What do yoga, obstacle courses, and the Rockettes have in common? They are each similar to exercise styles that were the precursor to modern competitive gymnastics.
You probably have all the details you need to know about the history of Simone Biles, the GOAT of women’s gymnastics. You’ve seen her parents, heard about what she did at age seven, know her family history, medical history, and her husband’s shoe size. You know how she got here. But how did gymnastics get here into the Olympics? It may surprise you to know that gymnastics emerged from multiple paths, all of which had cultural and philosophical movements attached to them.
So as you prepare to watch the men fly around the pommel or wince as they drop into the Maltese cross on the rings, consider where they started, before there were medals at stake.
Pehr Ling: Goethe, the Edda, and the Shaolin monks
The word gymnastics is based on the Greek gymnasium, which was a place where men exercised naked (gymnazein meant to train in the nude). But what the Greeks did exactly while their junk was bouncing around isn’t detailed that much and wasn’t maintained. Exercise systems slept for centuries until the Scientific Age, End of Enlightenment, whatever you wish to call the beginning of the 19th century. Three guys, in Stockholm, Berlin, and Prague, are credited with creating modern gymnastics.
Pehr Henrik Ling, the Swede, kicked it off in 1804. Ling studied theology at Uppsala University, then traveled extensively, reading a lot of Goethe and Schiller–heavy duty German guys–as well as Norse mythology and books on Chinese body exercise and martial arts. In other words, he was one of those guys wealthy enough to wander around and think deep thoughts. Those thoughts centered on ways to improve health, and he became an innovator and proponent of a system of exercises. Basically, he invented calisthenics. So, yes, you can blame all those jumping jacks you did in middle school PE on Ling.
Ling concentrated on stretching, aerobics, and performing in groups. His exercises occasionally included the use of equipment, but he was more focused on activities that moved the body alone. He is also credited with helping to influence Swedish massage, and his interest in the mind-body connection encouraged the development of the modern yoga movement. His emphasis was on the medical properties that exercises could deliver, and some of his more progressive followers suggested that Swedish gymnastics could “cure” disease. There was even a “Battle of the Systems” in the 19th century, as debates raged over which type of exercise would be best, especially in schools.
Group displays were also a part of the Swedish system. In the earliest Olympics, practitioners debated the best form to use. In the 1906 and 1908 Games, the gymnastics competitions featured two types of events: team events and individual events. The team events involved men competing together with a routine for a half hour, with props and featuring individuals and groups. In the Stockholm 1912 Games, the ones in Sweden, there were two types of team events: The Swedish system and The other one. Sweden won the gold in the Swedish system and declined to participate in the other one.
Beating Back Napoleon with Rope Climbing and Pommel Horse Flares
The other one, created by the other guy, was the German system developed by the “father of gymnastics,” Friedrich Ludwig Jahn. Jahn also studied–you guessed it–theology and medicine at various German universities, but he also served in the Prussian army in 1806. Remember that time when Napoleon marched across Europe? While Napoleon was eventually defeated by the westerners at Waterloo and the Russians in Moscow, in between, he swept across Germany, Prussia, and Poland. Which means the Germans spent a lot of time grinding their teeth under French occupation and realizing they needed to up their military game.
Enter Herr Jahn and his ideas to build up the muscles of the Vaterland. Jahn’s focus on exercise was to improve the physical fitness of the army for expressly nationalistic purposes. He advocated rope climbing and marching together–heavy-duty military exercises–not unlike what is seen today in basic training. But he also is credited with inventing the use of the pommel horse, vault, parallel bars, rings, and the high bar. Basically, all the apparatuses that are used in the men’s even today emerged from Jahn’s sytem, except for the floor exercise, which is closer to the Swedish system.
Jahn established gymnasiums called Turnplatzes (turn being German for gymnastics), where his system was practiced. Larger groups were called Turnverein, and the movement of dudes-getting-together-to-march-and-climb-ropes spread worldwide. In the United States, Turnverein were established a number of states. and his broader groups were called Turnverein. For example, a large swath of the Milwaukee Turnverein joined the Union Army together to fight in the U.S. Civil War.
His politics were a blend, and their downstream effects were problematic. On the one hand, he bristled under the autocratic yoke of Napoleon, so he advocated “revolutionary” and leftist ideas of throwing off governments. In that sense, some of the earliest Turnverein were termed radical. At the same time, Jahn’s emphasis on natural purity of his countrymen and the embrace of the essence of Germany led to the rejection of anyone not German. So his ideas also fostered spirits which would help breathe life into the Nazis in the next century.
In the earliest Olympic Games of 1896, gymnastic competitions on Jahn’s apparatuses–horizontal bar and parallel bars for example–were included. Combinations of these moved in and out of subsequent Games. At one point, there were events adding performance on the apparatus together with the shot put and javelin. In the 1912 system boss battle, the German system was the one called “the free system.” However, they were edged out of the medals by everyone else from Scandinavia–except Sweden–with Norway, Finland, and Denmark finishing 1-2-3.
The Ultimate Group Mix of Exercise and Politics: Sokols
The mix of people and exercises were not done evolving. As the philosophy of Marx and Engels brought working class people together in the late 19th century, there was more change to come. Political clubs sprang up that centered around discussions of philosophy, politics, and the spirit of international brotherhood. (And sisterhood, too, as some of the earliest clubs advocated equality for women, which was easy to do when it was nowhere near likely to happen. Just sayin’.) Some of these groups also extolled the virtues of exercising together because you’re more likely to join your buddies on the picket line after you’ve been part of a their human pyramid.
Ground zero for this movement was in Czechoslovakia, and the man in charge this time was Miroslav Tyrš. Surprisingly (NOT!), he also had a Ph.D. in philosophy, having written a thesis on Schopenhauer and was considered an expert on art history. Naturally, therefore, he ended up teaching physical education and getting interested in sports. Actually, like Ling, he suffered from poor health–maybe these guys shouldn’t read so much German philosophy?–and was interested in strengthening his body.
Tyrš groups were called sokols, which means falcons, and based around the principles of “sound mind and a strong body.” He wanted to model the sokols after the Turnplatzes, but the Germans refused to join a group with Bohemians (i.e. Czechs) in it, so he rejected the Turner system and created his own. This system would be egalitarian, even including women.
The sokol movement also spread across Europe, becoming popular wherever there were gatherings of the working class. This was particularly true in many countries across Eastern Europe, so gathering in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and other countries across the geography “owned” by Russia and Prussia. The men and women in the sokols would get together and perform mass gymnastics together, but less in the spirit of competition or even health and more in the spirit of affirming their support of each other. A sokol demonstration was a demonstration of solidarity, in the most socialist sense of the word.
The mass demonstrations out of the sokol groups were extremely popular and well received, and they became the centerpieces of the Spartakiads, the Worker’s Olympics developed in the 1920s. Spartakiads were Eastern Europe’s answer to the Olympics because the Games in the early days not only prevented paid athletes from competing, but at one point, rejected any working person from who wanted to compete. To contrast themselves with the bourgeois gentlemen athletes, those in the sokols reveled in athletics of the working man.
Mass demonstrations of 20,000 people in the Spartakiads were common, which is why by the time Stalin came along, he made them compulsory and included children. The ultimate expression of these mass gymnastics movements has continued to adjust to become what is now called the Arirang Mass Games in North Korea. They still represent the beauty and pageantry of the mass gymnastics displays created by the health nuts and philosophers of 150 years ago, but there is a shadow cast by their obsession with promoting North Korean leaders.
Still, aside from the mass gymnastics displays used for other political purposes, the development of the sokols also influenced Olympics gymnastics considerably. This was because the expertise across the Eastern European clubs, beginning with Czechoslavakia, but also in Russia, Poland, Romania, and the Ukraine, created a pool of extraordinary athletes. Czechoslovakia medalled repeatedly in Games from 1948 forward, establishing themselves particularly as one of the best women’s teams to emerge from the sokols.
Gymnastics Help Women Get in the Games
Thus, despite some of the ways that the philosophies behind gymnastics were used, the support for sound mind and strong body allowed for exhibitions of astounding skill and grace. This came to include an embrace of women by the Olympic Movement, as women’s demonstrations impressed the male committee members as different from men but athletic in their own way.
When the Danish women gymnasts put on a display in London 1908, the audience was enthralled. The photo of the women made the front page, eclipsing the picture of the royals. It’s possible that what people enjoyed was the view of their calves (in stockings, but still visible). Yet the “pleasing figures” as they were called, helped strengthen the view that women could participate in a kind of sport. It would take until 1928 for women’s gymnastics to formally be contested, but once there, they would remain until they eclipsed the men’s versions in popularity and worldwide interest.
While it might be tempting to dismiss the inclusion of women gymnasts as sexist because it was their display of precision and grace (cue the Rockettes!) which impressed the committee, such displays opened the door. Plus, women who performed their feats of skill had to reach a standard of elegance that compelled them to display strength without looking like they did so.
It’s hard to say who Simone should credit most: Jahn, Tyrs, or Ling, or the Danish group who showed up in their stockings and wowed the King of England.
A fascinating write up on the history and evolution of Olympic gymnastics.