In the United States of America nearly all of the population has, at one point in their lives, participated in one type of sport. One of the most iconic sports today is artistic gymnastics. However even though it is a very well-known sport that has programs to both men and women, women in the sport far out-number the men. To show roughly how well-known gymnastics is let’s look at a statistic. In 2012 there were 5.4 million athletes involved in the sport (Statisa). Gymnastics has several benefits for both men and women. Young children should be encouraged to enroll in gymnastics to experience the many benefits of the sport. To fully understand why you should enroll your child in gymnastics first you must discover the difference between the …show more content…
Many of the benefits are physical, but there are also several that are psychological. One of the physical benefits an athlete can enjoy is flexibility. Flexibility is the range of motion an athlete’s body can assume. Wm A. Sands, Ph.D. from the Department of Exercise and Sport Science says: “It is believed that flexibility can be an effective aid to the reduction of injury, preventing athletes from forcing a limb to an injurious range of motion” (Sands 2). One precaution that must be addressed is the acquisition of the flexibility. If an athlete is pushed too far to acquire flexibility it may actually cause muscular tearing and hyper-extension of joints and ligaments. Strength is another physical benefit that is a byproduct of performing gymnastics. Among the physical benefits of gymnastics one of the greatest is body awareness. Body awareness is the ability to know your body’s relation to itself and objects around the body. When performing gymnastics one of the most vital developments is body awareness. This awareness is beneficial in more than just an athletic environment. This awareness helps prevent them from being injured when falling because “Gymnasts acquire a very "cat-like" ability to right themselves and to fall without being hurt” (Sands