Gymnastics is not an easy sport, and it certainly helps to start young (as soon as they can walk!) - but keep in training and you can go on for many years. Regular conditioning exercise is essential - for strength, flexibility, and endurance (cardio). You need to refine your sense of balance and spatial awareness... have confidence in your coaches, be brave when they tell you to - and off you go! No prizes for guessing that this is, indeed, our favourite sport! We're deliberately including images of quite young gymnasts, because we admire their commitment to the training. But we have olympians in today's mix as well.  Be impressed.  

"The Naked Art" - yes, if that title grabbed your attention for the wrong reasons, look away now! It is a literal translation from the Greek of the word GYMNASTICS, and back in the day it was a collection of different sports, performed naked by boys and teens and only guys were allowed to watch. It included athletics, wrestling, discus, shot put and stuff like that. The word now describes a totally different collection of activities usually NOT performed naked(although most guys prefer to train shirtless!) - by both boys and girls. The guys get six activities: parallel bars, high bar, floor tumbling, rings, vault and pommel horse and, incidentally, that horse is the one item directly remaining from Olympian days - the pommels (handles) themselves were on side saddles designed to be be ridden on real horses by ladies in long skirts.  In one language we are aware of (German), the work Gymnasium actually means 'high school' and the word for gymnastics is TURNEN , which a...