Ancient Women's Pieces of Apparatus

In the next two posts I will be giving a basic overview of each of the four pieces of women’s apparatus; vault, uneven bars, beam and floor.

The floor is the most basic piece of apparatus. It goes way back to Ancient Greece, when gymnastics was performed without any fancy equipment. Gymnasts:
a) Tumble
b) Jump
c) Spin
d) Dance
Around a 12x12m square. Although this is the simplest piece, it has come on leaps and bounds from the Ancient Greek sport, which was performed on the ground. Now sprung wooden floors with padding have been developed, and skills have increased in difficulty. Many gymnasts perform double somersaults with ease nowadays. Floor may be the oldest piece of apparatus, but it is just as challenging as the rest, with tumbling to test power and leaps to show flexibility.

Svetlana Khorkina Floor Routine, Credit: gymnasticscoaching.com

The second piece I will discuss in this post, and the very first piece of apparatus in the Olympic rotation of women’s gymnastics is vault, and personally it is my favourite. I love the exhilaration of running up the vault strip. Vault consists of the gymnast:
a) Running up a 25m runway
b) Jumping on a springboard
c) Placing the hands on a 1.25m tall vaulting table (forwards, sideways or backwards) and pushing off
d) Somersaulting off the vault, perhaps twisting in the air too.
So where did this strange piece originate? Vaulting was one of the earliest events to be competed by gymnasts. Vaulting actually derived from a fun activity of leaping over bulls created by ancient civilisations in 2700 BC! By the time 800 BC came, many civilisations surrounding Greece used vaulting as a method to teach soldiers how to mount horses. Up until 2001, the vault used to be called a horse, and was long and thin. It was altered to a wider table in 2001 for safety reasons, which comes as a relief to me! Note the change in equipment in the video below.

Old Vs New Vault Champions, Credit: MunchTheSilivasFan

I love both of these pieces of apparatus, and it’s great that while we updated the ancient sport, we kept these key pieces of apparatus. Stay tuned to learn about beam and bars!

Thanks to the following sources for information:
www.thoughtco.com
www.britannica.com
http://gymnastics.isport.com
www.healthfully.com
www.healthyliving.azcentral.com