Flexible Gymnastic Girl

Exercises of the ancient Greeks at first consisted of athletic feats performed by each individual according to his own notion, and were encouraged among the youth as combining amusement with exercise. These exercises were at length reduced to a system which formed a prominent feature in the state regulations for education. In fact, the period for gymnastics was equal to the time spent on art and music combined. All Greek cities had a gymnasium, a courtyard for jumping, running, and wrestling.
As the Roman Empire ascended, Greek gymnastics gave way to military training. The Romans, for example, introduced the wooden horse. In 393 AD the Emperor Theodosius abolished the Olympic Games, which by then had become corrupt and gymnastics, along with other sports, declined. For centuries, gymnastics was all but forgotten.
In the fifteenth century, Girolamo Mercuriale from Forlì (Italy) wrote De Arte Gymnastica, that brought together his study of the attitudes of the ancients toward diet, exercise and hygiene, and the use of natural methods for the cure of disease. De Arte Gymnastica also explained the principles of physical therapy and is considered the first book on sports medicine.
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Germany, two pioneer physical educators – Johann Friedrich GutsMuths (1759–1839) and Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852) – created exercises for boys and young men on apparatus they had designed and that ultimately led to what is considered modern gymnastics. In particular, Jahn crafted early models of the horizontal bar, the parallel bars (from a horizontal ladder with the rungs removed), and the vaulting horse.