General Gymnastics (Recreational Classes)
Open to all ages and abilities, General Gymnastics covers the full spectrum of the sport of gymnastics from pre-school through to all levels of recreation, displays and festivals.
Exciting to watch and exciting to perform, gymnastics is one of the most popular sports in Great Britain with an estimated four million people taking part on a regular basis (source ‘Young People in Sport, Trends in Participation, Mori 2002) Performance gymnasts demonstrate amazing skill, exceptional strength and great courage, however Gymnastics is a sport that offers everyone a fun, social and exhilarating activity from babies at 8 weeks old to veterans of 88 years+.
Gymnastics introduces people from a early age, to the benefits of a healthy life style leading to a huge variety of opportunities of enjoyable and rewarding non-competitive and competitive sport. Participation in Gymnastics develops body awareness, strength, flexibility, control and co-ordination, which can be drawn upon during other physical activities, sports and in everyday life.
Under the overall description of Gymnastics lie the individual disciplines of:
Womens Artistic
Women's Artistic Gymnastics is probably the most well known branch of the sport and one of the biggest crowd pleasers at the Olympic Games. It is an exciting, aesthetic, yet extremely demanding discipline incorporating Vault, Asymmetric Bars, Beam and Floor.
Mens Artistic
Men perform on six pieces of apparatus for the Olympic discipline of Men's Artistic Gymnastics. This discipline offers a variety of exercises for men and boys regarded by many as the most technically demanding of all sports. Each of the six pieces of apparatus require agility, strength, balance and co-ordination.
Trampolining
This exhilarating sport includes individual and synchronised events as Olympic disciplines both requiring a routine of 10 elements, starting and ending on the feet. The competitions are made up of three routines - the preliminary round where gymnasts compete a compulsory / set exercise, and a voluntary piece followed by a final round voluntary exercise.
Rhythmic Gymnastics
Rhythmic gymnastics, another of the Olympic disciplines, develops grace, coordination, agility and artistry. In this graceful, elegant and balletic discipline gymnasts perform routines on a floor square to music using hand apparatus: ropes, balls, hoops, clubs and ribbons.
Acrobatic Gymnastics and Tumbling
A dramatic visual discipline popular with spectators, Acrobatic Gymnastics includes partnership work on the floor where there are five categories of competition, women's pairs, men's pairs, mixed pairs, women's trios and men's fours.
Freestyle Gymnastics
This is a title British Gymnastics have adopted for Parkour / Free Running. RGTC work in Partnership with The National Taskforce to provide free freestyle gymnastics classes.
Cheerleading
Aunique athletic discipline which incorporates cheers, chants, stunts, cheer arm motions, jumps, tumbling and dance.
