As pointed out in the article, 14- to 16-year-old girls often win gymnastics championships (and in fact nobody over the age of 20 has won the olympic all-around since 1972), whereas no man under the age of 20 has ever won an olympic all-around. Being a grown adult is a huge advantage in men's gymnastics and a massive disadvantage in women's.
(I have a kid of each gender in local gymnastics programs and I have to carefully keep this stuff in mind. It's great that the kids are strong, and gymnastics makes people absurdly strong, but I don't think I would ever let my daughter anywhere near a high-level competitive program.)
My children always liked sport but I told them that this is for their fun and not a medal for the organization (they were never interested in the competition part).
They switched sports either when it was getting boring or they felt that the competition part was over the fun one.
This does not mean that they abondonned early, but for instance both stopped karate after their black belt, to do rock climbing or ping pong. Because the fun was gone.
It sounds like you might have the experience required to explain what is different about men's gymnastics that causes it to not have this same youth bias?
But why is strength important for male gymnastics but not for women gymnastics? The argument for women's gymnastics was that they are smaller and lighter weight and thereby can do crazier stunts... doesn't that apply to men? It just sounds like there is something fundamentally different to the sports themselves that I am not understanding as someone who knows nothing about either.
Two factors. First of all men's and women's gymnastics have some different events and different judging criteria for the events they have in common. On the whole the men's events and scoring criteria require more core and upper body strength to pull off successfully.
Secondly while the strength to weight ratio of women might peak at 15-18, in men it keeps increasing into their mid-late 20s. In general, the strength difference between a 15 and 25 year old man is much much greater than that between a 15 and 25 year old woman. Basically a 20-25 year old man can pull off feats of strength that a 15-16 year old simply can't. The same isn't really true for women (again in general).
I'm the same. My son struggled with his motor skills when he was little so we got him interested in gymnastics and he loves it and it's really helped. I'd like to do the same for my daughter when she's old enough but I'd hope she doesn't want go into competition. She also likes dance so that might be a better option.
FYI, Dance can have similar problems. I’m convinced a world reknowned ballet school had a major negative psychological effect on someone I know. Not sure how common that is in lesser schools, but something to be mindful of.
Yeah, I'm just thinking that dance seems less about the competition than gymnastics, so might be a healthier atmosphere.
Our gymnastics club has a kind of parkour club which seems more about having fun and being active which I think me might move my son to when he's old enough.
The ballet world has similar levels of competition and harmful psychological effects as women’s gymnastics. There are a huge number of girls and women competing for an extremely small number of available jobs as a full time professional dancer for a top-tier ballet company, of which there are only a small handful in the world. And almost everyone in ballet has struggled with disordered eating at some point, including the men.
