Talk about taking one for the team...
'Serenity'
Spike's Bitches 42: Which question do you want me to answer first?
[NAFDA] Spike-centric discussion. Lusty, lewd (only occasionally crude), risqué (and frisqué), bawdy (Oh, lawdy!), flirty ('cuz we're purty), raunchy talk inside. Caveat lector.
4'10" here, and never deprived of nutrients. Just short.I'm not saying all people not tall would be, just seems vast majority of female gymnasts are small. Maybe my conspiracy raddled brain is working too hard. Not enough sleep. Needs more food. Watch less TV. All of the above.
Ima shut up now.
Well, yes, but if they'd grown significantly, they'd have washed out of the sport before you got to know them as gymnasts.
Yeah. Kind of like basketball players are tall. It's an asset for the sport.
And Natter's favorite gymnast, Svetlana Khorkina, is about 5'5".
Why is smaller good for gymnastics? I'm sure there are physics reasons, but I don't know what they are.
When gymnasts hit puberty, it throws off their center of balance, which then screws with all the flipping and such they have to do. They have to relearn everything.
Such is my understanding... Kat would know more.
Well, I think it depends on the event. I think there's a bit of an advantage to being bigger on vault, but a huge advantage to being smaller on bars. For the men, shorter legs would seem to make pommel horse much easier.
Center of gravity is lower. Very important for balance beam, makes you a heck of a lot more stable. On the uneven parallel bars it means you don't have to make as many contortions to avoid the lower bar when circling the upper. Makes you spin faster, too.
When gymnasts hit puberty, it throws off their center of balance, which then screws with all the flipping and such they have to do. They have to relearn everything.
Same thing happens in most sports. Skating jumps feel really different with and without hips.
I think that this is a large part of the reason why the very young Olympians (from before the minimum age of 16 was put in) tended to not have a second Olympics, while a bunch who had their first Olympics around age 16 or 17 ended up going to a second and sometimes even a third. It's much easier to go through the body changes if you're not trying to keep your world title at the same time. If you get to that level after you've gone through puberty, you just have to work on staying there with pretty much the same body.