Gymnastics is definitely one of, if not the most difficult sport. An immense amount of strength is required for even the simplest skills to be executed properly. Every muscle group in a gymnast’s body must be strong. Runners for example, primarily strengthen their legs & minimal core work. Gymnastics requires upper body strength, core strength, & lower body strength, along with all of the little muscle groups that most don’t even realize exist. Similar to climbers, gymnasts must do grip strength training for bars. Rope climbs are a great tool for this & building the extreme upper body strength that is vital to gymnastics. Gymnasts need endurance & power. So gymnastics training encompasses the training of distance runners & sprinters. Additionally, gymnastics is the most mentally demanding sport out there. Knowing that a slip in focus for even one second could lead to paralysis is not exactly comforting. Mental blocks are so common and drive many gymnasts to quit. Gymnasts have to master four completely different apparatus to even have a chance at succeeding in the all around at competitions. There is never a limit to the skills that a gymnast can learn, so one can never truly master the sport. Even for the best gymnasts in the world, there’s always an extra twist or flip to be added somewhere. In other sports like volleyball for example, once an athlete learns the basics (bump, set, spike, serves, jump serves) they work to perfect those & then use the same skills forever. Gymnasts work to perfect old skills while constantly learning new skills for the next level. Lower level gymnasts train for more hours each week than elite athletes from other sports. Elite gymnasts train up to 40 hours each week. Gymnastics is by far the most difficult sport