Forms Of Gymnastics

Artistic gymnastics is what is normally referred to when someone says “gymnastics.” Women’s artistic gymnastics includes different events than men’s artistic gymnastics. Women compete in the floor exercise, the balance beam, the uneven bars, and the vault. The men share two events with the women: the vault and the floor exercise. But they have four events that are unique to men’s competition: the high bar, the parallel bars, the pommel horse, and the rings. The floor exercise fuses dance and tumbling on a large mat. The vault is an event where the competitor uses a springboard to aid in different flips and twists. The uneven, parallel and high bars are very similar events but contain different skills of strength and acrobatics to perform. The balance beam, unique to women, challenges balance, grace and strength of the competitor. Pommel horse and the rings both challenge the strength of men having to perform various maneuvers while suspending all of their body weight on their arms.

Rhythmic gymnastics is performed by women and makes use of various objects or props to perform fluid, connected movements with the required object. These objects include the ball, ribbon, hoop, rope, and clubs. Rhythmic gymnastics contains elements of ballet, gymnastics and theatrical dance. All of this includes the manipulation of the particular object. One thing to note is that a club looks and acts very similar to a baton. Many may have seen baton twirlers in their local parades, they combine feats of tossing and twirling the baton as well as some basic tumbling type moves.

Another form is the tumbling and trampoline where the gymnast uses a trampoline to aid them. The trampoline helps propel them further in the air and they can perform complex flips and twists.

The last form of gymnastics is sports acrobatics. Multiple competitors work together in sports acrobatics to perform difficult feats of tumbling. This form of gymnastics uses the other person as the mechanical aid instead of an apparatus.

Gymnastic influence can be seen in other sports. Cheerleading is one such sport that involves many gymnastic skills, including some simple tumbles and feats of strength. Diving is a sport that shows a foundation with gymnastics, many tumbles and spins are involved in diving as a sport. Some forms of gymnastics also share similarities with dance, mainly the floor exercise in artistic gymnastics and all of rhythmic gymnastics. The fusion of different elements within gymnastics causes many to consider gymnastics an art as well as a sport.