Rhythmic gymnastics combines ballet and creative movements to music, while working with ribbons, balls, hoops, ropes and clubs in a choreographed dance-and-tumble routine. It has a lot more dance than artistic gymnastics. Everything is done on the floor with far different routines and different music.

There are two kinds of gymnastics: rhythmic gymnastics and artistic gymnastics. The kind of gymnastics most of us are familiar with is artistic gymnastics. Women's artistic gymnastics includes uneven bars, balance beam, vault and floor exercise. The kind of gymnastics I am going to talk about is rhythmic gymnastics which includes ball, hoop, ribbon, rope, clubs and sometimes floor exercise (I will go into these in more detail later). Gymnastics, rhythmic and artistic combined, started in Europe during the eighteenth century as one sport and over time gradually developed into two different yet similar sports.

Rhythmic gymnastics started as an independent competitive sport in the early nineteen fifties by the Russians. Then in nineteen sixty three the first rhythmic gymnastics world championship was held in Europe. Even though rhythmic gymnastics has its own world championships it did not become an Olympic medal sport until nineteen eighty four. This is partly why rhythmic is such a little known and hardly recognized sport in the U.S.

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In the U.S. rhythmic gymnastics has six different competitive levels: level five being the lowest competitive level, level six being the next highest and so on until level ten which is the highest level in the sport. Levels five through seven have compulsory routines they must complete. Four compulsory routines are picked out of the six for each level each year. In level seven you have a choice of having one optional routine (made up for you/designed for you by someone else or yourself) or you may do the compulsory routine for that event.

The kinds of apparatus and the ...

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