The History of Gymnastics

How did gymnastics become a thing? Who came up with the idea to walk on hands, do flips on a 4-inch beam, swing on bars, or flip over a vault? They all do not seem like typical human tasks that were necessary for our development, so why did we start doing them? Although we many never know the actual thinking process that was going through people's heads as they invented gymnastics, I can tell you a little bit about how gymnastics has changed through the years to get to what it is now.

It all started in the early Greek civilization at the same time running, jumping, swimming, throwing, wrestling, and weightlifting were becoming a thing to help development. They began to do vigorous gymnastics exercises that included both men and women. It was highly valued in ancient Greece as it was one of their most fascinating sports to watch.

Later, after the Romans conquered the Greece, they developed the Greek's version of gymnastics to a more formal sport. They used the gymnastics skills and gymnasiums to help them prepare for warfare because gymnastics was found to help them develop fighting skills at a fast rate. However, as Rome started to decline, their interest in gymnastics started to fade. The tumbling aspects of gymnastics seemed to stick around because they did not need equipment and many people like to do it for fun but the other events that they used for training basically went away.

Gymnastics obviously did not fade all the way away though, otherwise we would not have it today. A Prussian man named Johann Bernhard Basedow started the modernization of gymnastics in 1774. He used gymnastics as a form of instruction in his school and people in Germany began to invent additional gymnastics equipment, such as the horizontal bar, parallel bars, and balance beam. Throughout the following years, many more schools adopted gymnastics as a form of instruction which helped the sport become more and more popular. The sport was introduced to the US in universities during the Civil War, brought by European immigrants. Gymnastics began to emphasize the importance of form and neatness rather than rivalry, like it was in ancient Greece and Rome.

After many years, the sport of gymnastics became competitive. Men's gymnastics became part of the Olympics in 1896 and women's gymnastics eventually became part of the Olympics in 1936. Modern gymnastics became globally popular after joining in on the Olympic games due to people realizing the entertainment aspect of the sport. Gymnastics began to pick up widespread TV coverage which gave the sport extreme amounts of publicity that they did not have in the past.

Gymnastics became more and more popular to where it is today--one of the most popular sport to watch in the Olympics. Many different types of gymnastics have been invented as well, which you can read about in my Different Types of Gymnastics post. It is even crazy to look at how gymnastics was performed in the 1900s to now because the sport is constantly changing. I would encourage you to look up videos of old gymnastics and compare it to how you perceive the sport today.

Sources:
https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/history-gymnastics-ancient-greece-modern-times/


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