The Evolution of Bars

 Uneven bars has changed a lot over the years.  It originally consisted of men's parallel bars set to different heights.  The bars were very lose together and gymnasts could go from the high bar to the low bar with little difficulty. 

In the 1950's routines usually consisted of simple circles, kips, balance elements, and holds like you might see on beam.  Release moves even began to come into play but they were almost entirely limited to transitions between the low and high bars.

In the late 1960's to the early 70's, companies began manufacturing uneven bars as a separate specific apparatus.  The design was changed slightly to allow the bars to be adjustable, with tension cables that held the bars to the floor.  As a result of this change, caches could set the bars further apart.  Additionally, the circumference of the bars themselves decreased, allowing gymnasts to grasp and swing from them with greater ease.

                                                       Emilia Eberle on bars in 1979
By the mid 80's, routines had become so based on swing and release moves that the bars were moved even farther apart.  The distance between the bars increased even more as gymnasts developed difficult transition elements that required space. 

                                          
                                                   Me at level 9 Regionals April, 2013

The Evolution of Vault

The vaulting horse was set up with its long dimension perpendicular to the vault runway for women, and parallel for men.  The vaulting horse was used in the Olympics for over a century, beginning with the Mens vault in the first modern Olympics and ending with the 2000 Summer Olympics.  The horse had been blamed for several serious accidents over the years. In 1988, American Julissa Gomez was paralyzed in a vaulting accident; she died from complications from her injuries three years later.  During warmups at the 1998 Goodwill Games, Chinese gymnast Sang Lan fell and suffered paralysis from a cervical-spine injury. 
  In a series of crashes when the horse's height was set too low or too high, gymnasts either rammed into the horse's front end, or had bad landings after having problems with their hand placements during push-off.  

Brian Meeker at the 2008 Olympics misses his foot on the spring board and runs into the horse.

 

Following the 1988, 1998 and 2000 problems, International Gymnastics Gymnastics Federation (FIG) re-evaluated and changed the apparatus, citing both safety reasons and the desire to facilitate more impressive acrobatics.  The 2001 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships were the first international competition to make use of the "vaulting table", an apparatus made by Dutch gymnastics equipment company Janssen-Fritsen since the mid-1990s. It features a flat, larger, and more cushioned surface almost parallel to the floor, which slopes downward at the end closest to the springboard; it appears to be somewhat safer than the old apparatus.

The History of Gymnastics

Some of you might be wondering just how long gymnastics has been around.  It has been around for over 2,000 years.  But as a competitive sport it is a little more than a 100 years old.  The word gymnastics comes from the Ancient Greek word 'gymnos' which is translated to mean 'to train naked'.
The Ancient Greeks used gymnastics as a training for war.  The Romans followed the Greeks and they made gymnastics a compulsory for their soldiers as part of their training.  They had the ambition to conquer and they thought gymnastics could make their fighting forces supremely fit. 

Gymnastics is one of the oldest Olympic sports.  Artistic gymnastics was introduced at the very first Olympic Games in 1896 in Athens, and has been present at every Olympic Games since then.

At the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris, the basis of modern Olympic gymnastics competition was firmly established.  The athletes (men) began to compete for individual Olympic titles on each event, as well as the combined team score.   In 1928, women were included in the Amsterdam Games and the U.S women first competed in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, Germany.

My Project Plan

Hi my name is Carly and I am doing a blog on gymnastics.  This is going to be my first year as a level 10 gymnast and I want to teach people about gymnastics and to share some of my experiences.  Anyone who wants to read my blogs can, it's not just for gymnasts.  My purpose is to help people understand more about gymnastics.  You can expect to find lots of interesting topics, anything from the history of gymnastics and even to my gymnastics meets.