gymnastics

Ancient origins

The term gymnastics, derived from a Greek word meaning “to exercise naked,” applied in ancient Greece to all exercises practiced in the gymnasium, the place where male athletes did indeed exercise unclothed. Many of these exercises came to be included in the ancient Olympic Games, until the abandonment of the Games in 393 ce. Some of the competitions grouped under this ancient definition of gymnastics later became separate sports, such as athletics (track and field), wrestling, and boxing.

Of the modern events currently considered to be gymnastics, only tumbling and a primitive form of vaulting were known in the ancient world. For instance, Egyptian hieroglyphs show variations of backbends and other stunts being performed with a partner, while a well-known fresco from Crete at the palace at Knossos shows a leaper performing what is either a cartwheel or handspring over a charging bull. Tumbling was an art form in ancient China as well. Stone engravings found in Shandong province that date to the Han period (206 bce–220 ce) portray acrobatics being performed.

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Developments in Europe

Tumbling continued in the Middle Ages in Europe, where it was practiced by traveling troupes of thespians, dancers, acrobats, and jugglers. The activity was first described in the West in a book published in the 15th century by Archange Tuccaro, Trois dialogues du Sr. Archange Tuccaro (the book contains three essays on jumping and tumbling). Tumbling seems to be an activity that evolved in various forms in many cultures with little cross-cultural influence. For instance, the hoop-diving illustrated in Tuccaro’s book looks very similar to a type of tumbling seen in ancient China. Tumbling and acrobatics of all kinds were eventually incorporated into the circus, and it was circus acrobats who first used primitive trampolines.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Émile; ou, de l’éducation (1762; Emile; or, On Education) is credited by historians as the catalyst of educational reform in Europe that combined both the physical and cognitive training of children. Rousseau’s work inspired educational reformers in Germany, who opened schools known as Philanthropinum in the late 1700s that featured a wide variety of outdoor activities, including gymnastics; children from all economic strata were accepted. The “grandfather” of modern gymnastics, Johann Christoph Friedrich Guts Muths (1759–1839), was a leading teacher at the Philanthropinist school in Schnepfenthal. In his seminal work, Gymnastik für die Jugend (1793; Gymnastics for Youth), Guts Muths envisioned two main divisions of gymnastics: natural gymnastics and artificial gymnastics. These two divisions may be thought of as utilitarian and nonutilitarian gymnastics. The former disciplines emphasize the health of the body, similar to the exercises developed in Sweden and Denmark under Per Henrik Ling (1776–1839) and Neils Bukh (1880–1950), respectively. Modern aerobics also falls into this category, and a competitive form, now called aerobic gymnastics, was added to the disciplines sponsored by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) in 1996. In contrast, nonutilitarian gymnastics is characterized by modern artistic gymnastics, the maneuvers of which are geared to beauty and not function. For example, in feudal Europe young men were taught to mount and dismount a horse, useful knowledge during a time when armies rode. Modern “horse” work in artistic gymnastics has evolved to a point where there is no practical connection between gymnastic maneuvers on a horse and horsemanship. Only the language of riding remains, with the terms mount and dismount still being used in gymnastics.

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The Olympic Games

The prime developer of natural gymnastics was Per Henrik Ling. In 1813 Ling founded a teacher-training center, the Royal Gymnastics Central Institute, in Stockholm. Ling devised and taught a system of gymnastic exercises designed to produce medical benefits for the athlete. Calisthenics are attributed to him, including free calisthenics—that is, exercises without the use of hand apparatus such as clubs, wands, and dumbbells. Although Ling did not promote competition, free calisthenics later evolved into the artistic gymnastics discipline now known as floor exercise.

The acknowledged “father” of gymnastics, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, founder of the turnverein (gymnastics club) movement, is credited with the rapid spread of gymnastics throughout the world. Gymnastic competition can be traced to the outdoor playground (Turnplatz) Jahn opened in a field known as the Hasenheide (rabbit field) on the outskirts of Berlin. Ernst Eiselen, Jahn’s assistant and coauthor of Die Deutsche Turnkunst (1816; The German Gymnastic Art), carefully noted and explained the various exercises developed on the playground. The pommel horse was used for leg-swinging exercises and for vaulting. Jahn invented the parallel bars to increase the upper-body strength of his students, and immense towers were erected to test their courage. Balance beams, horizontal bars, climbing ropes, and climbing poles were also found at the Turnplatz. Primitive pole vaulting was practiced along with other athletic games. The wide variety of challenging apparatus found on the playground attracted young men who were then, in addition, indoctrinated with Jahn’s dream of German unification and his ideas on the defense of the fatherland and ridding Prussia of French influence.

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The Prussians and leaders from surrounding countries became wary of nationalist sentiments, and Jahn and his followers were viewed with suspicion after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. About that time student organizations, such as the Burschenschaft (“Youth Branch”), were in favor of adopting a constitutional form of government, arming the citizenry, and instituting greater civil freedoms. In 1819, after the murder of the German playwright August von Kotzebue by a Burschenschaft gymnast, the Prussian king Frederick William III closed approximately 100 gymnastics fields and centers in Prussia. Other Germanic states followed suit. Jahn was arrested, jailed as a democratic demagogue, and placed under house arrest for the next five years. He was eventually acquitted but was admonished to relocate far from Berlin to a city or town with neither institutions of higher learning or gymnasia. He was awarded a yearly stipend and settled in Freyburg an der Unstrut. Three of his close followers, Karl Beck, Karl Follen, and Franz Lieber, fearing arrest, fled to North America, bringing gymnastics with them. The Turners (members of turnverein) remaining in Prussia went underground until the ban on gymnastics was lifted by King Frederick William IV in 1842.

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The first German gymnastic festival (Turnfest) was held in Coburg in 1860. The festival attracted affiliated turnverein clubs and marked the beginning of international competition, as the growing family of Turners outside Germany were invited to participate. Americans had been introduced to gymnastics by followers of Jahn in the late 1820s, but not until 1848, when large numbers of Germans immigrated, did transplanted turnverein members organize clubs and establish a national union of Turner societies. (A similar movement, the Sokol, originated and spread in Bohemia and was also transported to the United States.) By 1861 American Turners and Turners from Germanic regions bordering Prussia attended the second Turnfest in Berlin. By the time of the first modern Olympics in Athens in 1896, eight Turnfests had taken place in Germany with the participation of a growing number of countries.

International organization and competition

In 1881 the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) was founded to supervise international competition. The 1896 Olympic Games fostered interest in gymnastics, and the FIG World Championships in gymnastics were organized for men in 1903 and for women in 1934.

The 1896 Olympic Games marked the advent of true international, open competition in gymnastics. The Games featured typical German, or “heavy apparatus,” events and rope climbing. Gymnastics competitions were not standardized until the 1928 Olympics, when five of the six events presently held in Olympic gymnastics were contested—pommel horse, rings, vaulting, parallel bars, and horizontal bar, with both compulsory and optional routines required. Women first competed in the Olympics in 1928 in events similar to those of the men except for the addition of the balance beam. Floor exercise events were added in 1932.