To find watching the gymnastics utterly depressing?

[GandalfsWrinklyHat]

Watching the olympics - gymnastics on right now. Think it's the team competition bit. I know nothing about gymnastics at all, and am in awe of all those girls doing what they're doing, but they are SO YOUNG. And I cannot imagine that they could have had much of a childhood at all. I just find it so depressng. And they must surely know pain? You cannot train to do what they're doing and not experience a lot of pain. Somebody set me straight. I actually feel quite guilty for watching... Am I wrong?

I don't quite agree with you there, ice But your comment about being able to indulge prompted me. I've seen also many parents take children out of gym, even recreational gym, because of the cost involved. Yes squad is usually heavily subsidised, but there are many extras involved including the cost of competing and compulsory holiday camps. I do feel sad about those who may have slipped through the net due to low income. Though I suppose the same applies to many competitive sports and pursuits.

On the flexi9bility point, yes, some people are more flexible than others. I have hypermobile joints (but am dreadful at all sports, probably because I had severe asthma as a child), which DD has inherited. For DD, her natural [over]-flexibility is a significant advantage in dance - many good dancers have a degree of hypermobility - and she has always been able to do splits all ways without training or effort. She can also fold her hands right back at the wrists, make every pair of her fingers do splits etc, and if her legs lock backwards they are very, very significantly 'backwards banana' shaped.

It does make her more prone to injury, however, so she has specific exercise, insoles etc to counteract e.g. the fact that her ankles roll sideways and to strengthen the muscles that she has to use to keep her joints in what others would regard as 'normal' positions.

I was listening to an interview with Wayne Sleep a few weeks ago, I know he did ballet not gymnastics but I think similar levels of training and pain are involved. The interviewer asked him about pain as dancers got older from damaged joints etc. His reply was that dancers live with pain from 18 on that is their life. Made me glad I had no interest in ballet.

I can't remember getting help stretching, I'm naturally quite supple, I can see it in ds too, maybe this helps. Are some of us naturally more supple or am I talking bollocks? It just seemed to come quite easy for me, the flexibility that is.

I desperately wanted to do gymnastics but ... well hey.

My carer did dance to quite a high level and did some ballet - I can still (with arthritis in most joints) do a better second position than him.

When I did JuJitsu one exercise we did was to sort of kneel down then lie back - I just used to lie down and relax but some people really struggled.

Physios never think I have lost any mobility in my joints because I have 'normal range' but I know I'm no where near as flexible as I used to be.

this article about phelps on the BBC interested me....it contains lots of people talking about how swimming obsessions basically ruined their lives (mostly having appeared to save them initially!).

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/37030928

This article about a young Syrian woman swimmer who was training for the Olympics before the situation there got worse interested me, as she and her sister went on to use their swimming skills to keep a sinking boat afloat for three hours. www.independent.co.uk/news/people/yusra-mardini-rio-2016-olympics-womens-swimming-the-syrian-refugee-competing-in-the-olympics-who-a7173546.html

I find this sneering at the olympics in bad taste and somewhat puerile, like those tiresome tirades on the "pointlessness" of English Literature degree from insecure undergraduates on STEM courses.

Why is it obsessive to enjoy and work incredibly hard to achieve the very best in your chosen sport/activity?

Isn't it something to be immensely proud of and celebrated?!

Yes, quite. I'd prefer the words "determined" and "devoted". How great to be able to do something you love. I'm sure they don't love it all the time as well. But most of the time you'd have to.

10% of it might be having some in-built ability. 90% is hard work, repetition and training.

We can't all be Olympic athletes but most of us can train ourselves to become more than we, or others, might have expected of us.

The young us gymnast Simons had a very bad childhood gym stabilised her

She could of easily ended up a crack head

I think it is kind of the definition of obsessive to spend 6 hours a day training such that you have to cram school work in around it and have no time to do anything else except sleep and eat.

As the article on swimming explains, if you have nothing in your life, then fill all your life with swimming, then when the swimming ends you have nothing in your life again....except the depression....

Having only one thing in your life that defines and rules you isn't healthy. This also applies to people who only have their jobs, or only have their children. In all cases the thing you are obsessive about is transient, and the fall out when it disappears can be catastrophic. In sport this is more obviously the case than with other types of workaholics etc. You will peak very early and you can get injured at any moment and that's it. Then you are left to build your life back from scratch again.

Sport is great. Sport taken seriously and competitively is also great. Sport to the point of exclusion of all else from your life is unhealthy. The real problem is that in order to succeed in the olympics you now almost by definition have to take it to unhealthy obsessive levels, which wasn't the case historically.

That level of expertise needs an awful lot of dedication and agony - so yes, I think you are right to feel rather sorry for them. I also happened to see a tiny piece of the news showing an immaculate rider on a horse, which was prancing round as if it were standing on hot coals. Why do people want to see animals behaving in this bizarre way - and I have hear the trainers stick pins/ sharp objects into the animals legs to make them hop about in this stupid way. (Dressage, is it??) Pointless, unnatural etc. or am I alone in these thoughts?

Katherine, no you aren't alone. I think it all just goes too far. Years ago people had jobs and sport was something they did in their free time and if they were really good they might go to the Olympics, now it dominates lives and people are pushed to do dangerous things. I heard about a gymnast who would break her back if she landed wrongly, I just don't see how it is worth the risk.

Guessing that the pain gymnasts go through hurts less than falling of a real horse, rather than a pommel one, which is what I did multiple times when young!

I'm glad some people can be paid enough to do sport professionally and don't have to do other work as well.

Am I the only one who finds the comment from a poster above about how Simon Biles could 'easily have ended up a crackhead' a teeny weeny bit racist?

YABVU! I LOOOOVVVE the gymnastics!! Ex gymnast of rubbish ability here

No maggie, I thought that was an appalling statement too. As was the use of "could of"

Watch 'The Gabby Douglas Story'. It's on Netflix. Will give you a different perspective. She competed yesterday. She's 20

I admit I haven't read the whole thread but my DD was in a gymnastics club, I started her in gymnastics because I'm really inflexible and have always wished I was more so plus my BF at school was a gymnast and her posture etc was amazing. Anyway DD did very well at gymnastics although it was obvious she would never be in the elite team (not naturally bendy enough). She was in the pre elite team though which involved 10.5 hours training a week (at 6), the last weeks of attending I was finding her in tears and bereft. She quit and has vowed never to do gymnastics again. She wasn't ever going to be an Olympic star but she definitely has potential but the way the coaches dealt with her have put her off forever. The intense training involved is crazy, had DD been good enough to get into the elite I wouldn't have let her because 25 hours training (plus home conditioning) leaves little space for anything else, as it was the 4x a week that we did was hard work.
That said the girls in the elite squad do it because they love it. And I think you need that passion to compete in the olympics so a lot of the girls you see are utterly enthralled by their sport (not sure how true this is of all countries though. . .)

YABU my 10 year old DD is an elite squad gymnast and she loves it. She works hard and puts in plenty of hours but is a ball of energy and has made some great and strong friendships through her gym. She spends a lot of her time at the club and does the range and conditioning regularly, but never to the point of tears. I have heard of weigh in's and shouty coaches at other local gyms but hers do neither and seem to have the balance of dedication and fun just right. She is passionate about it and has learnt commitment, team spirit, humility and so much more than gymnastics from her club.

Was trying to find the women's all around final on the tv tonight. Couldn't seem to find it on any of the bbc streams. Did they show it?

Question for the gymnasts among you:

Has the distance between the asymmetric bars changed over the years?

When I used to watch them, there was a lot of "hitting the lower bar with the stomach area (used to make me wince) and then swinging round" moves. Now the gymnasts seem to be able to swing round the higher bar with straight legs without hitting the lower bar.

See here Olga Korbut who was under 5' tall so you can't say that gymnasts have got significantly smaller.

I was thinking that too. I remember there being a lot of being on one bar but hitting the other stuff.

Paper, it was on BBC 2. You should be able to find it on iplayer.

Yes, the bars were closer together. That stomach-hitting move looked painful.

And called Asymmetric Bars-now called uneven bars, I think.

Olga Korbut/Nelli Kim/ Comaneci/ Tourischeva absolutely fab to watch, back in the 70s.