What is the general public opinion of gymnastics?

[gymnastjess]

I hate people saying its unfair like during p.e. and stuff because i can do something and they can't i want to scream and be like i worked my but off to get this so have your whinge because you cant get it straight away. gosh. lol

 

[NYgymfan]

I hate people saying its unfair like during p.e. and stuff because i can do something and they can't i want to scream and be like i worked my but off to get this so have your whinge because you cant get it straight away. gosh. lol

Haha! I've heard of that happening. Someone I know did like 23 pullups during fitness testing in school and the coach was like "she didn't do that" so she had to do it again or not get credit. She was mad!

 

[gymnastgets10]

Here's a conversation I had with a friend a few days ago (it was over a chat room thingy so we were both on our comps and she pulled youtube up)

Her: So you do gymnastics?
Me: yep
Her: What can you do? Like backflips and stuff?
Me: um, go to youtube, and search 'level 8 gymnastics'; that's the kind of stuff I can do, but not everyone does the same skills
(slight delay)
Her: Wow! You can do that?
Me: what was it?
Her: um, idk, something on the handspring thingy?
Me: vault?
Her: um, I think so...
Her: so, are you going to the olympics? 'cuz you totally could
Me: no, olympians are elite, like past level 10, and I would already have to be elite
Her: oh

and that's about how it ended.

 

[Bella's Mom]

We always get the "can you get me tickets to the Olympics" question.

I'm like...dude, she's six and I'm a single mom in the field of education. Ain't gots no money for the 'lympics. Kid is lucky she gets to train at all!

 

[3rd_time_around]

Haha! I've heard of that happening. Someone I know did like 23 pullups during fitness testing in school and the coach was like "she didn't do that" so she had to do it again or not get credit. She was mad!

My dd's PE coaches never believe her and make her do it again, too, or they just knock off 10 or 20 from the count. I'm like "Why don't you watch her do it the first time!!!!!????"

 

[emorymom]

Mine are 7 and almost 6, girl/boy. For girls gym is seen as desirable to a point.

Boys rec classes are tolerated as good exercise and fun. Pre-team and team are somewhat feared. I think they are afraid the boys involved will be unable to play ball sports. To some extent that is true. The ball sports for the young boys can require a great deal of dedication in my area and the scheduling could be a problem even for a child who wasn't too tired from full day school. I guess the difference is that no one cares whether your daughter does not have a team ball sport, but a boy is seen as needing competence in one of baseball, basketball, football, soccer, lacrosse, etc.

There are also quite a few short boys in the preteam / team groups and that probably fuels perceptions that it's not something boys do unless they are too short for other sports. And honestly that is probably what went through a good number of those parents' minds: he is too short for X sport so we will try gym.

My adult boy cousin (who was a figure skater to a high level) wrote in a letter to another family member, on my son taking gymnastics and dance (hip-hop) that he wished I would put him in a martial art. I think this is a result of my cousin's complicated feelings about how he spent his youth.

 

[B Gymnast]

Haha! I've heard of that happening. Someone I know did like 23 pullups during fitness testing in school and the coach was like "she didn't do that" so she had to do it again or not get credit. She was mad!

That happened to me! I did like 63 crunches in a minute and all the guys in my class were like NO WAY! That's impossible! And I was just like No, not really..

And one day we were doing pushups in PE and we had to do like 25 and I easily finished them and everyone was like WOAH! How many pushups can you do without stopping? I said like 100 and they looked like this ->
Lol. Oh and I HATE it when people think all we do is cartwheels. No one understands what we actually DO. They don't think there's any pain or fear in gymnastics. Everytime someone says gymnastics isn't a sport I seriously go off the handle haha.. I just wish everyone would know how much work we really put into it.

Okay, I have to share this story: My brother has only been to like 2 of my meets (level 4 and 5) and he thinks I do all easy stuff. Well today I finished the montage I was making for my mom and I was like, ''Dylan, come watch my video!'' He said no, that's stupid.. It took some begging (finally my dad told him he had to come watch it), but I noticed the whole time he didn't take his eyes off the TV (very surprising). I asked how it was and he said it was AWESOME!! Ohh yeah I think I finally got to him Lol.. I also got him to smell my tiger paw (he didn't know what it was).. Hhaaha! That gave him an idea of how hard we work

 

[Deleted member D3987]

B Gymnast...you just caused me to wet myself i laughed so hard. you didn't...no, you didn't have him smell your tiger paw...no you didn't!

you could have given him an asthma attack or some other respiratory reaction to that God awful smell...LOL! i can't believe you did that to your brother.

 

[NYgymfan]

I'm with you, dunno...that was hilarious!

 

[gymgurl]

haha my sister when she comes with my mum to pick me up from training always says "HOLLY!! YOU STINK!!!!" So now mum has mad a rule that before i get in the car i have to reapply deoderant even though i do between every apparatus!

 

[MaryA]

I don't think I ever gave gymnastics half a thought before my daughter made the team. When my girls were pre-school aged they went weekly to the Tumblebus (an old school-bus that has been gutted and outfitted with mats, climbing stuff, etc. and goes to various locations... preschools, neighborhoods, etc.). I was always such a dork physically... I was just excited when they could make it across the monkey bars and do a cartwheel (somehow, growing up, those two skills seemed to mark the boundary between the cool girls and... well... me).

Kathy doesn't even get the best grades in gym class. I think that the elementary gym teacher's main focus is on activities that involve throwing, hitting, and/or kicking a ball and I'm not sure how much gymnastics prepares you for that, other than some basic strength and coordination. Actually, she's a bit of a klutz (with little to no interest in throwing, hitting, or kicking a ball).

 

[gymdog]

I'm pretty sure there's virtually no overlap between whatever makes you good at gymnastics and whatever makes you able to accurately throw and catch. At least for me. I can hardly do these things with any accuracy. I'm very fast at moving in general, but I do not combine my speed with accuracy...

 

[hakunamatata]

I'm pretty sure there's virtually no overlap between whatever makes you good at gymnastics and whatever makes you able to accurately throw and catch. At least for me. I can hardly do these things with any accuracy. I'm very fast at moving in general, but I do not combine my speed with accuracy...

I can't throw or catch to save my life, either. I'm a complete klutz outside of the gym and ball sports are definitely not for me. I have no hand-eye coordination whatsoever. For some reason it seems like my klutz symptoms are pretty common in other gymnasts as well, How funny. I guess that could be part of the reason why people assume I'm totally un-athletic, but I know I surprised people in gym fitness tests when I beat all the boys on the push up and pull up tests... muahaha.

 

[gymdog]

I'm very athletic in the sense of power and speed and gross motor coordination. I don't seem to have much depth perception though which surprisingly is not as limiting in gymnastics as I would expect. Most of the time I can see movements and say "oh, I can do that" so most people perceive me to be athletic I suppose, I'm just not very good at scoring. Had I never done gymnastics I suppose I would have found a place in a team sport doing something that didn't require much accuracy but speed and power. In many ways I might have been better suited to do that because I started competitive gymnastics pretty late at 11 so it was an uphill battle. Probably most of my success was due partially to luck and having a good body type for the sport. Had I been prone to injury or growth spurts I doubt I would have reached the level I did.

At age 6 (this is before I ever did gymnastics...I started around 7) there was a girl in my kindergarten class who did gymnastics and was walking on her hands on the playground. I had never seen this but it struck me that it wouldn't be hard to do. I said "I could do that" to the gym teacher who was standing with us and he told me it was very hard. Turns out I was able to imitate it. I'm both physically impulsive (this is more so my problem than clumsiness. If I paid any attention whatsoever before moving too fast or impulsively in strange ways I would probably run into stuff less) and weirdly able to build muscle, so although I'm not terribly coordinated in general I make it work. I was also able to do several pull ups when we were tested in gym that year. He told my parents they should put me in gymnastics so I started around 1st grade.

 

[CoachGoofy]

Someone at a social dance thing gave me the nicest complement.

She said if everyone were a gymnast, her job would be so much easier because we understand how to use our cores & how to do a movement in the sequence that makes sense (like, if you're doing a turn, how to do it at the right part of the footwork).

It made me go aww shucks b/c as far as gymnasts go I'm not all that coordinated. Hard worker, yes. Confident, yes. Solid in what I can do, sure. Breathtakingly effortless? Not hardly. And the shout-out to my training was gratifying-it is validating to the hard work, AND it indicated that people do see past the Olympics sometimes.

 

[tumblerK]

My gym teachers were actually the opposite. I did a leap over some notebooks piled on the floor one day early in the year and he looked at me and said, "I know a dancer when I see one," to which I replied with some attitude that I was a gymnast, NOT at dancer.

When we had the sit up test the limit was 75 in a row. I was the last one in that round to keep going at 75 so he was standing right in front of me counting. He got up to 75 and I expected him to stop counting but he kept going so I did to. He started counting backwards after that. I was all ready to keep going but he got to 72 and just looked at me and said, "Are you even noticing what I'm doing?"

In high school when we were doing the leg press machine my teacher was surprised as he kept adding more weight and I kept going. When I got to my max he said, "Oh yeah. You're the gymnast. I forgot."

 

[BlairBob]

For girls and women, it's typically very positive. one of the girls at our HS supposedly did like 40 pullups. I never did verify this but one of her friends tried asking me out on her behalf to the TWIRP dance which I didn't know was the Sadie Hawkin's dance. I didn't know what either was though I thought she was calling me a TWERP and I didn't have the patience for that. I was impressed by the supposed strength she had as a gymnast later on. As well, most guys think girls doing gymnastics is pretty awesome in general. Same with yoga or dance or ballet.

For the boys and guys, it can be very dismal as they always think they are running around in leotards (dammit singlet or unitard). Many of these boys aren't doing the ball sports which get more of a manly reputation for whatever reasons. I've known some boys keeping it a secret at school.

Men's figure skating and dance/ballet? Ways to get labeled feminine very easy. Pretty much will only get credit and esteem from their peers within their circles.

Gymnastics does get credit when they realize how strong they are or the fact that they can do cool tricks like standing back tucks or handstand pushups.

 

[Supportive_Dad]

Haha! I've heard of that happening. Someone I know did like 23 pullups during fitness testing in school and the coach was like "she didn't do that" so she had to do it again or not get credit. She was mad!

My DD did 6 pullups in gym class and stopped because she noticed everyone was staring at her. Most the boys could do was 3. All the girls were loving it.