What is Rhythmic Gymnastics?

 

Rhythmic gymnastics is a beautiful Olympic sport that is often called "The Princess of All Sports" for its grace and elegance. It combines elements of ballet and dance with acrobatic skills and apparatus manipulation. Girls perform routines choreographed to music and accompanied by one of the five apparatuses: rope, hoop, ball, clubs and ribbon.

 

This unique sport combines elegance and beauty of a dancer with strength and coordination of an athlete.

 

Why choose Rhythmic Gymnastics? Rhythmic Gymnastics is a wonderful sport for girls. While being a moderately physical sport, it also teaches girls flexibility, balance, coordination, agility as well as developing beautiful body lines and gracefulness.

 

When comparing Rhythmic Gymnastics with another gymnastic option like Artistic Gymnastics for example, Rhythmic Gymnastics poses much less risk of injury. Girls still become strong when training in Rhythmic Gymnastics, but not as muscular as in Artistic Gymnastics and more flexible, elegant, and feminine. Rhythmic Gymnastics is more girly and pretty with its movements, colors, and attitude. There is lots of fun to be had with acrobatic elements and tossing and catching of the apparatus.

 

And as any sport, Rhythmic Gymnastics teaches discipline, team work, respect, setting and achieving goals, self-confidence and more. Concentration skills also enhance learning abilities in school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Little Bit of History

 

Although it's quite new as a competitive sport, rhythmic gymnastics is rooted in the very beginning of modern gymnastics. Specifically, it grew out of the Swedish system of free exercise developed in 1814 by Peter Henry Ling.

 

Ling promoted "aesthetic gymnastics," in which students expressed their feelings and emotions through bodily movement. The idea was extended by Catherine E. Beecher, founder of the Western Female Institute in Ohio in 1837. In Beecher's gymnastics program, called "grace without dancing," young women exercised to music, moving from simple calisthenics to more strenuous activities.

 

During the 1880s, Emil Dalcroze of Switzerland developed "eurhythmics," a form of physical training for musicians and dancers, and George Demeny of France created various exercises to music that were designed to promote grace of movement, muscular flexibility, and good posture.

 

All of those strains were combined, around 1900, into the Swedish school of rhythmic gymnastics, which later added more dance elements from Finland. About the same time, Ernest Idla of Estonia established a degree of difficulty for each movement.

 

Rhythmic gymnastics as a sport began in the 1940s in the Soviet Union. It was there that for the first time, the spirit of sports was combined with the sensuous art of classical ballet. To Isadora Duncan, we credit the famous rebellion against the dogma of classical ballet and the shift toward the creation of a new discipline that would blend art and sport.

 

International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) recognized this discipline in 1961, first as modern gymnastics, then as rhythmic sportive gymnastics, and finally as rhythmic gymnastics. The first World Championships for individual gymnasts took place in 1963 in Budapest, Hungary. Groups were introduced at the same level in 1967 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Rhythmic gymnastics was added to the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, with an Individual All Around competition. The Canadian Lori Fung was the first rhythmic gymnast to earn an Olympic gold medal. The Group competition was added to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia.