fitness you have to be in the physical shape in order to do the

skills that we do

and get through the routines

and at the same time make it look effortless

so that's kind of like where the artistic side of it comes in too. Especially in

college gymnastics it really is a performance you go out there and you want

everyone in the crowd to be watching your gymnastics watching your routine

The focus is drawing in that crowd

cause they...

you know you're performing for them

and at the same time there is kind of that

scientific and technique component you have to

put your body exactly in the right place so that you are able to

hit those hand stands and stick that dismount

With gymnastics there is a lot going on

but what we can do is follow her center of mass and make rough approximations for say the

force on her feet when she lands and particularly in the case

of say, the uneven bars

If we follow her center of mass

it comes off the bars reaches a peak

where her velocity is approximately zero ignoring horizontal velocity

Basically what's happened

it all of her potential energy at the top has been converted into kinetic energy

The force between the gymnast

feet and

the mat

does work to bring the energy of the gymnast to zero. To calculate the work we take the integral

of the force parallel to the path over the path traveled

If we actually put in the numbers

we can calculate a value for this force which

turns out to be approximately two or three football players or

obviously there is a lot of force there

and these gymnasts have to be really strong

I remember when i was taking the physics series my sophomore year

learning about kinematics and dynamics

it definitely would cross my mind

think like oh...

what are those forces the are going through my legs when I land my vault

Or even just

you know for every reaction there is an opposite reaction so that when you're

pulling the bar down in your giant swings that force down is kinda what sends you

back up so you are able to flip twice and then land

It is a lot of force

by the end of season we know that every single one of the girls on the team are hurting

I think that just kinda comes

with the nature of the sport.