Why gymnasts so young

For instance, the average age for a female gymnast in the Tokyo Olympics is just under 22 years, a remarkable rise compared to previous years. This is hugely important given the dangers in promoting an aesthetic in which only children can be successful.

Connect with us. Why are gymnasts so young? Have something to tell us about this article? Let us know. Joshua Rogers. Joshua is a senior sports writer with over four years' experience in online writing. He became a trending writer for a leading social publisher and later spent time covering the World Cup for The Mirror Online.

So while the U. The average mean age for gymnasts from the United States was By comparison, gymnasts from the USSR averaged This was likely due to a confluence of factors. In addition, the Soviets exerted a lot of control over the judging panels, which made it difficult for Americans to get onto the podium. Soviet gymnasts won because they were usually better. At the same time, other factors were also reshaping the game. Only female coaches were allowed onto the floor with the team or into the training halls at competitions.

Male gymnasts of this time were already performing complex acrobatics in their exercises, so when they became coaches for women or when coaches for men started training women, they brought that technical expertise with them and started teaching them to the women.

Or, as it turned out, girls. Korbut was trained by Renald Knysh, who she and others later said had sexually abused them. Knysh, who died in , denied the allegations. And Vladislav Rastorotsky — perhaps one of the most innovative coaches of the 20th century, and by reputation a patient one — trained a whole bevvy of gymnasts, including Lyudmila Turischeva, Natalia Shaposhnikova and Natalia Yurchenko.

Cervin pointed out that Rastorotsky drew on the tradition of the Soviet circus for inspiration. And that disaster was entirely predictable. The new age minimum did little to stymie the decline in the ages of female gymnasts, whether they were from the capitalist West or the Communist East.

Training more than five hours a day as a preteen became a norm in the sport that persists to this day. And she remembers a sudden increased focus on very young talent. Then what happens? Do all phenoms die at 12? Where do they go? For certain talented youngsters, the hours start to ramp up quickly so that they will be at an athletic peak by the time they hit 14 or 15, if not earlier, either to start moving down the elite path or to get the attention of college recruiters.

The leap from junior elite to senior is a perilous one, and few junior standouts end up having great results at the senior level. And in many cases, they end up leaving the sport, citing injury and burnout, if they even bother explaining their departure at all.

Fink objects to classifying gymnastics as an early-specialization sport. Brehanna Showers, a former University of Oklahoma gymnast, began to specialize at around age 9 — relatively late according to the standards of gymnastics. When she shifted from recreational gymnastics and a handful of other sports to a more regimented gymnastics schedule, she recalls that her new teammates, many of them between 8 and 10 years old, were already nursing injuries.

It is kind of crazy. There were girls who were extremely talented, but their bodies were not going to hold up. What Showers observed anecdotally is supported by most of the available research. Though Showers was training more than 20 hours a week, she refused to give up her other interests. During this time, she started competing in pole vaulting, something she had to hide from her gymnastics coaches.

She was found out when one of her pole-vaulting teammates posted a photo on Facebook of Showers at a competition on her day off from gymnastics. Her coach saw it and told her she needed to stop. But what if gymnastics culture encouraged kids to explore a range of other activities rather than limiting their options? What if coaches viewed other sports as a complement to gymnastics, not a distraction from it? The weight training gives you stronger muscles, so you become a better tumbler.

Gymnastics tends to view itself as foundational to all sports — and perhaps it is — but a consequence of this thinking is that what gymnasts can learn from other sports tends to be discounted. Ellen Casey, a former collegiate gymnast. One of the new physicians for the U. Her expertise is in treating women, particularly female athletes, and she has conducted research on the role sex hormones play in injuries like ACL tears.

In other sports, she noted, some athletes wear sensors on their bodies so there is a steady stream of data to analyze. How much are people training? How old were they when they started doing that training? How many repetitions? The first thing we need to do, or try to do, is establish some sort of baseline. Casey would love to see gymnastics embrace science and start collecting data on itself so that best practices can be established — as well as guidelines on how to intervene to improve training and development.

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