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Gymnastics is a type 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, and from circus performance skills.
In gymnastics, the floor is a specially prepared exercise surface, considered an apparatus. The floor exercise is the event performed on the floor, in both women's and men's artistic gymnastics. The same floor is used for WAG FX and MAG FX, but rules and scoring differ; most obviously, a WAG FX routine is synchronised to a piece of recorded dance music, whereas MAG FX has no musical accompaniment.
The balance beam is a rectangular artistic gymnastics apparatus and an event performed using the apparatus. The apparatus and the event are sometimes simply called "beam". The English abbreviation for the event in gymnastics scoring is BB. The balance beam is performed competitively only by female gymnasts.
Olga Valentinovna Korbut is a Belarusian retired gymnast who competed for the Soviet Union. Nicknamed the "Sparrow from Minsk", she won four gold medals and two silver medals at the Summer Olympic Games, in which she competed in 1972 and 1976 for the Soviet team, and was the inaugural inductee to the International Gymnastics Hall of Fame in 1988.
A somersault is an acrobatic exercise in which a person's body rotates 360° around a horizontal axis with the feet passing over the head. A somersault can be performed forwards, backwards or sideways and can be executed in the air or on the ground. When performed on the ground, it is typically called a roll.
The Korbut flip is a gymnastics skill performed on either of two different apparatus. Both were first performed internationally by the Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut.
Elena Vyacheslavovna Mukhina was a Soviet gymnast who won the all-around title at the 1978 World Championships in Strasbourg, France. Her career was on the rise, and she was widely touted as the next great gymnastics star until 1979, when she broke a leg and missed several competitions. The rushed recovery from that injury, combined with pressure to master a dangerous and difficult tumbling move caused her to break her neck two weeks before the opening of the 1980 Summer Olympics, leaving her permanently quadriplegic.
The Code of Points is a rulebook that defines the scoring system for each level of competition in gymnastics. There is not a universal international Code of Points, and every oversight organization — such as the FIG, NCAA Gymnastics, and most national gymnastics federations — designs and employs its own different Code of Points.
A handspring is an acrobatic move in which a person executes a complete revolution of the body by lunging headfirst from an upright position into an inverted vertical position and then pushing off from the floor with the hands so as to leap back to an upright position. The direction of body rotation in a handspring may be either forward or backward, and either kind may be performed from a stationary standing position or while in motion.
Kurt Bilteaux Thomas was an American Olympic gymnast and part-time actor. He was a member of the United States men's national artistic gymnastics team and in 1978 he became the first American male gymnast to win a gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. In 1979, he won six medals at the world championship, setting the record for most medals won at a single world championship by an American gymnast, a feat matched only by Simone Biles in 2018. He competed in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Thomas was favored to win a medal at the 1980 Summer Olympics but was unable to compete due to the USA boycott of the 1980 Olympic Games.
Sabina Carolina Cojocar is a Romanian retired international elite artistic gymnast and singer. She became a world gold medalist with the Romanian women's gymnastics team in 2001 and is also a five-time medalist at the 2000 Junior European Gymnastics Championships.
Mitsuo Tsukahara is a Japanese artistic gymnast. He was five times an Olympic Gold Medalist. He remained active in the sport after his retirement from competition. He served as vice president of the Japan Gymnastic Association.
The Gienger is a gymnastics skill performed on the uneven bars for women and the high bar for men. It is named after German gymnast Eberhard Gienger. The release move looks like a half-turn layout "flyaway" above the bar to catch the same bar. Its COP reference is 3.405 and it is a D element.
Tumbling, sometimes referred to as power tumbling, is a gymnastics discipline in which participants perform a series of acrobatic skills down a 25 metres (82 ft) long sprung track. Each series, known as a pass, comprises eight elements in which the athlete jumps, twists and flips placing only their hands and feet on the track. Tumblers are judged on the difficulty and form of their routine. There are both individual and team competitions in the sport.
Ioannis Melissanidis is a retired Greek artistic gymnast and the 1996 Olympic champion on the floor exercise. He was also the first Greek gymnast ever to medal at the World Championships. He was named one of the 1996 Greek Male Athletes of the Year.
The Pak, or Pak salto, is a release move performed on the uneven bars in women's artistic gymnastics. The move starts with the gymnast hanging on the high bar and facing the low bar, then swinging forwards towards the low bar and performing a straight backward salto to catch the low bar.
This is a general glossary of the terms used in the sport of gymnastics.
There are currently five elements in the women's artistic gymnastics (WAG) Code of Points named after American gymnast Simone Biles: two on vault, one on balance beam, and two on floor exercise.
Banned gymnastic skills are gymnastics moves which gymnasts are prohibited to perform, mostly due to safety concerns for the performing athletes.
References
- ↑ "Kurt Thomas, first U.S. man to win a world gymnastics title, dies at 64". ESPN. ESPN News Services. 6 June 2020. Retrieved 13 June 2020.
- ↑ "USA Gymnastics | Skills Named for U.S. Gymnasts". usagym.org. Retrieved 2023-12-25.
- ↑ Dvora Meyers (2016). The End of the Perfect 10: The Making and Breaking of Gymnastics' Top Score —from Nadia to Now. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-501-10140-3.
- ↑ "2017-2020 Code of Points Men's Artistic Gymnastics" (PDF). International Gymnastics Federation . p. 39. Archived from the original (PDF) on 12 November 2020.