Child Anatomy

Oh my God! This boy has no bones! How many time I did hear this words! But, do you ever ask yourself how the gymnasts can do so many amazing things with their own body without to get hurting? All that elasticity exists because human anatomical characteristics. Our body is full of bendings, ligaments, muscles and bones that can be stretched out and to contract, generating a lot of kind of movement.

In a child's skeleton (image 1) we can see the disproportion in the length and in the thickness of the bones in relation to the adults. The arms, the legs and the healthy log are pretty short. This happens because our body is still in the middle of the formation and it will stop growing when you are about 20 years of age. Besides, the bones (or the "lack " of them) are not main responsible for the great elasticity of a gymnast. The muscles of the body (image 2) have that function. they are providers for the stretched out and contract too.

Image 1: Don't worry, it's not a scream movie! The picture is you own when we look inside!		Image 2: The human muscles. Click in the two images to see them larger.

Every child has enough flexibility to execute simple movements as placing the toe in the forehead but when we talk about more accentuated stretching we have some interesting advantages: The muscles are more flexible and they can be stretched out more easily than in an adult.

During an intensive training it is possible to do a backbend (image 3) and to reach the clang with the head in a little time, because the distance between the head and the clang is naturally smaller. In image 4 a boy can reach his forehead with the foot keeping your leg fuuly extended, what is impossible for any adult.

Image 3: The children do backbends more easily than adults.

Every child is different of other child. There are different muscular kind. It has different characteristics that can help the athlete in certain sports. This characteristcs are not acquired with the training. They come from your own parents' genes. It is the genetics acting in our body and doing some children are naturally more flexible than other. Amazing, hein?!!

Image 4: Short legs (a child characteristic) allow to the boy to do things that adults are not able to.