- Moderator
- #21
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.
Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
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..
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.
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.
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.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.
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.
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.
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.
I would guess that they figure out what corner to start in to avoid the pole during or before warm ups.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)?