Hollow body, round-off, basic stance: every gymnastics term explained simply — your cheat sheet before the other guides assume you know them.
"What's the hollow body position, and why does everyone talk about 'basic stance' like it's obvious?" — honest answer: gymnastics has its own vocabulary, and it's assumed knowledge in every guide, every club session, every coach's cue. This glossary explains the key terms before you trip over them — read it once, and everything clicks from line one.
Start with the gear, then the rest falls into place.
The crash mat (Weichbodenmatte) is your single most important purchase — a thick, cushioned mat you use for every landing and every new element. It doesn't take the landing away from you, but it changes the force-time curve enough that your joints don't absorb the full impact. A thin yoga mat is not a substitute — it only fakes safety.
On clothing: a leotard (Turnanzug) or snug, movement-friendly clothing (leggings plus a fitted top) isn't just about style — it lets you and your coach actually see your body line, which disappears under baggy clothes. You'll also use chalk (Magnesia, chemically magnesium carbonate): a white powder that dries your hands and increases grip on the bar, parallel bars, and rings — apply it sparingly, because too much cakes into a slick layer and makes your grip worse, not better. Once your support volume on the bar or uneven bars increases, grips (Handschützer) come into play — leather straps that protect your palms from tearing. For early support work on the floor, you'll often use parallettes (Parallettes): small, low bar handles that let you practice handstands and support holds safely at ground level.
This is the foundation everything else is built on — before a single somersault.
The hollow body position (Hollow Body) is gymnastics' signature core tension: lying on your back, you press your lower back into the floor, brace your abs, and lift your shoulders and legs slightly so your body forms a shallow banana shape. This pattern carries over into handstands, cartwheels, and support holds later on; it prevents the sagging lower back that ruins beginners' lines. Its upright counterpart is the basic stance (Grundstellung): arms stretched overhead beside your ears, abs braced, ribs pulled in, legs fully extended — the position every element starts from and every clean landing ends in.
One term that catches beginners off guard: wrist balance (Handgelenks-Balance). In a handstand you don't balance through your hips but through subtle pressure shifts in your fingers — tip forward and you press your fingertips down, tip back and you press through your palms. And a support hold (Stütz) is the isometric hold where your shoulders sit over your hands and your body forms one straight line — the base strength that carries every later element.
The classic first skills, in their proven order.
The forward roll (Rolle) builds body roundness and spatial orientation: from a squat, hands down, chin to chest, rolling over a rounded back — never over your head or neck. The cartwheel (Rad) is your first real floor element — hands and feet land one after another along an imaginary line, legs straight, eyes on your hands. Once the cartwheel is solid, comes the round-off (Radwende) — a cartwheel with a two-footed landing that launches you into the next move — and much later, the back handspring (Flick-Flack), a backward handstand-flip. These three build strictly on each other: no back handspring without a clean round-off. A somersault (Salto) is free rotation in the air with no ground contact — the element that demands the most power, height, and body tension, and definitely not where your progression starts. And the wall handstand (Wandhandstand, or "wall walk") is your safe entry into handstands: walking your feet up a wall, hands shuffling in, body extending — no fall risk involved.
Six fixed stations define classic artistic gymnastics, each with its own demands.
On the horizontal bar (Reck) you hang and swing from a single bar — the apparatus for giant swings and spectacular dismounts. The parallel bars (Barren) — or, for women, the uneven bars (Stufenbarren) with two rails at different heights — demand support strength and swing technique at once. The rings (Ringe) hang freely from the ceiling on two independent handles — pure strength matters here, because nothing stabilizes the movement for you. The balance beam (Balken), just ten centimeters wide, rewards precision over explosiveness. On vault (Sprung, or Sprungtisch) you convert short, explosive energy into a single takeoff over the table. And floor (Boden) is where your routine combines rolls, cartwheels, somersaults and more — routines here typically run far longer than on any other apparatus.
A few terms you'll run into at your first competition.
A routine (Kür) is your choreographed sequence on a given apparatus — timed in competition (mere seconds on vault, up to 90 on floor). The score (Wertung) is what the judges (Kampfrichter) calculate from difficulty and execution. And the dismount (Abgang) is the final move of a routine — the jump off the apparatus back to the floor, which needs to land solid or you're giving away points for free.
Whenever a new term throws you, ask yourself: is this about my landing, or my tension? Almost every term in this glossary circles back to one of those two things — whether it's hollow body, wrist balance, or dismount, it's always either about building body tension or controlling how you absorb force. Keep those two buckets in mind and you'll slot in any new term correctly.
### What is the hollow body position in gymnastics? The hollow body position is gymnastics' core tension pattern: lying on your back, you press your lower back into the floor, brace your abs, and lift your shoulders and legs slightly so your body forms a shallow banana shape. It prevents the sagging lower back that ruins form, and it's the pattern you carry into handstands, cartwheels, and support holds.
### What does basic stance mean in gymnastics? The basic stance (Grundstellung) is the upright default position: arms stretched overhead by your ears, abs braced, ribs pulled in, legs fully extended. Nearly every element starts from it, and every clean landing ends in it — it's essentially your body's "reset" signal.
### What's the difference between a cartwheel, round-off, and back handspring? All three build strictly on each other. The cartwheel is the base: hands and feet land sideways along a line, both legs straight. The round-off is a cartwheel finished with a two-footed landing that launches you forward. The back handspring is a backward handstand-flip — and it doesn't work without a clean round-off first.
### What's chalk used for in gymnastics? Chalk (Magnesia) dries your hands and increases friction between hand and apparatus — on the bar, parallel bars, and rings it stops sweaty hands from slipping. The key is applying it sparingly: too much cakes into a slick layer and actually makes your grip worse.
### What does a judge do in gymnastics? A judge (Kampfrichter) scores your routine on a given apparatus, combining the difficulty of your elements with how cleanly you executed them. A shaky or incomplete dismount, for example, costs points directly — no matter how hard the routine before it was.
Turnen: Getting Started Overview