet, 6 inches) above floor level. Skills on the horizontal bar consist of swinging and vaulting types of movements. Swinging movements are done either with the trunk and legs close to the bar (in-bar moves) or with the body fully extended from the hands (giant swings). In competitive routines there should be no stops, body parts other than the hands or soles of the feet are rarely in more than momentary contact with the bar, releases of one and both hands from the bar are common, and dismounts often consist of multiple somersaults (triples have been done), sometimes with one or more twists. In high-level routines of recent years, one-arm giant swings and release moves from one-arm giants have become common.

Parallel Bars. The parallel bars are flexible wooden rails 3.5 meters (11 feet, 6 inches) long. For competition the height is set at about 1.7 meters (5 feet, 8 inches) above the floor. Movements consist of swings, vaults, balance positions (held for 2 seconds), and slow movements emphasizing strength (e.g., presses to handstands). The bars are released and regrasped with one hand at a time or with both hands simultaneously (and with the gymnast above or below the bars).Most skills involve movement of the body in the plane of the central long dimension of the bars. However, the bars may be worked with the body moving perpendicularly to the bars or circling a position on the bars, and with both hands placed on the same bar. In competitive routines only the hands and, occasionally, the upper arms are ever in contact with the bars.

Pommel Horse (Side Horse). The pommel horse is a leather- or fabric-covered cylinder 35.5 centimeters (14 inches) in diameter and 162.5 centimeters (64 inches) long. The pommels are set about 40 to 45 centimeters (16 to 18 inches) apart and the height of the horse for competition is 1.25 meters (4 feet, 2 inches) to the top of the pommels. All movements on the horse are swinging movements (no stops are permitted and neither are slow movements employing obvious strength). Only the hands should touch the horse. Vault (Long Horse). The vaulting horse is the same apparatus as the pommel horse, with the pommels removed. For competition the height to the top of the horse is 1.35 meters (4 feet, 5 inches). The horse is vaulted along its length,with an approach run of up to 25 meters (27 yards).

Rings (Still Rings). The rings are wooden and are spaced 50 centimeters (20 inches) apart and suspended from a height of about 5.6 meters (18 feet, 6 inches). Ring activities include swinging movements, held positions, and slow movements emphasizing strength. Advanced competitive optional routines require two handstands, one reached with strength (press) and one with swing. One additional static strength element is required; it and the two handstands must be held two seconds.

Floor Exercise (Free Calisthenics). This event utilizes a square floor area, 12 meters (40 feet) on each side, and is performed on a mat 3.2 centimeters (11/4 inches) thick. Tumbling skills are combined with balance and positions and movements emphasizing flexibility and strength. In competition all parts of the floor area and all directions should be used, and a time limit of 50 to 70 seconds is placed on the exercise.

Women’s Events

Women’s artistic gymnastics consists of uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise, and vault. All-around scores are totaled from the four women’s events. Uneven Bars (Uneven Parallel Bars). The uneven bars were originally an adaptation of the men’s parallel bars, and thus the bars were identical to the men’s bars but with one bar set higher than the other. Uneven bar work evolved toward greater swinging motions, which required modification of the apparatus to withstand the large forces produced. In the late 1960s guyed bars with the rails extending only over the distance between the uprights began to be used.

The bars are worked in the direction perpendicular to their length,with many of the skills being very similar to those used in men’s horizontal bar work. Balance Beam. The balance beam was originally wooden, 5 meters (16 feet, 4 inches) long and 10 centimeters (4 inches) wide. For competition the beam height is set at 1.2 meters (47 inches). In the 1970s beams began to be thinly padded and covered with a material giving the feel of suede leather. Competitive routines consist of tumbling, balance, and gymnastic movements.

Floor Exercise. The same floor area and the same mat are used as in the men’s event.Movements are continuous and involve tumbling, gymnastic, and dance movements, as well as momentary balance positions. Vault (Side Horse Vault). The vaulting horse for women is the same apparatus as that used in men’s vaulting. However, the vaults are performed across the short dimension of the horse, and its height for competition is set at 1.2 meters (47 inches).

Modern Rhythmic Gymnastics (Modern Gymnastics) The women’s sport of rhythmic gymnastics appeared in its current form in the 1984 Olympic Games. Four of the five possible activities (ball, hoop, clubs, ribbon, rope) are contested to determine an all-around winner. Six-member team exercises are performed in the Modern Gymnastics World Championships but not, after 1956, in Olympic competition. Competitors must move vigorously within a square floor area measuring 12 meters (40 feet) on each side, performing dance skills and exhibiting grace, balance, and flexibility, while manipulating and maintaining control of their apparatus. They must use all of the area, involve the entire body and handle the apparatus with both left and right hands, and move in harmony with the motion of the hand apparatus and corresponding to the rhythm and mood of the music. Time limits are used for both team and individual exercises and there are special requirements for skill difficulties.

Gymnasts and Their Training

The ideal body type for gymnastics is short and light. Gymnastics skills require great strength and flexibility, as well as balance and explosive power. Ages and sizes of competitive gymnasts have been decreasing progressively as their selection and training has become more demanding. The two top female gymnasts in the 1992 Olympics were 15 years old, 137 centimeters (4 feet, 6 inches) tall, and one weighed 31.7 kilograms (70 pounds) and the other 31.3 kilograms (69 pounds). To produce the strength, flexibility, and power essential for competitive gymnastics requires long hours of strenuous practice, and training procedures are designed to develop not only these physical qualities but also the great courage required to perform intrinsically dangerous movements.

In socialist societies such as the former Soviet Union, other Eastern European countries, China, and Cuba, young children selected on the basis of body type and other physical attributes may be given opportunities to develop into competitive gymnasts through participation in state-supported training facilities and special schools. In countries such as the United States, the development of young gymnasts has been carried out in schools and organizations such as Turners, Sokols, and YMCAs. However, the intensity and level of work required to produce elite gymnasts today is available only in private training facilities, usually paid for by parents. Recognizing the financial cost of these private facilities, USA Gymnastics initiated a program of stipends paid to a small number of the most talented young gymnasts to offset their training costs. Male gymnasts tend to maintain and even improve performances beyond the peak age for female gymnasts, and their training may continue during college years with the support of athletic scholarships. Collegiate gymnastics is also available for females, but today college-age women are generally considered too old to be involved in the highest level of the sport. One of the most important contributions to the development of gymnastics in the United States was the establishment of the USGF Junior Olympics program, which provides compulsory exercises and guidelines for several levels of age-group competition for both girls and boys.

Gymnastics in the Olympics

After World War II, and especially since the early 1960s, gymnastics has grown phenomenally in the United States.Much of this growth has been due to the greatly increased coverage of gymnastics on television, and especially to the Olympic performances of Olga Korbut in 1972 and Nadia Comaneci in 1976.

International gymnastics competition before World War II was dominated by Western European countries. Except for the anomalous 1904 Games in St. Louis, Americans did not participate in Olympic gymnastics until 1920.With the entrance of the Soviet Union into Olympic competition in 1952 and the rise of Japan as a gymnastics power, the picture changed radically. Over this period,men’s team medals were won by the Soviet Union (10), Japan (9), East Germany (5), China (2), Finland (2), and one each by the United States, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Switzerland. Fewer countries participated in women’s gymnastics during this period and the Soviet Union was even more dominant, winning the team gold medal in all ten Olympic Games in which they participated (Romania won in 1984).Most individual medals were won by the Soviet Union (39.4 percent) and Japan (30.5 percent),with others going to China (6.1 percent), East Germany (4.5 percent), the United States (3.7 percent), and 13 other countries (all European except for three medals to the two Koreas, for a total of 15.8 percent). In the 1996 Olympics Russia won the overall team gold and 5 individual medals; Belarus took 4.

In the 1984 Olympic Games 19 countries were represented (2 entries are allowed per country), and Canada, Romania, and West Germany won the gold, silver, and bronze all-around medals. In both 1988 and 1992, 23 countries were represented, and the Soviet Union (called the Unified Team in 1992) won both the gold and bronze. In 1996 Spain won the team gold, Bulgaria the silver, and Russia the bronze. Modern Gymnastics World Championships have been held since 1963. The continued spectacular performances of young gymnasts in the Olympics and other international events have undoubtedly contributed to gymnastics’ growing popularity. In women’s gymnastics, a sport in which athletes may be has-beens at the age of 17, the key question is age: how young is too young?