Leisure Kicks - The essencial sport and leisure guide

Gymnastics can be as playful or as competitive as you want it to be. It can be a bunch of friends messing about in the school playground doing forward rolls and hand stands against the wall, or it can be supernaturally-bendy people with limbs of steel wool, lifting their own body weight on one arm and performing spectacular acrobatics. At the highest levels, gymnastics is an incredibly difficult and athletic sport that crosses power with beauty and discipline. Watching the best perform live frequently provokes gasps and oohs and aahs from the crowd as the athletes perform magnificent feats of strength along with shows of flexibility and perfect form.

It can involve bars and hoops and vaults or it can be as simple as a series of exercises performed on a mat.  If you are more interested in dance, rhythmic gymnastics may be the perfect fit for you. Or maybe you are more interested in trampolining? Perhaps acrobatics? There are so many options to try.

The most important thing to know if you want to pursue the sport seriously, however, is that it is a very tough sport physically. Athletes are pushed to the limit not only in terms of flexibility, but also in courage. 

Choose your sport

Introducing gymnastics by International Gymnastics