Gymnastics is a sport involving the performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, power, agility, coordination, grace and balance. Each country has its own national governing body. Competitive artistic gymnastics is the best known. It typically involves the women’s events of uneven bars, balance beam, floor exercise, and vault. Men’s events are floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar. It evolved from exercises used by the ancient Greeks that included skills for mounting and dismounting a horse, and from circus performance skills.
Other disciplines include: rhythmic, trampolining, Team Gym, tumbling, aerobic and acrobatic gymnastics. Participants can include children as young as 20 months old, recreational gymnasts of ages 5 and up, competitive gymnasts at varying levels of skill, and world class athletes.
