Gymnastics is great!! It’s fantastic and it’s my favourite sport and has been since I was 6.

Gymnastics is very hard and requires a lot of muscle and it demands patience, focus and control. Even though it is hard and demanding Gymnastics is not considered a sport by many people as well as dance among other sports. But a sport means an activity that is healthy for you, makes you move and is exercise for your body.

Gymnastics is not as popular a sport as Soccer for example or Hockey but it is a great one nonetheless. If you are doing competitive gymnastics there are four stations you do.

Beam: Beam is when you do many gymnastics moves on a balance beam hence the name beam. A beam is about 5 meters long 4.1 feet high (competition height) and 10cm (4 inches) wide. I can do a back walkover on beam, a handstand a cartwheel and more.

Bars: There are two types of bars, uneven bars (women’s competition) and parallel bars (men’s competition). For uneven bars the lower bar is about 5.6 feet high and the upper bar is about 8.2 high. The distance between the two bars is 130cm (4.3ft) to 180cm (5.9ft). Bars require arm muscle and sometimes leg muscles and abs. On bar the different types of skills that you can do is a kip, a Giant, a baby giant, a stride circle, a hip circle and more.

Floor: Floor is where you do tumbling routines. You have a routine to instrumental music infused with gymnastics and a little bit of dance. Floor is easily my favourite part of gymnastics because it feels like you are free and also because it requires a lot of focus to get right. Before you do skills on beam, you have to learn them on floor.

Vault: Vault is where you have a vaulting table and a springboard. A vault is a large apparatus that is almost parallel to the ground but slopes downward at the front which is closest to the springboard. In vault a gymnast runs along a stretch of floor before jumping on the springboard and doing a skill onto the beam. Vault requires that you have strong legs, arms and shoulders.

Gymnastics has been around for about 2,000 years but has only been a competitive sport for about 100 years. It is also an Olympic event!

So now you can see that Gymnastics is a hard sport but until you actually do it, you won’t realize how fun and physically straining it is. Gymnastics is my favorite sport! What’s yours?

Serena Wambura