The Art of Gymnastic

Gymnastics is a sport involving performance of exercises requiring physical strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, balance and grace.

Artistic Gymnastics, typically involves the women's events of uneven parallel bar, balance beam, floor exercise, and vault. Men's events include floor exercise, pommel horse, still rings, vault, parallel bars, and high bar.

Artistic gymnastics is usually divided into Men's and Women's Gymnastics. Each group does different events.

Traditionally, at the international level, the gymnast performed routines that he or she choreographed. Nowadays, each country may use compulsory and optional routines at their discretion in the training of young gymnasts.

Compulsory routines are used for gymnasts of level 1-6 and from level 7 and up the routines must be choreographed by the gymnasts with a set amount of skills and there must be a selection of skill types.

floor exercise

balance beam

vault

uneven parallel bar

men's pommel horse

Rhythmic gymnastic involves the performance of five separate routines with the use of five apparatus—ball, ribbon, hoop, clubs, rope—on a floor area, with a much greater emphasis on the aesthetic rather than the acrobatic.

There are also group routines consisting of 5 gymnasts and 5 apparatuses of their choice. Rhythmic routines are scored out of a possible 20 points; the score for Artistry (choreography and music) is averaged with the score for Difficulty of the moves and then added to the score for Execution.