Gymnastics is a sport with a very long history requiring high levels of agility, strength, balance, flexibility, coordination and endurance. Gymnastic skills were first developed in ancient Greece, specifically in Athens and Sparta, where it was used to prepare their warriors for battle.
The History of Gymnastics
The word “gymnastics” is derived from the Greek adjective gymnos, which means to “train naked.” The sport received this name because ancient Greek athletes trained and competed naked. Today, gymnastics is popular with both genders, and women and girls typically wear long sleeve gymnastics leotards.
In Sparta, the Agoge was a type of exhibition gymnastics in the form of a military-style dance performed before the state’s dignitaries as the finale for their training. The gymnastics were performed naked except for their weapons.
Athens combined the physical aspects of gymnastics with educating the mind. The Palestra was a training center, where disciplining the body and mental education was combined. This created a type of gymnastics that was aesthetically pleasing and individualistic. Athens abandoned the Spartan discipline that focused on discipline and strength.
Modern Gymnastics
Gymnastics has a revival in the 18th and 19th centuries; the Federation of International Gymnastics was created in Liege, France in 1881. By 1896, men’s gymnastics was popular enough to compete in the first modern Olympic Games.
It wasn’t until the 1920s that women participated in organized gymnastics. The first women’s gymnastics competition at the 1928 Olympics was limited, and only included synchronized calisthenics.
By the 1954 Olympic Games gymnastics events for men and women were standardized into the modern event we know today. Women typically wear long sleeve gymnastics leotards to compete. At that time, the women gymnasts from the Soviet Union amazed the world with their highly disciplined and very difficult routines.
Gymnastics has a long history, and gymnasts of both genders continue to raise the bar on what the human body can do. Surely the athletes of ancient Greece would be impressed!
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