Gymnastics

Is gymnastics safe?

For death risk, yes. For injuries, it is one of the tougher sports a child can do. Gymnasts fall from height onto hard landings thousands of times a year, so broken wrists, sprained ankles and concussions are routine. The rare catastrophe is a fall onto the head or neck, which can leave a gymnast paralysed.

The best count of serious outcomes comes from the US National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSIR), which has tracked school and college sport since 1982. In 1.15 million gymnastics participant-seasons up to 2025, it recorded 3 deaths: one high-school boy and two college women. That is about 2.6 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per season, or roughly 0.03 per session if a season has about 80 training days (our estimate). No high-school girl died in 940,000 seasons.

Many American gymnasts train in private clubs rather than school teams, and nobody publishes a comparable count for them. Elite club gymnasts train far more hours than school athletes, so their risk per season is probably higher, though there is no reason to think it is higher per session.

The neck injuries

Gymnastics stands out in the NCCSIR data for permanent disability. High-school girls had 7 traumatic injuries with lasting disability, a rate of 0.74 per 100,000 seasons, and boys 1.59. College rates were higher still, about 4.6 per 100,000 seasons for both men and women. That puts gymnastics alongside ice hockey and football among the riskiest school sports for catastrophic injury, though the numbers are small and rates based on fewer than five cases are uncertain.

These injuries happen when a gymnast under-rotates or loses orientation and lands on the head. Among head and neck injuries treated in US emergency departments in 2001–2020, the cervical spine was the second most common fracture site after the nose. Most head and neck cases (95.7%) were treated and discharged, but the few that are not can change a life.

Everyday injuries

The common injuries depend on age. A NEISS study for 2012–2018 estimated about 72,500 youth gymnastics injuries in US emergency departments each year, 61% of them in children aged 7 to 11. Young children mostly break wrists and forearms. Teenagers more often sprain ankles and have concussions. Across all ages, gymnastics-related musculoskeletal injuries ran at about 481 per 100,000 participants per year in emergency departments in 2013–2020.

At college level, NCAA women's gymnastics had 8.0 injuries per 1,000 practices and meets in 2014–2019. Strains, sprains and inflammatory conditions were the most common types, overuse injuries made up 22.5% of practice injuries, and concussion was the single most reported injury. Practice injury rates rose over the period.

Overuse is the slow-burn problem: wrist pain from bearing weight through the hands, back pain from repeated arching, and stress fractures. Children who specialise early and train long hours are most exposed.

Safeguarding is part of safety

Physical injury is not the only risk parents weigh. In December 2021 a US bankruptcy judge approved a $380 million settlement between USA Gymnastics and survivors of sexual abuse by Larry Nassar and others connected to the sport. The plan set up a task force of survivors and lawyers to change the culture of the sport. Any club should have a written safeguardingSafeguardingThe legal duty of payment and e-money firms to keep customer money separate from their own, so it can be returned if the firm fails.More in the glossary policy, rules against one-to-one unobserved contact, and a clear person to report concerns to.

How to keep gymnasts safe

1. Choose qualified coaches who teach skills in steps and do not rush children onto harder elements.
2. Use the right equipment: landing mats, foam pits and spotting belts for new skills, especially twisting and flipping elements.
3. Limit training hours, especially before puberty, and build in rest days and an off-season.
4. Take pain seriously. Wrist or back pain that lasts more than a few days needs a doctor, not more training.
5. Report concussion symptoms and follow return-to-sport steps.
6. Never move a gymnast who may have hurt the neck. Keep them still and call an ambulance.

How we scored it

Fatality risk (98) reflects about 0.03 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per session in US school and college data. Injury risk (45) is the weakest factor, because injuries are frequent and catastrophic neck injuries occur at a high rate for the number of participants. Controllability (62) credits coaching and equipment, and the rescue environment (90) is good in indoor gyms. Compare wrestling and American football, the other school sports where serious injury drives the score.