Why are rhythmic gymnasts so flexible

Injury prevention exercise training can help you with that. Rhythmic gymnasts perform many extreme movements that are unique to this sport. These movements demand stability in the core and hips in order to prevent overuse injury. The exercise programme below was designed to help with this. If you include these exercises in your daily training routine, we are sure it will pay off!

Many gymnasts are very flexible, but due to the extreme range of motions the sport demands many athletes try to compensate for a lack of flexibility in a specific joint. For instance, if the hip is not flexible enough, many will try to increase extension in the lower spine, which will hurt their back in the long run.

We have tried to address this in the exercise programme. Give it a try! Most gymnasts start training and competing at a young age. During growth, injuries can affect the growth plates of the bone, and need to be evaluated and treated properly in order to avoid later complications. The most important thing you can do to reduce your risk of injury, is to train just the right amount.

This can be tricky to determine. Read more about proper load management in the article below to come. The Get Set - Train Smarter mobil application is available for free in Google Play and Apple app stores, and ready for download in 9 languages.

For athletes it is normal to be exhausted and tired following training and competition. But it is not normal to stay tired even after several days of rest. There is no reason why children and adolescents should not train strength.

On the contrary, it is beneficial with training strength for all age groups - as long as you do it correctly. Technique, mobility and control A gymnast needs to be flexible and have a strong core.

Stability is key! Here are some of the pros and cons of the pulling method:. On the table, we can see that the damage these stretches can cause is mostly long term.

Long term injuries occur when we abuse a certain exercise and we do it very regularly. The pulling method may damage the hips and lower back if we incorporate them into our everyday training. But if we do it to check our flexibility progress every few weeks or months, or before a competition to get that extra amplitude we need, it won't do any harm. The pulling method should be exercised on a gymnast of a certain level, an age where they are body aware and can tell the difference between "good pain " and "bad pain", and most importantly, they should already have their full splits and be very comfortable with their regular over-splits.

The communication between the person who is pulling the leg and the athlete is very important for the puller to know when to stop and why. Is it because of stretch soreness or because of another reason? Is it a good moment to do so? But as I grew older, embarrassment crept over me. I wondered what it had meant to dedicate so much of my childhood to a sport that now seemed shamefully girly and unfeminist.

This is a sport that first asks women to be graceful and model-thin, then scrutinises their every movement and facial expression for imperfections. The lifecycle of an elite rhythmic gymnast would please the most ardent misogynist. Ideally, you begin as early as possible, so you develop maximum flexibility before the grim reaper puberty comes knocking.

Then, in the years when you are allegedly at your most beautiful, and certainly at your most emotionally insecure, you are expected to dazzle. Once you are no longer capable of dazzling, you exit the stage. Senior competitive gymnasts commonly retire in their early 20s. Mostly, though, when I looked at these photos, I felt old.

One summer, watching yet another round of gymnasts getting their taste of Olympic glory, all of whom seemed to be rudely getting younger and younger, I phoned my dad in a panic, telling him that I had become a has-been. He replied that I was 18, and thus still had plenty left to live for. Almost a decade on, I recently searched online for any remnants of my life in rhythmic gymnastics. I asked my mother if she still had any of the medals. Lost in an old house move. What about that time I was interviewed in the local paper?

Gone, gone, gone. That child national champion, so driven and so athletic, feels like another person who somehow inhabited my body decades earlier, before bolting it without warning, shutting the windows and doors and leaving no trace.

Was that even me? I was hooked on rhythmic gymnastics from the very start. I loved the rush of feeling my body stretching and moving, propelled by the hope that I, too, might one day be as graceful as that ribbon-throwing Olympian.

Under the tutelage of two kind teenage sisters, I began my education. Rhythmic gymnastics, I learned, is not just about sparkly leotards and ribbons; it is about sparkly leotards and ribbons and the ball, rope, hoop and clubs in reality, two small batons.

For each apparatus, rhythmic gymnasts have a separate routine. To the six-year-old me, always prone to catastrophising, one of the most appealing things was that there were no terrifying, gravity-defying flips or tumbles. The movements, set to music, are instead rooted in dance and ballet. You have leaps and jumps; rotations, otherwise known as spins and pirouettes; and balances just throw your leg out behind you to make an arabesque, then bend your knee and kick your foot towards your head, then catch it.

As you perform these movements, you must also effortlessly juggle, spin, throw and catch your ribbon or ball or rope or hoop or clubs. Yes, it is a real sport. Judges score each routine by two criteria: the difficulty of the moves, and the execution of the performance. Internationally, rhythmic gymnastics is dominated by Russia, Ukraine and Belarus: Russia has won every Olympic gold for the past five games, and are favourites to win again in Tokyo this year.

In New Zealand, it was a niche sport; underfunded, misunderstood, not the thing to pursue if you wanted mainstream recognition. You could be the best rhythmic gymnast in New Zealand but struggle to place internationally. But the place that mattered most was the gym.

After a few months of practising, I was ready for my first competition. Watching gymnasts pile in from other parts of Auckland, then studying them up close through the fog of hairspray in the changing room, I grew nervous. I remember these moments in the shadows more clearly than I ever do performing. Performing takes you into the realm of the familiar and rehearsed, allows you to get lost in the music and the delight of showing just how good you are at this thing.

The waiting, however, is hell. As I stepped out on to the mat, something strange happened. Facing an audience and a panel of judges, I bloomed. My body expertly followed the directions issued by my mind. I instinctively felt what jump went when. I remembered to flash my smile to the crowd.

The rapturous delight of showing off, the sudden bravado that blasted my nerves away, the rush of feeling my body leap and jump and spin — all this was new. Total pleasure, shot through with a complete conviction in my own power. I wanted to feel this way again. I won a bronze for one of my routines, and on the car ride home I held the medal tight to my chest. I had no expectations for what would come next.

All I knew was that they had given a few prizes to a select few kids that day, and, on my very first try, I had been one of them. W hat can I say? I had simply wanted to be pretty. Follow the ideological road from a childhood defined by Barbie dolls and ballerinas, and you may find yourself pining to be a rhythmic gymnast: conventionally beautiful, perennially cheery and shunted away from public life at The lack of respect that rhythmic gymnastics receives is hard to separate from the gender politics of the sport.

Rhythmic gymnastics is women-only and unabashedly girly. In other words, rhythmic gymnasts must not only endure pain, but smile through it, too. There is one version of this story that casts me as a victim of the patriarchy, obediently smiling through my suffering. Perhaps in a sense I was. It is easy to see how rhythmic gymnastics is constricting. What is harder to see is how liberating it can feel.

When I was on the floor, there was a deep pleasure in letting the audience, and myself, know that I could triumph over impossible demands. Under the scrutiny of judges, competitors and the crowd, I knew that I was here to conquer.

My smile felt less sweet and obliging than a dark challenge: go on, idiot, underestimate me. Gymnastics unlocked something sublime and powerful, opening up planes of existence normally closed off to girls: the feeling of bloodlust pumping through my body, the hunger for glory, and the all-consuming joy of losing myself in something greater. Yes, these dark emotions were channelled through something extremely girly. But these hyper-feminine things — like gymnastics, like dance, like pageants — were, and remain, some of the few ways in which women can experience those feelings without censure.

A t that first competition my performance caught the eye of coaches from a more competitive club across town. I had hit the big leagues. As the months passed, my leaps got higher and higher, my turns got more complicated and my splits became hypersplits in which you put one leg up on a bench for a deeper stretch.

Six months after my bronze, I won gold in a competition in Auckland. The next month, I won another. Then another.