Is Gymnastics Safe for Children?

With all its twists, turns and ridiculously complicated flips, gymnastics is often judged to be a dangerous sport for our kids to take part in. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let’s look at some reasons why gymnastics is actually a safe sport for your children, and why it should be high on the list of activities for them to do.

Start with the Basics

Sometimes we watch gymnastics on TV and think that our children will never be taking part in something as dangerous as that. Don’t fret. Those complicated moves Olympic gymnasts are doing on TV won’t be what your children will be doing. When your kids go to a gymnastics club, they will be starting from absolute scratch. Their coaches will be extremely relaxed with training and ensure that your kids are 100% comfortable with the basics before moving on to more complicated areas of gymnastics.

You can expect your kids to start with the simplest of moves, such as forward rolls, log rolls and even actions as basic as balancing on one foot! Without the fundamentals, your child will simply not be able to do the more ambitious tricks - so it’s vital for you not to get intimidated by what you see on TV. It simply isn’t reflective of what your child will be learning.

Pick a Club with High Quality Coaches

As with any sport or activity you would want your kids to do, you’d make it a fundamental need for their coaches and club to be of top quality. More specifically, you’d want the club to be safe and the coaches to be qualified in first aid and be DBS checked. That is the essence of what makes a sport safe. Hence when picking a gymnastics club, ensure it is of good quality and its coaches are well-qualified. This will make gymnastics a significantly safer sport for your kids.

Benefits of Exercise Far Outweigh Risks

It seems like kids in this modern age are sitting down and playing on their devices all the time. This constant state of inactivity causes their muscles and joints to become stiff and potentially very painful. Gymnastics makes your kids more flexible the more they do it, which alleviates any stiffness they may be facing from a lack of exercise. You might think all that stretching and bending would be bad for your kid's joints and bones, but we can see that this is a common misconception, in fact the opposite of the reality.

In fact, it is well-known that young gymnasts have stronger ligaments, tendons and bones than their non-gymnast counterparts, so get your kids into gymnastics and instead of getting more injuries, they are more likely to be injury-free instead!

Improves Balance and Coordination

Getting into gymnastics also improves your children’s balance and coordination as they start to learn about their entire body. This can be particularly useful for smaller kids as they get to grips with walking, running and more complex movements that they may not have tried before. Gymnastics, with its soft surfaces, gives your kids a safe environment to learn skills more easily - and can prevent injuries that may have happened if they did not do gymnastics. Talk about flipping the script!

Although gymnastics is sometimes given a bad rep, it is an excellent choice of sport for your kids to consider and (ironically) due to its health benefits - makes them more safe rather than less.

Photo by Brett Wharton on Unsplash