MAG Anyone heard of girls competing against boys?

[Aussie_coach]

There certainly are safety concerns on both sides of the coin. Boys splitting the beam is a concern. A lot of the bigger strength moves on rings are also not safe for females due to the way the shoulders and chest are shaped.

 

[skschlag]

I don't like it. I know, blast me, I don't care. You know how a girl splits the beam and gets right back up? I don't see a guy recovering very quickly from that..

LOL. Ever seen a guy "split the pbars?" or have an unfortunate landing on pommel horse? Those bars are not very forgiving. (and they have a much more colorful term for it....)

 

[samsmama]

My son would love music on floor! Male figure skaters have music -- why not gymnasts?

I don't see what the big deal is about boys and girls competing together, but for those who don't like it, you don't have to sign your kid up.

 

[Peachy88]

I think it is ridiculous how gendered the sport is. We are a two mom family and while our child is def girl she’s also a kid that idolizes our level 10 boy. It would be great to see some more mixing of the mag and wag ideologies to make an even more interesting sport! She ultimately wants to do women’s optionals but at six is enjoying the attention from the smaller team size of they boys team and getting to work on something other than the same routines.

 

[GymDad23]

There was a girl competing JD in our region this year. She was pretty good too. I guess I really don't have much of an issue with it, but I would be more fine with it if women's gymnastics didn't exist. Girls on a football team? Why not, there's no real outlet for them in that sport. Hockey/baseball/boxing/wrestling? Same. When they start debating about putting music in mens floor routines, then I'll start complaining more.

 

[profmom]

There certainly are safety concerns on both sides of the coin. Boys splitting the beam is a concern. A lot of the bigger strength moves on rings are also not safe for females due to the way the shoulders and chest are shaped.

To what moves are your referring and what is the physiological reasoning? I know there are strength moves that are harder for some athletes than others -- my son's long arms and short torso suggest that he's not likely to get a cross until he's in his 20s -- but this is a pretty strong claim.

Things like having ovaries and testes are 0/1 attributes. You have them or you don't. I don't think anything in chest anatomy other than the possibility of producing milk is a 0/1 difference. If you're talking about breast tissue itself, keep in mind that breasts come in a variety of sizes. I'm not sure why having breasts, even large ones, would not have any impact at all on throwing a Shap but would keep a girl from doing a Yamawaki.

And seconded Skschlag -- I've seen a mature guy split the pbars. He was rolling around underneath for at least a minute while all of his teammates cringed around him.

 

[profmom]

There was a girl competing JD in our region this year. She was pretty good too. I guess I really don't have much of an issue with it, but I would be more fine with it if women's gymnastics didn't exist. Girls on a football team? Why not, there's no real outlet for them in that sport. Hockey/baseball/boxing/wrestling? Same. When they start debating about putting music in mens floor routines, then I'll start complaining more.

The Imperial March would be the boys' version of Pirates of the Caribbean. You can't really say you've been to a meet until you've heard it three times . . .

 

[acam1103]

Yah, also not buying the risk of splitting the beam. My son split the p bars so he’s not safe by avoiding beam. And I had a friend growing up (female) who had a Gymnastics-ending injury from a beam split. So, not safe for anyone.

I’m not judging anyone’s differing opinion, we all feel how we feel about social issues. But I don’t see it as a safety thing (I’ve also seen my boys’ 6+ foot tall male coach do a mighty impressive beam routine when he lost a bet he made with the girls’ team).

 

[Popcorn]

MAG and WAG are just so different. Men's and women's basketball, or ice hockey, or curling, or whatever, same sport, same apparatus, same rules, etc. Maybe softball/baseball have differences, I don't know much about that, but can't women still play hardball and men softball?

I feel that if you have a girl who is more into power than grace, excited by rings or parallel bars or whichever, and is able to brave the stares at competitions, she should be able to do MAG, no problem. And if you have a boy who is graceful and flexible and loves the movement in WAG, and again able to brave stares, he should be welcome to try WAG. This will be a very small percentage of the gymnastics population due to nature and nurture, etc. but it should be an available option.

 

[profmom]

And I'm sorry, but whenever someone says "females" in this kind of context, I cannot help myself, but this is the first thing that comes to mind:

 

[raenndrops]

MAG and WAG are just so different. Men's and women's basketball, or ice hockey, or curling, or whatever, same sport, same apparatus, same rules, etc. Maybe softball/baseball have differences, I don't know much about that, but can't women still play hardball and men softball?

I feel that if you have a girl who is more into power than grace, excited by rings or parallel bars or whichever, and is able to brave the stares at competitions, she should be able to do MAG, no problem. And if you have a boy who is graceful and flexible and loves the movement in WAG, and again able to brave stares, he should be welcome to try WAG. This will be a very small percentage of the gymnastics population due to nature and nurture, etc. but it should be an available option.

More often, at least from what I have seen, boys who compete WAG do so because there aren't any boys teams in an area the parents are willing to drive to and pay for... The one we competed against at Regionals would have had over an hour drive each way to compete on any boys team, but he also wanted to be able to do football and basketball for his school. I had time to talk with his mom (and his coach since I was sitting in the area reserved for coaches and athletes). His parents told him that he would have to choose between gym and school sports if he wanted to go to a gym with a MAG team. He was in rec at the Y... the boys rec did vault, floor, beam, parallel bars, uneven bars, and mushroom. He asked the coach about competing and she said that they don't have a boys team, but he would be welcome to join their team if he wanted. He did.

 

[RDTmom]

I could totally see one of my son’s teammates choosing to do WAG. He’s way more into dance and I think would be ecstatic to have music for floor.

 

[Aussie_coach]

To what moves are your referring and what is the physiological reasoning? I know there are strength moves that are harder for some athletes than others -- my son's long arms and short torso suggest that he's not likely to get a cross until he's in his 20s -- but this is a pretty strong claim.

Things like having ovaries and testes are 0/1 attributes. You have them or you don't. I don't think anything in chest anatomy other than the possibility of producing milk is a 0/1 difference. If you're talking about breast tissue itself, keep in mind that breasts come in a variety of sizes. I'm not sure why having breasts, even large ones, would not have any impact at all on throwing a Shap but would keep a girl from doing a Yamawaki.

And seconded Skschlag -- I've seen a mature guy split the pbars. He was rolling around underneath for at least a minute while all of his teammates cringed around him.

I am talking much higher level skills, ie the iron cross has great potential to snap a females sternum. MAG apparatus rely heavily on upper body strength. Males in general have wider shoulders and the potential to develop significantly more upper body strength. Pre,puberty the differences are not so great, but post puberty, the game tends to change.

 

[profmom]

Maybe neither men nor women should do skills that they're not physically prepared to do? Also, don't confuse averages with individuals. Again, we are not talking about a 0/1 attribute but rather a situation in which the bell curve for women is shifted somewhat from the bell curve for men.There are surely more men on average who can successfully train a cross, but not all men can and not all women can't if both are working with coaches who know what they're doing. I'd also surmise that your average female gymnast's bone density's somewhat higher than the average bear, and if a girl were to be doing rings from say age six on, that would be even more likely to be the case.

Even so, I looked at the routines, and a decent number of the younger men competing at USAG nationals did rings routines without crosses. If it's good enough for potential junior national team members, it's probably OK for your run-of-the-mill JO gymnast. Crosses aren't required for rings any more than sheep jumps are required for beam.

 

[raenndrops]

Maybe neither men nor women should do skills that they're not physically prepared to do? Also, don't confuse averages with individuals. Again, we are not talking about a 0/1 attribute but rather a situation in which the bell curve for women is shifted somewhat from the bell curve for men.There are surely more men on average who can successfully train a cross, but not all men can and not all women can't if both are working with coaches who know what they're doing. I'd also surmise that your average female gymnast's bone density's somewhat higher than the average bear, and if a girl were to be doing rings from say age six on, that would be even more likely to be the case.

Even so, I looked at the routines, and a decent number of the younger men competing at USAG nationals did rings routines without crosses. If it's good enough for potential junior national team members, it's probably OK for your run-of-the-mill JO gymnast. Crosses aren't required for rings any more than sheep jumps are required for beam.

Only training it... but she is 47!

 

[Geoffrey Taucer]

Honestly, I would love to see MAG and WAG treated as two separate sports, both of which either male or female athletes are welcome to participate in. That's a change unlikely to happen in my lifetime, but I can always hope.

Yes, women will likely lag behind men in some events, but that's true in many sports. Women can't run the 100m as fast as men, yet we still have women's sprinting events in the Olympics.
Yes, men might get injured on beam, but it's not like they can't get injured on the men's events.

The most talented p-bar worker I've ever coached was female. 9-year-old level 4 girl who loved p-bars so much I used it as a reward for her when she was working hard enough. With only 5-10 minutes of coaching on p-bars per week plus playing around on them while waiting for turns on floor, she managed to learn a kip, a handstand pirouette, and even a peach to support (my jaw hit the floor when she caught this one). I'm absolutely positive that if I'd been able to give her the option to compete p-bars, she would have done so, and been better than most boys at her age/level.

 

[2G1B]

I don't doubt at all that a girl could do fine in boys' gymnastics or vice versa, if the child started working the skills and went through the progressions. It would be hard, however, to do both, since it just takes time to develop the skills on beam, rings, pommels, and pbars. As for upper levels, I could imagine constructing rings/pommel/pbar routines that a reasonably strong girl could do, and floor/beam routines with leap/jump and dance that a reasonably flexible boy could do. You wouldn't see a lot of girls doing crosses on rings. You wouldn't see a lot of boys doing ring or sheep jumps or leaps.



Don't tell anyone because it will provoke rage, but my guy can do a half pirouette on the low bar. He did one just for kicks on one of those nights when none of the L8 girls were around. I think a lot of boys could get decent beam acros. The problems would be the full turn and the leap/jump requirement, lol. Full turns are WAY harder than they look.

I hope NAIGC's initiative takes off. It's really an interesting idea for a competition.

These videos are cool, but I'm struggling with that pole in the floor for the first routine. How on Earth is that safe (yes, it has a pad, but still)?

 

[raenndrops]

These videos are cool, but I'm struggling with that pole in the floor for the first routine. How on Earth is that safe (yes, it has a pad, but still)?

I would guess that they figure out what corner to start in to avoid the pole during or before warm ups.

 

[Madden3]

What is stopping WAG from adding Pbars or rings or even making up some entirely new apparatus? It is not like MAG stole all the cool events and so now women cannot do them. Gymnastics events have not always been what they are now, and required skills have also changed with changes in training, judging preferences, etc. In other words if WAG had a burning desire to add rings to the WAG events, they could do so, and do so with or without an iron cross or any other particular element. Who is stopping them?

The sport is not "gendered." It is sex segregated. Most competitive sports are, because adult male and female bodies are different enough to impact athletic performance. So it is a matter of fairness. This separation on the basis of sex is just not as obvious as it is in gymnastics, where it makes sense to train separately as there are (at this time) different apparatus and consequently, different skills to train and different special abilities to focus on, leading to a somewhat different progression for development of the athlete. Also because training in gymnastics tends to start so young, it makes sense to separate based on sex for training, because boys and girls develop differently in ways that impact learning in young people.

I am very glad my sons have had (and perhaps one day my daughter will have) the opportunity to train and compete in positive and supportive sex segregated environments. For my sons this has been one of the best things about the sport. I have my own problems with WAG and the pressure for narrow conformity I see there regarding personal presentation, but I do not see this as an issue in MAG.

 

[Aussie_coach]

For our boys, the sex segregation is generally one of the things they love the most. When parents enrol their sons they often ask nervously "Are their many boys"? Wondering if their son will be the only boy in a sea of girls.

When they find out their son will be in a boys only class, they are very excited. They report back on how much the boys love having a boys only class. Their kids have male role models in the gym, make close friends with the other boys and don't feel lost in a sea of girls.