The Difficulty of Gymnastics

Gymnastics is considered by most to be one of the top 3 hardest sports in existence. There are aspects of the sport of gymnastics that exceed all other sports. The strength, flexibility, speed, power, and the intense training and competition all play factors in what make gymnastics so difficult. This sport requires as much or more than most other collegiate athletes while the teams receive much less money than that of a football team. The first point will introduce the massive benefits of gymnastics such as increasing bone mineral density and lean tissue in the body. Next, a study on the immense number of injuries that occur in gymnasts will be analyzed. How gymnasts are able to throw themselves in the air, do every movement that needs to be done, and prepare for the ground is the next analysis that will be done. This paper will look at the benefits of gymnastics as well as the factors that make it such a difficult sport.

A study was done to determine effects of gymnastics on bone mineral density, lean tissue mass, insulin-like growth factor, and osteocalcin over the period of 27 weeks. This study used 11 female gymnasts for the experiment, and 11 females who did less than 3 hours of exercise per week. The bone mineral density is a measurement of the minerals (such as calcium) in a person’s bones. The gymnasts in this study had a higher start bone mineral density than the controls. Even though the gymnasts started higher, their increase was still bigger on average (fig. 1). The lean tissue mass numbers are much more impressive for this study. Over the 27 weeks, the controls had almost no change from their initial 39.6 kg (fig. 3). The gymnasts started at 39.2 kg of lean tissue mass which is lower due to the fact that on average,...

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