Gymnastics is a sport that requires elegant and artistic combination of strength, balance, agility and muscle coordination, usually performed on apparatus specialized. Gymnasts perform sequences of movements requiring flexibility, strength and kinesthetic awareness, such as cartwheels, handstands, split leaps, aerials and somersaults.
Gymnastics as we know it dates back to ancient Greece. The ancient Greeks practiced gymnastics to prepare for war. Activities such as jumping, running, discus throw, wrestling and boxing helped develop the muscles needed for hand-to-hand. Additional fitness practices used by the ancient Greeks, including methods of mounting and dismounting a horse and a variety of circus skills.
Gymnastics became a central component of ancient Greek education and is compulsory for all students. Gyms, buildings outdoor courts where the training took place, was developed in schools where gymnastics, rhetoric, music and mathematics are taught. Ancinet The Olympic Games were born in this period.
When the Roman Empire ascended, gymnastics Greek was more or less turned into military training. In 393 AD, Emperor Theodosius abolished the Olympic Games altogether. The games had become corrupted; and gymnastics, along with other sports declined. For centuries, gymnastics was all but forgotten.
In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries two pioneer physical educators, Johann Friedrich GutsMuth and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn created exercises for children and youth in the apparatus he had designed sseveral. This innovation ultimately led to the which is considered modern gymnastics. As a result, Friedrich Jahn became known as the "father of gymnastics". Jahn introduced the horizontal bar, parallel bars, side horse with knobs, balance beam, vaulting horse and ladder.
In the nineteenth century, educators in the United States followed suit and adopted German and Swedish gymnastics training programs. In the twentieth century, the military began to publish manuals of drilling with all kinds of gymnastic exercises. According to the Army Manual U.S. Physics drilling, these exercises important provided proper instruction for the bodies of active young men.
As time passed, however, military activity moved away from the hand of warplanes to melee and into the contemporary computer-controlled weapons. As result of the development of modern warfare, gymnastics training as the mind-body connection so important to the Greek educational traditions, German and Swedish began to lose strength. Gymnastics once again took on the aura of being a competitive sport.
By the late nineteenth century, men's gymnastics was sufficiently popular for inclusion in the first modern Olympics held in 1896. The sport was a little different from what we now know as However, the gym. Contests, until the 1950s, both national and international involving a wide variety of exercises to change the modern gymnast may find a bit strange, as a team of synchronized floor calisthenics, rope climbing, high jumping, running, and the horizontal scale just to name a few.
Women began to participate in events gymnastics at the 1920 Olympic competition and the first women was held in 1928 Amsterdam Games, but the event is only synchronized calisthenics. Combined exercises women first held in 1928, and 1952 Olympic Games Highlights of the first full regime of events for women.
In 1954 the Olympic and other apparatus events for men and women have been standardized in modern format, and punctuation rules, including a scoring system 1 to 10, were conducted.
Modern Men's gymnastics events are scored individually and in teams, and currently include the floor exercise, horizontal bar, bars parallel, rings, pommel horse, vault, and the all-around, which combines the results of the other six events.
Events include Women's gymnastics bar balance, uneven parallel bars, combined exercises, floor exercises, jumping, rhythmic gymnastics and sports.
Until 1972, gymnastics for men stressed power and strength, while women focused on performing the routines of the grace of movement. That year, however, a 17-year-old, named gymnast Soviet Olga Korbut captivated a television audience with its innovative and explosive routines.
Nadia Comaneci received the first perfect score, in the 1976 Olympics held in Montreal, Canada. He was trained by the famous Romanian, Bela Karolyi. Comaneci scored four of her perfect tens on the uneven bars, two on the balance beam and another in the floor exercise. Nadia will always be remembered as "a fourteen year old girl with a ponytail, which showed the world that perfection can be achieved.
Mary Lou Retton became America sweethart with two perfect scores and her gold medal at the All-Around competition in front of the home crowd at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles.
These days gymnastics is a household name and many children participate in the gym at one time or another, since they grow. Olga Korbut, Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton, along with all the gymnasts since, have helped popularize competitive gymnastics of women, which is one of the most watched Olympic events. Both men and women's gymnastics now attract considerable international interest, and gymnasts excellent can be found on every continent.
About the Author:
Denise Villani is an author and the webmaster of several websites and article directories. Find more articles and information on gymnastics at
Gymnastics-Stuff.com.
Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – A Brief History of Gymnastics
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01 31st, 2010| 
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