A great sport for those wanting to look great and to do things that many find hard or impossible to do. It takes determination and commitment. And can be rough on the hands, which is why we use these for high-bar...  ...and slightly different ones for the rings. For parallel bars we employ wristbands but your hands just have to take their chance, along with a little honey and chalk. OK. Admire the dedication to training, and the skills being developed. And check out how it affects that all-important body image. For many of the images which follow, we are pleased to acknowledge a men's artistic training camp at Salerno, Italy, which has recently taken place.A few others are mixed in at random. Saluti Salerno!  

"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...