Welcome to the official website of the Gymnastics Association Kerala!
The Gymnastics Association Kerala is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and advancing the sport of gymnastics throughout our state.
Gymnastics is a sport involving the performance of sequences of movements requiring physical strength, flexibility, balance, endurance, gracefulness, and kinesthetic awareness, such as handsprings, handstands, split leaps, aerials and cartwheels. Gymnastics evolved from beauty practices and fitness regimes used by the ancient Greeks, including skills for mounting and dismounting a horse, and circus performance skills. Since its entrance into the United States in 1830, it rapidly evolved into a perennial Olympic sport.Gymnastics events test the strength, rhythm, balance, flexibility and agility of the gymnast, demanding an intense level of self-discipline.
Artistic Gymnastics is usually divided into Men’s and Women’s Gymnastics, with each doing a different rotation of events; Men compete on Floor Exercise, Pommel Horse, Still Rings, Vault, Parallel Bars, and High Bar, while women compete on Vault, Uneven Bars, Balance Beam, and Floor Exercise. In some countries, women at one time competed on the rings, high bar, and parallel bars (for example, in the 1950s in the USSR). Though routines performed on each event may be short, they are physically exhausting and push the gymnast’s strength, flexibility, endurance and awareness to the limit.
Traditionally, at the international level, competitions on the various apparatus consisted of two different performance categories: compulsory and optional. For the compulsory event, each gymnast performing on a specific apparatus executes the same required routine. At the optional level, the gymnast performed routines that he or she choreographed. Currently, each country may use compulsory and optional routines at their discretion in the training of young gymnasts.