Gymnastics is a sport that includes exercises requiring balance, strength, flexibility, agility, coordination, and endurance. The movements involved in gymnastics contribute to the development of the arms, legs, shoulders, back, chest, and abdominal muscle groups. Alertness, precision, daring, self-confidence, and self-discipline are mental traits that can also be developed through gymnastics. Gymnastics evolved from exercises used by the ancient Greeks that included skills for mounting and dismounting a horse, and from circus performance skills.

The most common form of competitive gymnastics is artistic gymnastics which consists of (for women) floor, vault, beam and uneven bars and for men floor, vault, rings, pommel, parallel bars and horizontal bar. Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG) is the governing body for gymnastics worldwide. FIG governs eight sports that include: "Gymnastics for All, Men's and Women’s Artistic Gymnastics, Rhythmic Gymnastics, Trampoline - including Double Mini-trampoline and Tumbling -, Aerobics, Acrobatics, and Parkour." Disciplines not currently recognized by FIG include wheel gymnastics, aesthetic group gymnastics, men's rhythmic gymnastics, TeamGym and mallakhamba.

Participants in gymnastics-related sports can include young children, recreational level athletes, and competitive athletes at varying levels of skill including world-class athletes.

Gymnastics developed in ancient Greece, in Sparta and Athens, and was used as a method to prepare men for warfare. In Sparta, among the activities introduced into the training program was the Agoge or exhibition gymnastics made up of gymnastic elements in the form of the Pyrrhic-a dance in a military style-performed for state dignitaries in the final year of a student's training. The maneuvers were performed naked except for the tools of war. Athens combined this more physical training with the education of the mind. At the Palestra, a physical education training center, the discipline of educating the body and educating the mind were combined allowing for a form of gymnastics that was more aesthetic and individual and which left behind the form that focused on strictness, discipline, the emphasis on defeating records, and focus on strength.

Don Francisco Amorós y Ondeano, was born on February 19, 1770, in Valencia and died on August 8, 1848, in Paris. He was a Spanish colonel, and the first person to introduce educative gymnastic in France. The German Friedrich Ludwig Jahn started the German gymnastics movement in 1811 with lead to the invention of the parallel bars, rings, high bar, the pommel horse and the vault horse.

3Artistic Gymnastics is usually divided into Men's and Women's Gymnastics. Men compete on six events: Floor Exercise, Pommel Horse, Still Rings, Vault, Parallel Bars, and Horizontal Bar, while women compete on four: Vault, Uneven Bars, Balance Beam, and Floor Exercise. In some countries, women at one time competed on the rings, high bar, and parallel bars (for example, in the 1950s in the USSR).

In 2006, FIG introduced a new point system for Artistic gymnastics in which scores are no longer limited to 10 points. The system is used in the US for elite level competition. Unlike the old code of points, there are two separate scores, an execution score and a difficulty score. In the previous system, the "execution score" was the only score. It was and still is out of 10.00, except for short exercises. During the gymnast's performance, the judges deduct this score only. A fall, on or off the event, is a 1.00 deduction, in elite level gymnastics. The introduction of the difficulty score is a significant change. The gymnast's difficulty score is based on what elements they perform and is subject to change if they do not perform or complete all the skills, or they do not connect a skill meant to be connected to another. Connection bonuses are where deviation happens most common between the intended and actual difficulty scores, as it can be difficult to connect multiple flight elements. It is very hard to connect skills if the first skill is not performed correctly. The new code of points allows the gymnasts to gain higher scores based on the difficulty of the skills they perform as well as their execution. There is no maximum score for difficulty, as it can keep increasing as the difficulty of the skills increase. Artistic events for women: Vault, Uneven bars, Balance beam, Floor and Scoring.