The word "gymnastics" comes from ancient Greece. Where the word was used in a more generic sense to refer to physical activity training. The Romans adopted Greek ideas of physical culture including gymnastics into military training. They performed an early version of today's vault by building wooden dummy horses upon which to practise mounting and dismounting. In the last two centuries, the sport has become formalized with the gender specific types of apparatus and scoring procedures used today.
Olympic Competitions: Modern day Gymnasts perform exercises consisting of defined values on either four (Womens') or six (Mens) of the Eight pieces of apparatus in Artistic gymnastics; and are scored by a panel of judges on their ability to demonstrate proficiency, strength, flexibility, agility and timing.

Events:

Women (WAG) compete on a total of four (4) events in olympic order:

the vault(set sideways), uneven/asymetric bars(at a set height),

and two (2) timed events: balance beam, floor exercise (to music).

Men (MAG) compete on the vault (set lengthwise), floor, pommel horse, rings,

parallel bars, and the (horizontal) High bar.

Competitions are divided into three parts.

team competition, all gymnasts perform a compulsory (1A) and a (1B) optional exercise on each apparatus. The five best scores of each country's six gymnasts determine team standings.

individual all-round competition, Where the top 36 of the gymnasts from the team competition advance to compete again on each apparatus.(maximum three from any one country).

individual apparatus: the top eight gymnasts on each event from the team competition compete again on that apparatus only to determine the individual event winners. There is rule that a maximum of two gymnasts may be selected from any one country.

Judging: takes into account technical execution and the degree of difficulty of moves in awarding scores out of a maximum of 10.

Competitions are held at these venues:

Olympic Games, World Championships, Pan Am Games, Commonwealth Games, and various Continental events

National, regional, provincial, state, county, and inter-club levels.