As Special Education Philippines is also about the pursuit of new knowledge, this post is to give an idea about the definition of vaulting and floor exercise in Gymnastics and some trivia about these two exercises.

When I first heard about vaulting from Leyte Palarong Pambansa 2012 athlete and gymnast, Julie Ann Borneo, my past experience told me that it was a location or a place where one stores valuable things like a bank’s vault. So when she instructed me to go to her, I was a little disoriented because I did not observe such a place inside the People’s gym in Pangasinan.

On the other hand, somehow I supposed that the performance I witnessed gymnasts perform on the big floor of the gym accompanied with usually an upbeat tune would be the floor exercise. The almost half of the gym was covered and it seems to be the highlight of the competition as you can hear cheers from different teams in support of their comrade’s presentation.

So what is vaulting?

Vaulting is a verb which means to perform a vault while a vault is an Gymnastics event that both male and female gymnasts perform. This event only lasts a few seconds and requires a vaulting table.

What is floor exercise?

Floor exercises is performed in a mat usually measuring 12 meters by 12 meters. Like vaulting, it is performed by both male and female gymnasts. It lasts for at least 1 and 1/2 minutes and does not require any apparatus to execute it.

Some Trivia about Vaulting and Floor Exercises:

1. The vaulting table can be referred as a vaulting horse some times because before 2001 it looked like a long cylindrical structure like a pommel horse. Found the picture below from Freaking News. Hilarious!

Pommel Horsey? Special Education Philippines

2. Vaulting is one of the two performances artistic gymnasts perform in a competition. The other one is floor exercises.

3. In the past , floor exercises where performed in mats similar to those used in wrestling. Ouch!

4. The floor used during floor exercises is also called a spring floor because the floor is made from plywood under a solid foam supported by foam blocks or springs. I hope it also adds some spring while gymnasts do their thing.