Continuing Singapore Gymnastics (SG)  series of introductions about the benefits of gymnastics from Dr William Sands' comprehensive research, we now release one of the advantages of the sport.

Physical

Gymnastics is an anaerobic sport.

Anaerobic means "without oxygen." Gymnasts tend to have middling levels of aerobic (with oxygen) capacity. However, gymnasts are among the strongest and most flexible of all athletes. Gymnastics performances usually last under 90 seconds. The level of intensity of the activities is too high for long-term performance such as seen in endurance sport long duration events like the marathon. Most sports are anaerobic in nature. Only the long term endurance sports such as cycling, swimming, and running are largely aerobic. Gymnastics is an "acyclic" sport which means that the same movements are not repeated over and over. There are numerous benefits to cyclic, long-term endurance sports but variety is generally not one of them. One of the major benefits of gymnastics activity is that it subjects the gymnast's body to a wide variety of stimuli. Repeating the same movement patterns over and over has recently been questioned. And, the generally assumed superiority of aerobic training has been shown to be illusory for many areas of fitness, particularly with regard to weight loss.