gymnastics

Physical exercises, originally for health and training (so called from the way in which men of ancient Greece trained: gymnos ‘naked’). The gymnasia were schools for training competitors for public games.

Men's gymnastics includes high bar, parallel bars, horse vault, rings, pommel horse, and floor exercises. Women's gymnastics includes asymmetrical bars, horse vault, balance beam, and floor exercises. Also popular are sports acrobatics, performed by gymnasts in pairs, trios, or fours to music, where the emphasis is on dance, balance, and timing, and rhythmic gymnastics, choreographed to music and performed by individuals or six-girl teams, with small hand apparatus such as a ribbon, ball, or hoop.

Gymnastics was first revived in 19th-century Germany as an aid to military strength, and was also taken up by educationists including Friedrich Froebel and Johann Pestalozzi, becoming a recognized part of the school curriculum. Today it is a popular spectator sport.