Dvora Meyers:
If you want to get boys into gymnastics, call them ninjas.
This is the advice I heard from a Southern California-based gymnastics coach while I was attending the 2017 USA Gymnastics Congress …
Here’s former gymnast Najee Richardson.
Can American Ninja Warrior Save Men’s Gymnastics?
Published by
Gymnastics Coaching.com 
men’s gymnastics does not need to be “saved”.
It never has been and never will be a mass participation sport due to it’s extensive “task demands”…..this notion that we ought to be like soccer has always eluded me……
the pressure in our current culture to dumb everything down to the point where no standards (or
excellence) are required to “succeed” surely needs to be revisited
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It’s a bit stupid to say that gymnastics can’t be a mass participation sport. You seem to be stuck in an elite mindset. Gymnastics is an essential sport for motor skill development and should be promoted as such and I firmly believe every child should do a little bit of gymnastics. In my country gymnastics has just overtaken tennis in participation numbers and is certainly heading towards being a mass participation sport and many clubs have as many as 30% boys. I find it strange when you go to america and many gyms dont even offer boys gymnastics and people seem to be stuck in a mindset that it is for girls and miss out on many customers and hold the sport back. In addition many people do gymnastics without realising it at a trampoline park. So if you consider those numbers gymnastics is already a mass participation sport, not to mention the gymnastics components of cross fit.
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fair enough Jason, and both your premises are correct:
1. I do have an elitist approach and therefore my perspective is skewed
2. as an American, my comment was directed through the prism of that youth sport culture….I fully agree with you that gym is the building block of all sports (and movement generally), and SHOULD BE something that ALL young people be exposed to….it SHOULD be a lifetime sport, and once upon a time (pre-Great War) in the US, it was……unfortunately, I don’t see the culture in the US undergoing a dramatic shift towards boys/mens gymnastics participation (at least in my lifetime)……again, YOU ARE CORRECT in an ideal world
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