Gymnastics
Gymnastics is a group of sport that includes physical exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, artistry and endurance. The movements involved in gymnastics contribute to the development of the arms, legs, shoulders, back, chest, and abdominal muscle groups. Gymnastics evolved from exercises used by the ancient Greeks that included skills for mounting and dismounting a horse.
The most common form of competitive gymnastics is artistic gymnastics; for women, the events include floor, vault, uneven bars, and balance beam; for men, besides floor and vault, it includes rings, pommel horse, parallel bars, and horizontal bar.
The governing body for competition in gymnastics throughout the world is World Gymnastics. Eight sports are governed by the FIG, including gymnastics for all, men's and women's artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, trampolining, tumbling, acrobatic, aerobic, parkour and para-gymnastics. Disciplines not currently recognized by FIG include wheel gymnastics, aesthetic group gymnastics, TeamGym, men's rhythmic gymnastics and mallakhamba.
Participants in gymnastics-related sports include young children, recreational-level athletes, and competitive athletes at all skill levels.
Etymology
The word gymnastics derives from the common Greek adjective γυμνός, by way of the related verb γυμνάζω, whose meaning is to "train naked", "train in gymnastic exercise", generally "to train, to exercise". The verb had this meaning because athletes in ancient times exercised and competed without clothing.History
Gymnastics can be traced to exercises performed in Ancient Greece, specifically in Sparta and Athens. Exercise of that time was documented by Philostratus' work Gymnastics: The Ethics of an Athletic Aesthetic. The original term for the practice of gymnastics is from the related Greek verb γυμνάζω, which translates as "to train naked or nude," because young men exercised without clothing. In ancient Greece, physical fitness was highly valued among both men and women. It was not until after the Romans conquered Greece in 146 BC that gymnastics became more formalized and was used to train men in warfare. On Philostratus' claim that gymnastics is a form of wisdom, comparable to philosophy, poetry, music, geometry, and astronomy, the people of Athens combined this more physical training with the education of the mind. At the Palestra, a physical education training center, the disciplines of educating the body and the mind were combined, allowing for a form of gymnastics that was more aesthetic and individual and that left behind the focus on strictness, discipline, the emphasis on defeating records, and a focus on strength.Don Francisco Amorós y Ondeano—a Spanish colonel born on 19 February 1770, in Valencia, who died on 8 August 1848, in Paris—was the first person to introduce educative gymnastics in France. The German Friedrich Ludwig Jahn began the German gymnastics movement in 1811 in Berlin, which 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. Follen opened the first college gymnasium and the first public gymnasium in the US in 1826 at Harvard University and in Boston, Massachusetts, respectively. Neal was the first American to open a public gymnasium in the US, in Portland, Maine, in 1827. He also documented and promoted these early efforts in the American Journal of Education and The Yankee, helping to establish the American branch of the movement.
The Federation of International Gymnastics was founded in Liege in 1881. By the end of the nineteenth century, men's gymnastics competition was popular enough to be included in the first modern Olympic Games, in 1896. From then until the early 1950s, both national and international competitions involved a changing variety of exercises gathered under the rubric, gymnastics, which included, for example, synchronized team floor calisthenics, rope climbing, high jumping, running, and horizontal ladder. During the 1920s, women organized and participated in gymnastics events. Elin Falk revolutionized how gymnastics was taught in Swedish schools between 1910 and 1932. The first women's Olympic competition was limited, involving only synchronized calisthenics and track and field. These games were held in 1928 in Amsterdam.
By 1954, Olympic Games apparatus and events for men and women had been standardized in a modern format, and uniform grading structures had been agreed upon. In 1930, the first UK mass movement organization of women in gymnastics, the Women's League of Health and Beauty, was founded by Mary Bagot Stack in London. At this time, Soviet gymnasts astounded the world with highly disciplined and difficult performances, setting a precedent that continues. Television has helped publicize and initiate a modern age of gymnastics. Both men's and women's gymnastics now attract considerable international interest, and excellent gymnasts can be found on every continent.
In 2006, a new points system for Artistic gymnastics was put into play. An A Score is the difficulty score, which as of 2009 derives from the eight highest-scoring elements in a routine, in addition to the points awarded for composition requirements; each vault has a difficulty score assigned by the FIG. The B Score, is the score for execution and is given for how well the skills are performed.
FIG-recognized disciplines
The following disciplines are governed by FIG.Artistic gymnastics
Artistic gymnastics is usually divided into men's and women's gymnastics. Men compete on six events: floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and horizontal bar, while women compete on four: vault, uneven bars, balance beam, and floor exercise. In some countries, women at one time competed on the rings, horizontal bar, and parallel bars.In 2006, FIG introduced a new point system for artistic gymnastics. Unlike the old code of points, in which there was a maximum 10.0 score, there are two separate scores that are added to produce the final score. The first is the execution score, which starts at 10 and has deductions taken for execution mistakes, and the second is the difficulty score, which is open-ended and based on what elements the gymnasts perform. It may be lower than the intended difficulty score if the gymnast does not perform or complete all the skills, or they do not connect a skill meant to be connected to another. Scoring for national developmental levels or outside of the FIG competition system may continue to use the 10.0 system; for example, US women's collegiate gymnastics still uses the 10.0 system.
Competitive events for women in artistic gymnastics
Vault
In the vaulting events, gymnasts sprint down a runway, to take off onto a vault board. They then land momentarily inverted on the hands-on the vaulting horse or vaulting table and propel themselves forward or backward off that platform to a two-footed landing. The post-flight segment may include one or more saltos, or twisting movements. A round-off entry vault, called a Yurchenko, is a commonly performed vault in the higher levels of women's gymnastics. Other vaults include taking off from the vault board with both feet at the same time and either doing a front handspring or round-off onto the vaulting table.In 2001, the traditional vaulting horse was replaced with a new apparatus, sometimes known as a tongue, horse, or vaulting table. The new apparatus is more stable, wider, and longer than the older vaulting horse, approximately in length and in width, giving gymnasts a larger blocking surface. This apparatus is thus considered safer than the vaulting horse used in the past. With the addition of this new, safer vaulting table, gymnasts are attempting more difficult vaults.
Uneven bars
On the uneven bars, gymnasts perform a timed routine on two parallel horizontal bars set at different heights. These bars are made of fiberglass covered in wood laminate to prevent them from breaking. In the past, bars were made of wood, but the bars were prone to breaking, providing an incentive to switch to newer technologies. The height of the bars may be adjusted by to the size needed by individual gymnasts, although the distance between bars cannot be changed for individual gymnasts in elite competition.In the past, the uneven parallel bars were closer together. The bars have been moved increasingly further apart, allowing gymnasts to perform swinging, circling, transitional, and release moves that may pass over, under, and between the two bars. At the elite level, movements must pass through the handstand. Gymnasts often mount the uneven bars using a springboard or a small mat, and they may use chalk and grips when performing this event. The chalk helps take the moisture out of gymnasts' hands to decrease friction and prevent rips ; dowel grips help gymnasts grip the bar.