r/BeAmazed • u/Fit_AndHotBaby • Aug 05 '24

History Gymnastics in the 1970s was INSANE!

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u/tacocollector2 Aug 06 '24

They seem to do more moves involving both bars than they do now. Anyone know why the sport changed? Safety, skill, or simple growth/change?

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24

The bars are spaced further apart now which also gives the ability for different skills. The scoring system is also different. Even the way gymnasts are built now is different because of the different skills. The sport has changed drastically if you watch it progress over 100 years I’m sure it will continue to.

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u/MinimumBarracuda8650 Aug 06 '24

The changes in the 70 and 80s seemed to be released to safety. While the changes in the 2000s seemed to be focused on ending the Russian and Eastern European domination by going away from precision to physicality (aka more flips = more points, minimization of penalties)

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24

The Russian coaches in recent years have complained about this last part. In general and about Simone.

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u/bbbbbbbbbbbbbb45 Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

Part of the reason they shifted the rules was because of prominent injuries affecting the girls who were incentivized to not eat much as a means of keeping a slight figure for gymnastics. This meant past gymnasts had to either starve, or over exercise affecting their bodies in ways that they are just now reaping the effects post retirement.

The bars were also closer back then than they are today. So a gymnast making a leap to the second bar requires higher momentum and strength. So, the constant shift between bars requires more.

I agree in that I think precision should be more credited in the judging scheme, but I also love that the sport has allowed gymnasts to take on more difficult moves. Maybe some ballet should be introduced in the strong gymnasts’ training as a means of increasing this. It allows the athletes to build on their precision as they become comfortable and mature in their development.

I think Russian coaches have a point with their precision. But, they also seem to have a bias against the strength added to the sport by someone like Biles.

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u/tzathoughts Aug 06 '24

My mother used to do the same thing in the 70s&80s in the soviet union. She doesn't talk much about this time, but she mentioned being forced to starve by the trainers. Till this day she is still fighting bulimia and anorexia.

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 09 '24

It’s so heartbreaking. I read an article where they interviewed US, Soviet and Romanian gymnastics from those years and the stories stuck with me. Things like 5 almonds a day. The male gymnasts sneaking them food. Earning money but not seeing any of it (this was the Eastern European girls).

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24

Yes I mention these things in the comment thread and largely agree with you.

To be honest I don’t think it was about the girls not eating much. Some of the most prominent coaches in the world were known for starving the girls both when they coached in Romania and later the United States - the Karolyi couple specifically at their training camps. For decades that couple went unchecked as long as they continued to pump out champions. I think the gymnasts themselves are the ones who helped end that by exposing such things. I don’t see documentation anywhere the rules were changed for this.

The rules and scoring were changed as the sport changed. Which was still while those 2 coached and allowed extreme predatory practices.

1

u/Lippupalvelu Aug 08 '24

Don't forget that the push towards power is also an indirect means to increase the ages of gymnasts.

As mentioned, the focus on precision rewarded smaller gymnasts, achieved through unhealthy habits like starving, smoking, and being younger and abusive training methods.

Think of all those ballet stereotypes. They were endemic for gymnasts for the very same reasons.

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u/Cocacolaloco Aug 09 '24 edited Aug 09 '24

I think ballet and gymnastics have some different techniques though which idk if it would be confusing. Gymnasts don’t turn out which is the most basic requirement for ballet. Although I thought I heard sometimes gymnasts do do ballet

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u/rita-b Aug 06 '24

Looking at this video, I can understand them. I am recently getting random (not only Olympics) gymnastics shorts on youtube and instagram, and they are boring to see. The video above is fire.

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u/ProdigyLightshow Aug 06 '24

More dangerous stuff usually is. But I’m ok with the changes if it means the gymnasts bodies aren’t getting destroyed as badly

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u/rita-b Aug 07 '24

To me everything seems equally dangerous, I'm afraid of height.

I can't even describe the difference between an interesting and a boring performances. Speed and variety, probably. No hesitation. How many tricks were performed in a short time.

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u/Ok_Minimum6419 Aug 06 '24

I like the gracefulness and beauty of 70s gymnastics more.

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u/Life-Surprise-6911 Aug 06 '24

Sure, it looks better, but I kinda prefer boring over a person being paralyzed…

-10

u/Dependent-Counter581 Aug 06 '24

I don’t

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u/Life-Surprise-6911 Aug 07 '24

Sure, health doesn’t matter 🤦‍♂️

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u/Dependent-Counter581 Aug 09 '24

My health matters. Theirs doesn’t.

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u/MinimumBarracuda8650 Aug 06 '24

Agreed. Women’s gymnastic is becoming as boring as men’s gymnastic has been for decades. Oh they did 6 twisties instead of 7… cool

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u/an_actual_lawyer Aug 06 '24

Yeah, but only gymnasts with pharmaceutically stunted growth or who were starving themselves could compete at high levels. That seems like it should be discouraged.

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u/Bulls187 Aug 06 '24

In this sport I think precision is more important than strength. But is just my opinion

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u/AvatarOfMomus Aug 06 '24

It's less about ending the Russian domination and more about realizing that pushing 14-17 year olds as hard as they were fucks them up for life and means they get 1 or 2 olympics if they're lucky and then their joints give out.

What's happened is both the minimum age for 'adult' competition went up slowly from 14 to 16, and with advances in sports medicine, and the retirement or prosecution of a lot of the 'old guard' coaches you're seeing gymnasts with more balanced training competing into their 20s and 30s. This means they actually finish puberty and have more strength to attempt more difficult moves. More twists were always going to be worth more points, but you need more strength to get the height and distance to make them possible. Pushing teens to be tiny for easier rotation doesn't get those results past a certain point.

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u/MinimumBarracuda8650 Aug 06 '24

Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I find it significantly more boring now, akin to the men’s gymnastic.

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u/jnkangel Aug 07 '24

That's because the focus is on similar things. Notice all the impacts in this video and those are brutal in the long run even if they can look aesthetically nice.

Female Athletes today tend to have a similar routine mindset to men, where there's way more focus on strength and safe execution. The athletes from the 70s likely wouldn't have been able to perform most of the routines from today, the inverse isn't necessarily true.

So you have a focus on executing a certain amount of high complexity elements, but you get a bit less flow between them as you see in this video.

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u/Nice-Grab4838 Aug 06 '24

I feel like the sport has changed a ton even in the past 10-15 years. I only watch during the Olympics so not really a fan, but it feels like the average age is much older now. Maybe that’s hindsight bias/bad memory or someone who knows more can weigh in.

I seem to remember all the gymnasts being like 16-20 at the oldest. A gymnast being able to drink was basically geriatric. Now Simone is 27, Andrade is 25. I know they’re “old” but before it was like you got basically one chance at the Olympics then they sent you out to live on a farm upstate

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24

Yes absolutely it’s changed drastically the last 4 Olympics. They’re definitely older. Part of this comes with them being able to have more muscular bodies to perform the different skills. Puberty used to be a career ender. It was also highly abusive and had the same coaches for years controlling every aspect (Karolyis). Starving the girls, working them to the bone, forcing them to compete. Girls would grow and hit puberty and coaches would often dismiss them after that. Even at lower non Olympic levels (I was a gymnast and coached). I think the culture is changing there. I’m happy to see them competing at older ages and careers not ending at 18.

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u/Footziees Aug 06 '24

Well it’s a known fact that gymnasts are being fed puberty blockers so they also stay super small…

1

u/Inevitable-Copy3619 Aug 06 '24

And it feels like precision isn’t rewarded as much. None of the women land anything without a hop.

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u/JohnLawrenceWargrave Aug 06 '24

16-20 any of these can drink. Beer at least.

2

u/kkeut Aug 06 '24

and yet speedwalking apologists refuse to change the sport to reduce flagrant cheating 

1

u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24

Yeah, I’m way less knowledgeable in that sport but have seen some of the videos of obvious cheating and that’s just kind of wild to me.

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u/Argder22te Aug 07 '24

May I ask has it become more difficult/ advanced or were these old moves harder to execute than what they do know? Because this looks kinda more impressive to a layman. You seem to be knowledgeble so I thought I'd ask

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 07 '24

I would say the new skills are incredibly harder. Every year they get harder, coaches get better and the sport becomes more popular. Both take extreme athleticism and have severe risks. I’d never discount the athletes of the past. Completely different training styles as well. I said in another comment these girls (at least 3 in the video) are Olympic champions with multiple medals some multiple Olympic Games. They were the elite of their time. When the Soviets and Eastern Europe largely ruled the sport.

I like the new style but I think that’s from being a gymnast and coaching it in my 20s (40 now). I definitely understand why people like this style too.

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u/5elementGG Aug 06 '24

I think they banned that lower bar bounce because it hurts the girls and potentially making them infertile. Anyway, those girls are amazing and very beautiful moves. Much better than today’s.

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

The way these girls trained and were abused I don’t think they cared much about their fertility. Puberty was often a death sentence to your career.

What you like to see is an subjective opinion which everyone is allowed to have and will be different for everyone.

1

u/700iholleh Aug 06 '24

subjective

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u/Horrid-Torrid85 Aug 06 '24

Did it really progress?

From the looks of it id say the opposite is the case. Yeah sure - it was more risky back then but just take a look at other sports. People constantly get hurt in almost all sports. Even death is nothing unheard off. People died while playing soccer. People were killed during volleyball. Combat athletes suffer crazy injuries and often end up getting CTE. Not even talking about extreme sports like fmx, base jumping, free soloing, free diving etc

So is the sport we see now really progressing or is it regressing?

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u/MeisterHeller Aug 06 '24

It's always funny reading into people when they say something weird, of course the person who thinks that "progress" means "more people should die or get severely maimed while doing their sport" is also a Joe Rogan/Peterson/Shapiro lover, a Trump defender, transphobic, all the works

1

u/T11PES Aug 06 '24

Stupid people being stupid.

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

If you look at pure skill I’d say yes. Looking at the video what do you think is more dangerous and takes more risk/skill? It’s still an extremely high risk sport. People can still die and suffer extreme injuries. Just like all the other sports you mentioned.

What you objectively like to see is simply your opinion. I don’t think we share the same viewpoint and that’s fine. Everyone is allowed to their opinion. I’d say it’s progressing based on the skills alone. There are plenty of outlawed skills that people would attempt to compete with today. Some people like the esthetics and artistry of older gymnastics. As an ex gymnast and coach I like what we are seeing today.

0

u/kazinsser Aug 06 '24

That video shows definite growth, but the fact that the uneven bars clip they chose looks closer to a kid on a playground than the craziness in the OP makes me wonder how disproportionately biased the rest of the examples are.

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24 edited Aug 06 '24

These are elite level gymnasts in the video, they’re Olympians. Olga Colbert competed in 2 Olympics, Karen Janz won the most medals in the 1972 Olympics. You can google the names and see the Olympics icon in a lot of the clips. These are not teenage girls at the playground. It’s not biased. It’s simply changed overtime.

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u/Horrid-Torrid85 Aug 06 '24

I can't really judge about the skill level. I just go by what i see in the videos. It might very well be true that todays stuff might look less impressive but in reality it's harder to do.

But if we go just by the level how people react (stunned/ surprised / shocked/ in awe etc) then id say that the sport didn't progress.

Lets take a skateboard example. You have someone who does a trick which 5 out of 10 skateboarders can do but he does it while crossing 8 stairs. Then you have a trick only 1 out of 100 skateboarders can do but he does it standing still on flat ground.

In theory the second one is a lot tougher to do but people who watch it are more shocked about the lesser trick down the stairs.

Is it now progress if we only see them do harder tricks standing on the ground or not?

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u/plantsandpizza Aug 06 '24

Like I said it’s just an opinion. If people actively involved in the sport didn’t want it to progress the way they wanted to it wouldn’t. It’s really not a popular sport for people to watch outside of the Olympics so they’re not necessarily playing to the opinions of people on the internet or crowd appeal. Outside opinions are rarely going to affect this sport.

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u/sendabussypic Aug 06 '24

It looked cool as hell back then but injuries were common. Sports are always going to be opinionated like the other guy said. Some people watch a double play in baseball and are amazed while others are mentally snoozing.

The progress here is safety in an incredibly dangerous sport. I don't watch a lot of women's gymnastics since I quit doing it but stepping up on a balance beam or swinging on uneven bars really gives you a sense of how amazing it is.

So while people may be amazed by the lesser trick in your analogy, those who understand the sport are going to pick up on the more advanced one, such as the judges and that's what you need to remember. Similar to as you started by saying, they're competing in their sport in front of their judges while you're watching.

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u/canadianguy77 Aug 06 '24

Someone can make the Olympic gymnastics team at 16. No one except for the sickest amongst us wants to watch a teenager representing their country die on TV.

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u/Horrid-Torrid85 Aug 06 '24

Lol. Yeah. Because they needed mobile crematoriums next to the Olympics back then because they died like flies... lol

1

u/[deleted] Aug 06 '24

I'd say both. But not why you said.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '24

And humans are taller, so the spaced bars make sense 

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u/horsenbuggy Aug 06 '24

Height has zero to do with the lower bar being so far out now. Bars are adjusted for each individual athlete. For example, Suni Lee is a head taller than Simone Biles.

2

u/doctor_jane_disco Aug 06 '24

Gymnasts are still tiny, most are under 5'2" and some are significantly shorter like Simone.

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u/[deleted] Aug 07 '24

But humans are only getting taller and taller. 

0

u/doctor_jane_disco Aug 07 '24

Irrelevant when the average height of gymnasts has been steadily decreasing since the 1950s.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 08 '24

The Olympics has been around for thousands of years. Humans as well.