An Overview of Gymnastics

So, this is my first blog post ever. If it's not like other blog posts you've read, bear with me, I'm still new at this. :) My blog is all about gymnastics, as you can probably tell from the title and the blog address but I'll tell you anyway. I am going to talk about the ups and downs, the committment, the frustration, the skills, and everything in between about gymnastics. I'm going to start off this week with the basics.

Gymnastics is divided into two categories if you are interested in being a competitive gymnast. You can choose to go into the Junior Olympics program or you can choose to go into the Excel program. The Junior Olympics program is more intense and more competitive. Excel is also competitive but is slightly more recreational because the amount of time you practice is less, so you can have a life in addition to being a competitive gymnast. The Junior Olympics program is divided into levels 1-10, 1 being the worst and 10 being the best. Excel is divided into 5 levels: bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond (formerly known as rookie, novice, intermediate, advanced, and superior). So, the better you get, the more levels you move up. (I am an Excel platinum gymnast by the way).

Unlike other sports where you always practice and play on either a field, rink, or court, gymnastics is made up of four events: floor, bars, beam, and vault. Each event is induvidually challenging. In order to be a good gymnast overall, or all-around (as it's referred to in the sport especially at meets), you must be good on each event. But that's a LOT harder than it sounds.

Everyone has a favorite event and sometimes that person's favorite can change, but generally you always have an event you like more than the other three. For me, my favorite was always vault. I loved everything about it: the way you could run as fast as you wanted towards it and then soar off a springboard over it, and that all thrills me still, but due to an injury I have on my shins, I developed a pain that always happened when I would hit the springboard. And, let's be honest, it's never fun to be doing something that causes you pain. So floor became my new favorite and still is. Along with having a favorite event comes having a least favorite event. A lot of people consider beam their least favorite because it's kind of horrifying to do some of the things gymnasts do on a four inch piece of wood, but I have always enjoyed it for some reason. For me, my least favorite is bars. The main reason is the fact that I always rip (swing on the bar so often that I lose layers of skin on my palms and eventually have a layer of that skin peel off, leaving fresh skin exposed, which is as unpleasant as it sounds.) Also, I have never been really good at it. I've always been just ok, and it's hard to like something that you aren't exactly good at.

Well, that's the best overview of the sport of gymnastics that I could come up with right now, but I will have a post following this one coming soon that goes into more detail about each of the events.

Please feel free to comment with any questions or ideas for a following post!

~Fun Fact~ Gymnastics was recently proven as the most difficult sport in the world both mentally and physically.