Why Should Gymnastics be Taught in Schools?
Gymnastics was one of the earliest sports established and has developed over the centuries. It was initiated in early Greek civilization and involved a series of exercises; although we no longer see swimming, throwing, or weight lifting as part of gymnastics, there are many traditional movements that have carried on throughout the years1. Gymnastics is a disciplined and artistic sport that requires balance, coordination, dexterity, gracefulness, and strength. Because of its variety of skills and movements, gymnastics is one of the five movement activities required to be taught in Physical Education in Alberta Education. Through personal experience and research, I believe that gymnastics a crucial part of the physical education program and offers students many skills that are not commonly performed in other areas of sport and physical activity.
Alberta education has four general outcomes for physical education that the program is based off; “activity”, “benefits health”, “cooperation”, and “do it daily… for life!”. The “Activity” area focuses on students acquiring skills through a variety of developmentally appropriate movement activities. The second point, Benefits Health, is to have students understand, experience, and appreciate the health benefits that result from physical activity. The goal of “Cooperation” is for students to interact positively with others and the fourth point, “Do it Daily… for Life” is focused on passing on the message and responsibility for students to lead an active way of life2. These four outcomes are all achievable through gymnastics, and not only does gymnastics meet these requirements but it also allows students to learn a new way to move their bodies that will enhance their physical literacy in tremendous amounts.
Within the gymnastics unit you can focus heavily on the “benefits health” compared to other activates in physical education. Gymnastics gives students an awareness of their movement and different body parts that I would heavily integrate with positive messages about body image, functional fitness, and well-being. I believe that because gymnastics is an individual sport with a total focus on the body rather than any peripheral stimuli (ie. Soccer ball, hockey stick and puck), students learn to be more aware of their bodies and the way that they look, feel, and move.
The Kids Can Move manual for Alberta gymnastics states that it’s “program is designed to help Canadian children acquire the fundamental movement skills which are the basis for all sports and physical activities”3. By allowing children to grasp an understanding on their body and have a good sense of control, their movements when adding in implements or projectiles will be more controlled as they already have clear body and spatial awareness. Similar to the way we teach progressions in other sports, such as learning how to float in water before doing front crawl, it is useful to teach students individual and controlled movements before moving into more complex settings such as playing with a team, adding implements or projectiles, moving in different settings (ie.ice, water), and contact sports.
While most of our daily movements are done walking on our feet on a hard ground, gymnastics gives students an opportunity to practice movements on different levels on a soft surface. It is important to start teaching basic movement patterns to students at a young age as these movements are the foundation for many more activities in the future that students will encounter, both in sport and their daily life. Rolling and inversions helps kids develop their vestibular system in a safe and controlled environment. This is useful for kids to be able to orient themselves after being thrown off balance. This is important for later development in orientation for contact sports. Inversions also reverse the blood flow in circulation helping students get more blood flow in their brain, this feeling can be refreshing to students and can feel as if they are “resetting” their mind, allowing them to focus and have a clear head in the classroom.
Teaching gymnastics in schools is extremely different from club gymnastics where the goal is to compete, but rather allow students to learn to control their body and use it to perform a variety of locomotor and non-locomotor skills. Involvement in gymnastics from a young age develops the fundamental movement skills as well as physical and motor abilities that are integrated in all aspects of our life. I believe that it is crucial for children to be given the opportunity to have a full gymnastics unit that is properly funded with the basic gymnasium equipment that is required to learn these skills.
