Your Guide to Olympic Gymnastics: Floor Exercise

For two weeks every four years, women’s gymnastics is one of the biggest sports in the world. The rest of the time, those of us watching are kind of a niche group.

That can make it hard to fully appreciate what you’re seeing when the athletes take the Olympic stage. If you want to know what’s required on each apparatus or how to distinguish good routines from great ones, we’re here to help.

Here, we’ll look at the floor exercise, starting with a broad overview and then moving into technical details. We also have guides to the vault, uneven bars and balance beam.

The basics

The square floor mat is about 40 feet on each side, which makes the diagonal paths along which gymnasts tumble about 56 feet. A carpeted surface covers a layer of foam, over wood, over springs. The slight bounce of those springs allows gymnasts to do more difficult skills.

Every floor routine must include:

• A flip with a twist of at least 360 degrees

• A double back flip, with or without twists

• Backward and forward tumbling

• Two leaps or hops in succession, either directly connected or with running steps in between. One must involve a 180-degree split.

Floor routines, set to music of the gymnast’s choice — no lyrics allowed — last about 90 seconds and include three or four tumbling passes. Gymnasts generally do their most difficult passes first. They receive one score for difficulty and one for execution, and the two are added.

Unlike the vault, which showcases pure power, the floor exercise combines power with artistry. In practice, though, some gymnasts don’t put as much effort into their choreography. But when a gymnast really puts on a performance, you can tell.